July 29, 2013 2 min read
Tulsa Fire Department Finds TargetSolutions ‘Hands Above the Competition’ for Firefighter Training
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Tulsa Fire Department’s impressive history dates back to the turn of the 20th century. The metro-sized department was once a small-time operation that served a community of around 1,000 people. Immense growth in the city’s population has been mirrored by the department’s expansion. Now, with a team of 724 employees, the 30-station department responds to more than 54,000 incidents each year, while serving nearly 400,000 citizens over 201-square miles.
With such a large metro fire department, communication across stations about training was not easy. Gathering large numbers of personnel and booking classrooms for training was unfeasible. The implementation of TargetSolutions in 2007 helped Tulsa’s leadership effectively disseminate training to the entire department.
“The biggest thing that TargetSolutions has done to help us with our training needs is offer an alternative to the classroom,” said Tulsa’s Director of EMS Michael Baker. “We have fire stations all over the city and we have to be able reach our firefighters at any time. TargetSolutions allows us to distribute education rapidly and lets us post our own custom developed content for our personnel and it gives us a great feedback mechanism to monitor it.”
The ability to distribute customizable material has benefitted Tulsa tremendously. TargetSolutions’ powerful online training management system enables departments to reach personnel on their level, at their time and at their pace. This has allowed the department to create online coursework that complements hands-on training in order to make the overall process more effective and efficient.
“We have fire stations all over the city and we have to be able to reach our firefighters at any time. TargetSolutions allows us to distribute education rapidly. We ask our members to review an online TargetSolutions PowerPoint and video embedded presentation, and take a test afterward to prepare themselves for when they arrive at an in-service or a training event to do the skills portion. This has allowed us to take something that would normally be two hours long and condense it down into an hour.”
Michael Baker
Director of EMS, Tulsa Fire Department
TargetSolutions has the ability to transform a department’s training productivity through engaging online courses, pre-training assignments called custom activities, and post-training tracking capabilities. Some might think web-based training software is too difficult and unpopular with personnel, but Baker believes adapting to technology is easier than you might imagine.
“TargetSolutions offers a great dashboard of performance and its easy to read, the icons are easy to access, and the members generally find their way quite nicely throughout the system,” he said. The system has proven to be beneficial for Tulsa and when it comes to customizing and delivering content, Baker says the department has found TargetSolutions to be “hands above the competition.”
About TargetSolutions
TargetSolutions is the leading provider of web-based technology solutions for fire and EMS organizations. These solutions enable organizations to maintain compliance, reduce losses, deliver curriculum, and track all station-level tasks, certifications and training activities.
