TITLE
The Mayor and City Council shall discuss and possibly take action on approving funding for Fire Department City-Wide Incident Preplans with vendor Preplanners LLC in an amount not to exceed $48,000 to be paid for from contingency (10010000-99000). Discussion and Action.
AGENDA ITEM DESCRIPTION
The City of Maricopa Fire & Medical Department responds to over 4600 calls for service annually. Of this number, almost 15% (almost 700 incident responses) are for fire related requests. Currently, the fire department has no real way to “preplan” incident responses for the requested fire related incidents.
“Preplans” are formal plans of a specific building or business which highlight; access points, fire suppression and alarm systems, fire hydrant locations, knox boxes, utility shut offs and other operational and tactical considerations.
By not possessing preplans, Fire Incident Commanders are limited to what they can see from their Command vehicle, which in most cases only encompass approximately 10-20% of a buildings total square footage. This illustrates an immense disadvantage in strategic planning at fire incidents and other emergency scenarios. Not only does it hinder Maricopa Fire Crews, it also greatly limits Auto and Mutual Aid partner departments coming into Maricopa when requested. They have NO way of specific mapping or viewing footprints (preplans) of buildings prior to arrival on scene. These are all major issues for the operational capabilities of Maricopa Fire & Medical along with all other partner agencies.
After much research, the Maricopa Fire & Medical Department’s Fire Prevention Division has found one group that can assist the department in creating and implementing the much-needed preplans for the city’s commercial, industrial and educational buildings. This group, The Preplanners LLC., is not only a valley company but is the only resource that can deliver complete, professional, and user-friendly preplans that are so badly needed by the fire department.
The Preplanners LLC., can create and provide professional CAD building footprints along with the necessary operational and tactical consideration components (some of what is listed above). The group can provide preplan templates specific to Maricopa Fire & Medical needs and preferences, they can also integrate GIS components into the preplans. The group provides preplans for the cities of Gilbert, Mesa, Queen Creek and Sun Lakes. The Preplanners have experience and expertise working with getting preplans onto the Phoenix Dispatch Mobile Computer Terminals, located in each piece of fire equipment in the valley. These are very important considerations because the City of Maricopa does not currently possess a GIS employee or anyone else that allows for this kind of implementation without outside resource assistance.
The Maricopa Fire & Medical Department’s Fire Prevention Division has determined that the city has approximately 96 buildings or businesses in need of fire preplanning. The projected cost of this project is $48,000, which the fire department is requesting through contingency funding. There would also be an ongoing cost of approximately $5000 annually to address the continual business and building expansion in the city, which will become part of the 2018-2019 budgetary process.
STAFF RECOMMENDATION
Due to the public safety impact of this program, not funding it would continue to leave Maricopa Fire & Medical Incident Commanders at a huge operational/tactical disadvantage during an emergency incident. It would also impact automatic and mutual aid partners who will be coming in to assist during emergencies virtually "blind" towards commercial and school buildings. Staff recommends that the council approve funding for Fire Department City-Wide Incident Preplans with vendor Preplanners LLC in an amount not to exceed $48,000 to be paid for from contingency (10010000-99000).