CPSE Supplement
CPSE Supplement
IAFF Formalizes Support for
CFAI Accreditation Process
BY DR. LORI MOORE-MERRELL

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION of Fire Fighters (IAFF) has a long history with the Center for Public
Safety Excellence and its Commission on
Fire Accreditation International (CFAI)
and Commission on Professional Creden-
tialing (CPC). The IAFF nominates repre-
sentatives to each of these three bodies
and actively engages with representatives
from the International Association of Fire
Chiefs (IAFC), the National Fire Protec-
tion Association (NFPA), the Insurance
Services Office (ISO), and the Internation-
al City/County Management Associa-
tion (ICMA) to ensure the CPSE and its
commissions achieve their mission of
leading the fire and emergency services to
excellence through the continuous quality
improvement process of accreditation,
credentialing, and education.
To solidify its support of the CFAI
accreditation process, at its August 2016

Biennial Convention, the IAFF adopted
Resolution No. 14: “RESOLVED that the
IAFF support and promote the CFAI
accreditation process noting that it is not
a validation that any fire department is
‘doing everything right’ but that it is a
continuous quality measurement system.”
The resolution acknowledged that the
CFAI accreditation process is a compre-
hensive self-assessment and evaluation
model that enables agencies to examine
past, current, and future service levels
and internal performance and com-
pare them to industry standards and
research. It went on to state that by con-
ducting a community risk assessment,
the agency can determine whether it has
sufficient resources effectively deployed
to address the hazards and risks in the
community, documenting the results in
its standards of cover (SOC). The SOC
document can then be used to identify
whether there are gaps that may leave
the community vulnerable to civilian in-
jury or death, firefighter injury or death,
or property loss.
The IAFF resolution specifically
addressed the importance of having
labor representatives on both the internal
agency accreditation teams and, when
available, as peer assessors on the peer
site assessment team. During the CFAI
public hearings, several agencies have
invited their labor representatives to
join them as they sit before CFAI to be
considered for accreditation. This united
front among all members of the agency
indicates to CFAI that the concepts of
self-assessment and continuous quality
improvement are institutionalized and
that there are effective labor-management
relations within that agency. The IAFF is
preparing to train select leaders who work
within accredited agencies and/or those
working in agencies seeking accreditation
in the CFAI process so that these individ-
uals may be considered for future roles as
CFAI peer assessors.
The IAFF understands that baseline
performance, as initially reported in the
accreditation process, indicates the level
at which an agency is operating today.

However, the IAFF also understands
that the focus should be on continuous
improvement for the future to ensure that
departments continue to meet the needs
of their community. Therefore, the IAFF,
in the resolution, recommended that the
NFPA 1710 standard serve as the bench-
mark (i.e., the target for performance) for
career departments. (Likewise, NFPA
1720 would serve as the benchmark for
volunteer departments.) In that regard,
it is notable that Category 2 of the 9th
edition Accreditation Model refers to both
jurisdictional expectations and industry
research, such as the research used in the
development of evidence-based consen-
sus-built standards like NFPA 1710, to set
benchmarks for performance.
Finally, the IAFF resolution encour-
ages fire departments going through
accreditation to use the new “big data”
system known as FireCARES during the
community risk assessment portion of the
process. FireCARES stands for Fire Com-
munity Assessment/Response Evaluation
System and provides U.S. fire depart-
ments entry to numerous data assets that
can assist in their accreditation efforts.
FireCARES can be accessed at www.
firecares.org. Every U.S. fire department
has a home page in the system.

The IAFF remains committed to the concept of continuous quality improvement and the role that the CPSE plays in promoting this concept in the fire and emergency services and believes that the adoption of Resolution No. 14 will underscore this commitment.

DR. LORI MOORE-MERRELL is assistant to the general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters. She is also a CPSE board member.

mitment to being good stewards of public resources. The accreditation process helps us find ways to be more innovative and efficient and to provide exceptional customer service to the people in our communities.

I’m a firm believer that even in great
organizations there are always ways we
can be better. I think this is particu-
larly relevant in the public sector. It
gives me great assurance that there are
other leaders who embrace this vision
and that there are outside organi-
zations, such as the CPSE, to affirm
we are moving in the right direction
and support us in the journey toward
excellence.