The Village Concept

This week I learned about a new business concept that will soon revolutionize the level of service delivery for the City of Richmond Fire Department. In a traditional means many will not readily make a connection with a Fire Department as being a business entity. It is however. Businesses ordinarily provide products and services as is the case with the fire department. Our output is not however measured in number of units produced or sold, but rather how effectively we mitigate emergencies and handle customer service issues. The new village concept addresses a new way to approach customer service delivery.

The Village Concept decentralizes the fire department and places ownership for a community on the individual fire stations within those villages. Instead of calling a central fire administration to have your personal issues addressed, you can have your local fire station better meet your needs. By placing the ownership on the individual fire companies they are better able to respond to the needs of their particular village. The key advantages to this concept are increased responsiveness to customer needs, more creative problem solving, and a vested interest in the successes and failures of the village.

The Fire Service is now only slowly becoming an organization that understand the importance of good customer service and an improved responsiveness to customer needs. It has begun to learn from the successes of the business world and developed policy innovations that mirror that of many Fortune 500 companies. The new direction of the Richmond Fire Department, with regard to the Village Concept, will make it one of the most innovative fire service organizations and set the bar for other fire service organizations to emulate.