The Community Risk Reduction section of OCFA is tasked with a wide array of fire prevention activities. Among them are the review and approval of construction plans to ensure they meet current fire codes, inspections of those construction projects, permitting and inspection of businesses and multi-family residential units, and handling special activities ranging from responding to the report of a fire hazard to permitting a major fireworks display. Managing all of the records for these duties was a monumental effort being done using a combination of antiquated software, disconnected systems, hand-written forms, paper file folders and a 40-year old dot-matrix printer.

Key Problems

• Virtually everything was written by hand on paper and later entered into software, causing major data entry efforts and compromised data integrity.

• There was no ability to accept electronic submissions from the public forcing customers to come in to OCFA offices in person to submit requests for services.

• Receiving payments and reconciling with OCFA’s accounting department was extremely cumbersome.

• Workflows for services were inefficient, often requiring the use of multiple disconnected systems.

• The distribution of annual inspection workloads to OCFA Operations Units required several weeks every year to print documents and deliver them to fire houses.

• Limitations in the existing system caused the need to track thousands of unnecessary business records to account for businesses occupying multiple buildings.

The Solutions

• We created a web application with a responsive design to allow OCFA staff to enter data directly into the system whether they were out in the field or in the office. Utilizing the UI/UX design system I developed for OCFA’s IRIS - Incident Reporting and Investigations System allowed for a consistent experience for users across multiple OCFA roles as well as an efficient development process.

• The inclusion of a public-facing portion of the system now allows customers to submit requests, monitor their progress and pay fees online.

• Integration with OCFA’s financial systems now provides a direct connection between service requests, accounts receivable and online payment processing.

• With the creation of Location Relationships, we provide users with a means of tracking a property through its entire lifecycle and to group locations based on proximity to each other.

• Combining a new filterable workload and field-accessible electronic inspection records has completely eliminated the need for an annual distribution process.

• We developed the feature Campus Creation to allow multiple buildings to be grouped into a single business inspection record.

Key Success Metrics

• Improved inspection workload completion rate

• Reduction of total Business records managed

• Faster time to receipt of payments 

• Reduced task completion times in multiple services

• Reduced error rates

The OCFA responds to more than 150,000 incidents per year and must complete a detailed report on every single one of them through the National Fire Incident Reporting System. These reports are completed by the firefighters themselves, users who clearly have far higher priorities than paperwork and little time to get it done. The software used by OCFA for collecting these reports was outdated, incomplete, and provided a confusing user experience.

Key Problems

• Firefighters could not complete reports while away from the station, often meaning several hours or even a day would pass between the time a unit was on a call and when they would be able to complete the report on it.

• Reports took too long to complete, causing frequent interruptions in reporting as units were dispatched while a report was in progress.

• Investigations reporting was not included in the existing reporting application requiring a separate system to be used. This caused duplication of data entry efforts and more cumbersome processes.

• A key part of each incident report, the Incident Narratives, were challenging to write and inconsistent in style and content detail.

• Due to software limitations, the exported report files would frequently fail to be accepted by the NFIRS system. This required the manual correction of those files to resolve formatting errors.

Solutions

• A responsive web application allows firefighters to use iPads in the field to complete reports either during or immediately after an incident call.

• Integration with dispatch and patient record systems imports data into a large number of fields that previously had to be entered manually. This not only saves an immense amount of time, it improves data integrity and consistency.

• We included Investigations Reporting directly into IRIS eliminating the maintenance of a separate system and allowing Incident Report, Dispatch and Patient Care Records data all to be imported directly into the investigations.

• The Narrative Builder now makes the drafting of written accounts of incidents much faster and easier for firefighters. It ensures the inclusion of all necessary details, resolves typos and grammar issues, and provides a consistent voice across all reports.

Key Success Metrics

• Vastly reduced time to complete individual reports

• Reduced number of incomplete reports per day

• Fewer number of errors per report

• Improved quality and completeness of incident narratives

• Eliminated NFIRS acceptance failures

In 2015, the landscape had dramatically changed from just a few years earlier. Toshiba website traffic on mobile devices had gone from being a small fraction to the majority. Brick and mortar retailers were becoming a far smaller part of sales succumbing to online sales, both retail and direct. And the existing Toshiba web properties were running on proprietary systems that, while still solid, were not keeping up with the pace of technology improvements at the time.

Key Problems

• Separate mobile and desktop websites

• Separate direct sales website

• Minimal ability to tailor content to user

• Poor conversion rate

• Poor accessory attachment rates

Solutions

• Migration to Oracle Commerce

• Consolidation of Marketing and Direct Sales sites into 1

• Responsive design

• Eliminated mobile sites

• Automatic Persona Generation (APG)

• Browsing history

• Logged in user profiles

• Adaptive Content

• Dynamic Merchandising

• Shortened Conversion Funnel

Key Success Metrics

• Typical web analytics

• Improved Monthly Traffic

• Decreased Bounce rate

• Increased Time on page

• Increased Repeat visitors

• Increased Conversion rates

• Direct sales

• Find a Retailer

• Improved Accessory attachment rate