News

UK Fire and Rescue Service provides updated online national guidance resource

The UK Fire and Rescue Service officially released its updated suite of national guidance at the Emergency Services Show at the NEC, UK in September 2017.

The complete overhaul of its guidance to all firefighters and emergency services is the culmination of a six-year programme to update and replace over 8,000 documents previously held in offline documents.

The updated website simplifies how fire and rescue services can find, access and act on the latest operational guidance whilst maintaining a full audit of how guidance has changed from now into the future.

Key elements of the updated and newly engineered platform for online guidance are:

A dramatically improved user experience for consumers of the guidance products
Dynamic and user-friendly cross-referencing between related areas of the guidance
products
Efficient editing arrangement for content used in multiple places across the site
Bookmarking and email alert functionality to notify registered users of updates to
content
Version history taking into account a complex content hierarchy structure
Custom-built comparison between chronological revisions of content
User feedback and social sharing mechanisms

Phase 2 (to launch during 2018) plans to enable the UK’s 50 fire and rescue services to create local and tailored versions of the central guidance platform and phase 3 plans to enable offline mobile access to the national and local content via an incident focussed customisable interface.

Commenting on the new platform, Doc Holliday, Programme Manager at National Operational Guidance said: “The release of our updated guidance platform represents a real evolution in guidance production and distribution to the UK fire and rescue services. Gone are the days of paper-based documents gathering dust on shelves and going out of date; we are now able to produce, update and share our national guidance using a modern, accessible online format that ensures all services will be kept up to date with the latest information, without duplication, and accessible from anywhere at any time. Maintaining a consistent set of guidance across fifty fire and rescue services in paper format was a costly challenge and moving online will both provide an enhanced service and reduced cost.”

Andrew Japp, Client Strategy Director at Panlogic, said “We are absolutely delighted to have been able to bring our knowledge and expertise in user experience, digital engineering and build to the UK fire and rescue service. This first phase launch follows months of detailed work and future phases enabling local services to tailor the content to their needs will see further advances in how our emergency services are supported.”

To access the National Guidance click here.