The Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) is home to innovative training workshops designed specifically for fire and emergency service agencies. Created to aid emergency service personnel in achieving continuous quality improvement, our workshops are held at a variety of locations across the United States and internationally.
View and register for our 2012 workshops
CFAI Basic Workshop Series
The CFAI Basic Workshop Series includes two workshops, held over three days, that are required for agency accreditation managers and highly encouraged for agency heads and all members of the agency accreditation team.
CFAI Self-Assessment Workshop (2 days)
This 16-hour workshop assists fire and emergency service leaders in preparing for and working toward accreditation through a unique self-assessment model. This workshop provides valuable information on conducting an agency self-assessment and how to prepare for an on-site peer assessment visit.
The workshop:
- Explains the benefits of self-assessment and, ultimately, accreditation.
- Defines the planning requirements for self-assessment.
- Reviews the self-assessment process and the performance activities that define it.
- Prepares fire and emergency service personnel for a successful self-assessment.
- Prepares fire and emergency service personnel for an on-site peer evaluation.
Each student receives a workshop participant manual and the latest edition of the Fire and Emergency Service Self-Assessment Manual (FESSAM).
CFAI Basic Standards of Cover (SOC) Workshop (1 day)
This eight-hour workshop equips fire service personnel to rationally plan for and justify various levels of service. The workshop uses an overview of resource deployment planning and community risk analysis to cover the latest tools for calculating and analyzing risk—and the latest processes for mapping deployment and deployment coverage areas, such as Geographic Information System (GIS) software packages.
The workshop:
- Explains a process that allows agencies to determine their level of service performance in a consistent manner.
- Reviews the CFAI definition of the planning requirements to be considered in the self-assessment process.
- Defines methods agencies can use to determine the levels of service appropriate for its responsibilities and risks.
- Defines methods of developing a Standards of Response Coverage report.
Each student receives a workshop participant manual and the latest edition of the CFAI Standards of Cover manual.
Chief Officer Designation - A Guide to Completing the Process
This four-hour workshop explains the benefits of the prestigious CFO designation and the components of the designation process. Participants learn how to prepare a candidate portfolio and maintain the designation after it's earned.
Data Analysis and Presentation Using Microsoft Excel
This three-day hands-on workshop, created in cooperation with FireStats, LLC, aims to give fire officers a comprehensive understanding of the popular analytic and statistical tools available to the fire service—which are especially useful in fire department accreditation and Standards of Cover.
Designed primarily for chief-level officers with administrative responsibilities, the course prepares fire officers for making better and more defensible policies and presentations on department operations and long-term planning. The workshop includes instruction in basic and intermediate-level MicrosoftTM Excel and does not require any prior experience with the software.
Keys to Successful Mentoring
The Chief Officer Mentoring Program is designed to match tenured, experienced mentors with protégés (less experienced chiefs and chief officers). There are approximately 32,000 fire chiefs in the United States and, on average, we lose 3-4 a month due to retirements. As fire service leaders, we have a fundamental responsibility to develop our future leaders. Succession planning and the development of leaders is one of the greatest challenges we are facing in the fire service. The mass amounts of retirements in recent years have exacerbated this challenge.
This program is designed to prepare chief officers to step into their roles with real-world dialog beyond the formal academic and certificate tracks. Keys to Successful Mentoring is not only designed to assist peers and colleagues outside our departments, but can be adopted to assist the local fire chief within their organization. This four-hour workshop will provide instruction on best practices in mentoring, implementing a mentoring program within your department, how to become a mentor for the CPC program and the matching of mentors to protégés.
Advanced Technology for Community Risk/Standards of Cover
Designed for accreditation managers and their GIS specialists, this one-day seminar (or five-week webinar) focuses on using GIS and related tools to conduct the analysis required to complete the CFAI Community Risk and Standards of Cover (SOC) process. The workshop covers the data necessary to use GIS and Excel software and produce the exhibits necessary for a defendable Community Risk/SOC study.
The workshop provides training in:
- Completing a Public Safety Data/Application Matrix Worksheet in order to conduct a data needs assessment
- Identifying locations that may be good sources of data for their agency and accessing and downloading that data
- Accessing data sets from multiple websites
- Assembling the data to create the set of exhibits for the community being served
- Techniques and methodologies for refining data into risk categories
- Identifying the data sets and their relative data components needed to model risk and prepare the required risk exhibits
- Using population data to create population density areas that align with the current CFAI FESSAM
- Techniques to develop Risk Demand Zones
- Data sets needed to create the exhibits that represent distribution and concentration of services provided
- Extracting performance analysis data from GIS data sets
- Using GIS and Excel to analyze how emergency workloads impact unit and system performance
- Calculating the remaining capacity for a unit or first due area
- Calculating and assessing stop loss points
- Assessing peak loading by TOD and DOW
- Assessing performance by unit, shift, TOC, and DOW
- Analysis and reporting strategies to maintain awareness of current system performance
- Analysis to anticipate the deployment of resources when necessary to maintain service level objectives
This workshop is offered in two formats:
- Live 8 hour workshop
- Five week virtual distance learning
CFAI Peer Assessor Workshop
This eight-hour workshop provides live webinars, virtual coursework, and a final exam over four weeks to prepare members of on-site peer assessment teams to evaluate and validate information submitted for CFAI Accreditation. This workshop is also valuable for accreditation managers who can gain experience and knowledge for their own site visits by conducting site assessments.
The workshop provides training in:
- Evaluating agency performance in a fair and consistent manner
- Characteristics and skills required of a peer assessor
- Duties and responsibilities of the Team Leader
- Team preparations, behavioral guidelines, documentation requirements, rating processes, and anticipated schedule of events
- Preparing team worksheets, recording techniques, and applying appropriate ratings to areas evaluated
Dayroom Discussions
Informal and dynamic dayroom discussions among accreditation managers have solved some of the greatest problems faced by fire and public safety agencies, our communities, our nation, and even our world. In these discussions, all participants are equal, participate, and share ideas, but usually at least one person provides the straight scope for the rest of the group.
CFAI reserves 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm EST on the second Friday of each month for our own online dayroom discussions with the people responsible for coordinating their departments' accreditation processes. They may represent Registered, Applicant, or Accredited agencies. The discussion begins with 20-minute point of insight from the CFAI Program Manager, followed by the answering of questions and exchange of advice among all participants. Register here for the next Dayroom Discussions.