Audit Report On The Fire Department Procedures For Replacement Of Front-Line Vehicles

AUDIT REPORT IN BRIEF

The audit determined whether the New York City Fire Department (the Department) is in compliance with its union contract with regard to replacement requirements for front-line firefighting vehicles.

Audit Findings and Conclusions

In our opinion the Department is in compliance with the replacement requirements for front-line firefighting vehicles in its union contract. However, the Department needs to formalize its replacement procedures in its own written policies. Based on our tests, we concluded that it has assigned front-line vehicles that are less than 11 years old to all 216 firehouses throughout the city. In addition, it has a procurement procedure that replaces a front-line vehicle beginning 27 months prior to the vehicle’s eleventh anniversary. This procurement procedure ensures that a vehicle approaching 11 years of age will be replaced before its eleventh year.

We also noted that the Department uses its spare vehicles to temporarily replace their out-of-service front-line vehicles. This is in accordance with the requirement that if a regularly assigned vehicle is unavailable, firefighters must respond to fires on available equipment. During our visit to 21 firehouses, we found that six (17%) of the 36 front-line vehicles assigned to these firehouses were out of service and were replaced with spare vehicles.

However, the Department has no written guidelines to dictate when and for how long a spare vehicle should replace a front-line vehicle. According to officials, if it is determined that a front-line vehicle will be out of service for longer than five hours, based on the type of repair needed, a spare vehicle is assigned to the firehouse.

The Supervisor of Mechanics on duty at the Control Center , a 24-hour operation, checks the Spare List to determine which spare vehicle is available to replace the out-of-service vehicle. (The Spare List is a sheet of paper that lists all the spare vehicles.) The locations of the available spare vehicles are written in pencil and erased each time the vehicles are assigned. Even though the location information for the spare vehicles is tracked in the FDFLEETS computer database, FDFLEETS is not being used to assign spare vehicles. In addition, the location information for spare vehicles in FDFLEETS is not updated regularly.

Audit Recommendations

Based on our findings, we make the following four recommendations. The Fire Department should:

• Have its own written policy regarding the replacement of the front-line firefighting vehicles and spare vehicles when they reach a certain age.
• Develop written guidelines to determine when and how long a spare vehicle should replace a front-line vehicle, and ensure that newer spares are assigned to those vehicles out of service for a longer time.
• Ensure that the location information for spare vehicles maintained in FDFLEETS is kept up-to-date.

Consider computerizing the process of assigning spare vehicles to replace out-of-service front-line vehicles.