Loudoun County, VA Fire and Rescue

Operational Workforce Management, Interfaces and Analytics Success Story

CHALLENGES

In 2015, Loudoun County Fire Dept. (LCFD) faced a variety of issues in managing their 2,000+ career and volunteer personnel. They relied upon a paper-based time management system, where clerks manually typed data into spreadsheets. As they prepared to implement the PeopleSoft automated payroll system, they discovered there was no way to integrate that system with their existing scheduling system. In addition, their scheduling platform could not integrate with the County’s new CAD system or their RMS, JMS, and an Internal Affairs system.

What Loudoun County Fire and Rescue needed was a solution that could:

• Transmit career and volunteer rostering data to the county CAD system
• Connect multiple types of disparate systems.
• Automate scheduling, time off and overtime based on their rules.
• Calculate extremely complex payroll requirements for different types of personnel.
• Provide visibility into scheduling vacancies and overtime cost across all divisions.
• Enable tracking of cross-staffed units.

THE ORION SOLUTION

Workforce Management PLUS

Since 2016, Loudoun Fire & Rescue has  been using Workforce Management PLUS to automate scheduling and extremely complex pay exception rule calculations instead of PeopleSoft. This has saved the county extensive funding and has eliminated the annual maintenance cost of the former scheduling system.  Complex 28-day overtime hour calculations have been automated and holiday pay based on agency scheduling rules generated. FLSA pay periods, pay equalization and automated payments for special overtime are now being automatically calculated.

All equipment previously managed using multiple spreadsheets is now managed with the Orion Workforce Management PLUS platform. This is enabling automatic transmission of first responder information and equipment directly to the agency’s CAD system.  What's more, when a cross-staffed unit responds to a call, the non-responding unit is automatically placed out of service within PLUS and this information is transmitted to CAD.

Interface Agent

Orion’s Interface Agent software is being used to exchange data with previously separate systems. For example, volunteer data managed in the county’s Fire RMS is received by Orion and transmitted to the county’s CAD system with volunteer equipment assignments. Accurate personnel data is being sent to the agency’s internal affairs system, where internal investigations can be securely managed.

Interactive Analytics

With Orion's Interactive Analytics as part of the solution, agency leaders are using a 10 day rolling schedule to anticipate staffing backfill levels as a result of COVID-19. In terms of funding, it has helped to generate real time documentation for COVID cost reimbursements.