VACS - Volunteer
Availability Communications System
VACS is a web based system that manages the
collection and dissemination of volunteer availability
data in real time for organisations that rely
on volunteers to provide services in critical
times. Typical of such organisations are volunteer
fire departments and brigades, coastguard and
other emergency services.
VACS is a subscription based service in which
individual members of a volunteer organisation
are able to set up and change their availability
status on line or via touch tone telephone
or cellphone. Each individual is able to set
up a profile which shows at which times of
the day over a seven day period that he or
she is going to be available to respond to
callouts. At any time the volunteer is also
able to call in on a phone and change their
status manually.
VACS enables emergency and other volunteer
based organisations to better manage their
volunteer resources and to know when the availability
of a service might be compromised through lack
of available volunteers.
VACS communicates with both volunteers and
the organisation critical personnel periods
and is able to communicate through rules based
profiles whether or not a particular unit is
able to be turned out in response to a call.
It is also able to communicate with volunteers
to get them to reconsider their status if a
unit has fallen below the critical manning
level.
Background
As the world gets busier, industry and business
rely more and more on utilising staff on call
to respond to a work place or emergency. Being
on call can be quite intrusive to family and
social activities. Frequently staff on
call complain that the current systems
of swapping or managing this availability amongst
colleagues is rigid and unnecessarily restrictive.
Managers are often reflecting that the management
of on call staff is stressful, time consuming
and a major contributing factor to difficulties
in retaining staff. As processes become more
sophisticated, the skills required by staff
are more advanced which is being reflected
in higher training costs. Retaining staff is
therefore a major financial as well as Social
consideration.
VACS was originally developed in response
to the requirements of the NZ Fire Service
which has approximately 450 volunteer based
fire brigades nationally throughout NZ.
Fire Service Volunteers and in particular
those in composite (combined Paid/Volunteer)
brigades in provincial or metropolitan cities
often work prohibitive distances from their
stations. Chief Fire Officers often have difficulty
with staffing or ensuring consistency of availability,
skills and experience with the staffing of
fire appliances.
Using current technology a volunteer firefighter
may be available for some part of a day but
because of the need for total reliability of
response and the limited capability of the
systems utilised, must choose to be unavailable
for all of the day. Because this inconsistency
is inherent in the system and does not always
indicate that a crew is not available, the
dispatcher may choose to dispatch a volunteer
appliance to test their availability if other
resources are unavailable. This can therefore
delay the response from another (distant) or
commit another appliance unnecessarily.
Contact Us for
more information
To see VACS working please visit the working
VACS website used by the NZ Fire Service below.
A dummy volunteer login is available using
the following data:
UserID: 111
Password: 111
Or download the
demo data document.
www.vacs.co.nz
