By Stephen Martini, ENP

Presenter: Stephen Martini, ENP

Is your PSAP facing a consolidation under a time crunch? If so, it is critical to understand the realistic opportunities and challenges you are facing and prioritize accordingly. In a perfect world, there are sixteen items needing to be addressed prior to consolidating PSAPs: leadership, politics, staffing, issues involved with combining staff, training, media, equipment, combining services, operating in the interim while building the new center, employee retention, hiring new staff, public education, funding, consensus building, adding new services or maintaining existing services. But perfect doesn’t consider uncontrollable x-factors. Elected leaders may have political goals to consolidate a PSAP by a certain date. Short-staffed agencies may not have enough personnel to conduct daily operations now and can’t wait for the perfect plan to come together. Agencies who see consolidation coming may stop hiring completely or hire the wrong people because they don’t have a long-term investment.

You likely won’t consolidate with a well-trained, fully-staffed crew, and if you do, some of those may still leave within the first 18 months. Financial deadlines may also dictate the timeline, so make sure you dedicate the right amount of money to achieve the goal to make sure you’ll arrive alive. Perhaps you define an interim plan (something that works for the first few years) and agree to revisit the cost of consolidation once operations are firmly established. Prioritize what must occur in order to consolidate successfully and focus on those goals. There will be more wish list items than funds and time to accomplish, but this can be achieved in future fiscal years!

So what are your priorities? Critical technology (CAD, phone, radio, NCIC), staffing and training. All others items can be maintained at their current level and improved after all operations are successfully functioning in the same place!