It's time to put the old administrative chiefs out to pasture and replace them with highly charged civilians. Sound radical? You better believe it! But like most radical change, it may well move your department from mediocrity to superiority. I know what you're thinking, but hold that thought and read on.

The fire service has experienced an enormous amount of change of late. Advances in technology, training and education and and changes in political sentiment toward government have had a huge effect on the way fire departments conduct their business. We are drowning in a quagmire of complex financial issues, procurement and disposal regulations, human resources laws, information systems, and new communications technologies. Meanwhile, we are being held to a much higher level of accountability and professionalism by our citizens, the media, and state and federal governments. These changes will require fire departments to closely re-examine themselves.

One area that needs to be thoroughly examined is how fire departments carry out administrative service functions. These generally include finance, budget, procurement, human resources, time management and office management. It has been my experience that in most departments, a senior fire officer handles these functions. Frankly, I question whether this is an appropriate use of a senior officer's time and, more importantly, if the “typical” senior officer has the technical expertise and educational background necessary to do the job. We must identify ways we can alter our organizational structure to put more qualified and cost-effective personnel in charge of administrative service functions.

There appears to be a growing trend for police and fire departments to move away from using highly paid chief officers for administrative service functions. The tendency is to move toward using civilian administrative services managers that are typically better educated and lower paid.

All-in-one position

As noted, the recent technology explosion and growing public cynicism toward general government have changed the face of this position. Traditionally, an administration chief has been a firefighter who had ascended the chain of command. He or she had a relatively low level of formal education and was trained by a predecessor with even less. These individuals learned their jobs through on-the-job training and studied systems and materials that had been out of date for years. For instance, the chief fire officer manual published by IFSTA was discontinued a few years ago due to its lack of current technological and financial management information.

Today's administration chief has to be part accountant, financial analyst, purchasing agent, human resources manager, statistician, office manager and dogcatcher. The majority of these skills were not deemed as vitally important 20 years ago as they are now. Today's public practically demands that they be included as minimum requirements, not to mention the fact that new laws and regulations on everything from FLSA to property disposal overwhelm us.

Citizens and elected officials expect each city department to be run at peak efficiency. They expect administration chiefs to develop, monitor and administer their budgets in the same manner as a chief financial officer of a Fortune 500 corporation. Furthermore, with the introduction of a vast amount of information system s technology, the administration chief's workload and skill level expectations have increased tremendously.

Let's say for the sake of argument that a department has an administration chief who is very experienced and well educated in administrative functions. This officer may be drawing a chief fire officer salary topped off with a public safety fringe benefit package in the 40% to 45% range. You may be looking at an overall compensation package of around $87,000 for a $60,000-a-year chief officer. The fact is, we are not all fortunate enough to have such an exceptionally well-educated member on our staff. Most of us learn as we go, making mistakes along the way and hoping we survive them. Even so, we would still have to pay a premium for the position.

As chief officers, we need to step out of the box and look at the big picture. By doing so, we can see that the administration chief position in the fire service either has outgrown the personnel we currently have, or we have failed to anticipate change in preparing people for the position. Regardless of the cause, it's the responsibility — the duty — of an organization's leadership to make the necessary adjustments. Visionary leaders should view this as an opportunity to improve the organization rather than a stumbling block.

An obvious solution

The word “obsolete” can be used to describe many facets of the fire service. Clearly, we have failed to evolve into our changing roles at the same pace as our private-sector counterparts. While corporate America has been mandating high academic standards for their middle and senior managers, the fire service has been getting by on a seniority-based system. This passive behavior has left us several steps behind where we need to be.

My proposal is to replace the “learn-as-you-go” administrative chief with a focused administrative services manager. This individual would likely possess a master's degree in business or public administration and have a strong background in budgeting and finance, procurement and disposal, human resources, and office management. He or she likely would need some experience as an administrative assistant or management analyst. Ideally, this individual would be motivated by a desire to someday become finance directors or city managers, although I have no idea what would possess anyone to want to do either. Nonetheless, let's capitalize on this ambition.

An effective civilian administrative services manager would be a section or division head reporting directly to the fire chief and would have no problem planning and organizing finance, information systems, purchasing, payroll, recruitment, hiring or staffing duties. Nor would this individual have any difficulty with equipment acquisition procedures. Further, this prototypical employee would be very capable of planning and conducting training sessions on his or her areas of responsibility and would have no problem with budget development or administration.

However, the civilian administrative services manager would not be qualified to act as the fire chief in the chief's absence, nor serve as the incident commander at an emergency scene. These two responsibilities would require the training and experience of a veteran fire officer. This should pose little risk to the concept of “civilianizing” the administrative services manager position.

It's absolutely possible for a civilian to do the job currently being performed by a uniformed administrative chief. In fact, the civilian could, no doubt, do it with a higher degree of competence, and at a lower cost. The savings in benefits alone would be in the area of 20%. These individuals are available and very well skilled. Speaking from experience, your department will benefit tremendously from this transition. This concept has been in place in our department for a two years now and our level of efficiency and productivity has never been higher.

Still sound radical? I hope so. It has been said the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Different results will require a paradigm shift away from our homegrown administration chiefs and toward civilian managers. The expertise and attention to detail the right administrative services manager brings to your department will help move it to the next level.

---

Robert McKibben is a 24-year veteran of the fire service and is currently the chief of the Peoria (Ariz.) Fire Department. Peoria, a Western suburb of Phoenix, is a city of 126,000 and is the fifth fastest-growing city in the United States (of cities over 100,000). McKibben holds a bachelor's degree in fire science management from Southern Illinois University and a master's degree in business administration from Cardinal Stritch College in Milwaukee. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Society of Executive Fire Officers.