If You Can Use Excel, the Job is Yours

This morning I was listening to Episode 013 of the Combustible Podcast “Why Data Should Matter to Firefighters”. The podcast features Dr. Matt Hinds-Aldrich (NFPA) and Captain Tom Burrell (Dekalb Fire), who also happen to be friends of mine.

During introductions Tom jokingly mentions that he got his position because he could use Excel. When Tom asked the Chief about the qualifications needed for the position, the Chief said “If you can use Excel, then you can have it”. Although he was partially joking, it is also partially true.

In the Fall of 2007 I was working at the station and loving my job. By January 2008, I was sitting in a cubicle at Headquarters. “What happened” you ask? What happened was I broke my ankle. Once I was healed enough to return to work, I was on light duty at Fire Headquarters. On my first day the Chief asked me if I knew how to use Excel, to which I replied "Yes! I took an Excel class in college". I was excited to show off my skill set. Little did I know, my entire career would shift at that moment.

Shortly thereafter I was asked to be the Accreditation Manager for the department. After three days learning about Accreditation and data, I came home feeling like a run-over dog. There were so many things we were doing, but also so much we weren’t doing and so much we could be doing. I ventured into data analysis to complete the Standard of Cover (SOC). Plodding along using pre-made queries from our Records Management System (RMS), and Excel to create reports. I started using Access, connecting directly to the RMS. That lead to learning SQL and using SQL Server to write queries to extract data. The story gets boring to read from there. More technology, more courses, and more formal education.

Ten years later, I am in awe of where we are as a department. I am not alone, there are others like me. The department now has a six-person Planning Division with a wide array of skills. Some have experience in the fire service and some don’t. The Division not only provides the Department with adequate planning and analysis resources, but also provide current employees with an opportunity to advance their careers.

We are still using Excel, but we are also using an alphabet soup-esque variety of other tools/languages (R, JMP, SAS, SSRS, SSIS, GIS, Python, C#). In its short tenure, the Planning Division, has accomplished a laundry list of tasks. The major themes are improved service delivery to the community, streamlined reporting, and custom applications.

Those of us that started doing analysis in Excel are not unique in the fire service, but the demographics are changing. This is a very exciting time for data science in the fire service. We have some amazing projects in the pipeline and I can’t wait to see what other departments are able to do.

(Originally posted by me on another platform)