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Success Stories

January 14, 2025 5 min read

Connecticut Fire Academy Eliminates Bottlenecks for Students and Staff by Modernizing Operations

Industry:

Fire

Solution:

Acadis

The Challenge

As Connecticut’s leading provider of firefighting education and training, the Connecticut Commission on Fire Prevention and Control Fire Academy is responsible for planning and conducting hundreds of classes (346 in 2024) and training thousands of students (5,770 in 2024) each year. However, the Connecticut Fire Academy’s previous training management processes needed updating to meet the needs of both internal and external customers.

Most of CFA’s processes were paper-based—leading to delays in student registrations and difficulties accessing transcripts or certificates.

“If a student or a firefighter across Connecticut needed a copy of his or her certificate from a year ago, they would need to contact the academy through phone, email, or fax to request their certificate or transcript,” said CFA’s Director of Training. “The on-site staff would then research, download, and send to the firefighter. This process delayed students from having the documentation they needed.”

Manual processes like these not only consumed valuable time and resources but also increased the risk of errors in managing student data, course schedules, and certifications.

“It was difficult to keep track of student progress and ensure that everyone was meeting the necessary requirements,” said the Director.

It also made it challenging to quickly access important information when it was needed. Linking course materials with actual classes was a significant issue, as they were unable to easily provide evidence of curriculum or instructor information when requested for legal or liability purposes. Furthermore, CFA lacked a clear picture of how many students they were touching each year, which presented staffing and budgetary challenges.

The Choice

The Connecticut Fire Academy recognized the need for a more efficient and user-friendly process for both students and staff and decided to streamline their processes by implementing the Acadis Readiness Suite—a purpose-built system for automating academy operations.

With Acadis, the Academy has been able to improve the experience of Connecticut firefighters, Academy staff, and instructors.

Acadis provides a platform for online student registration, self-service printing of certificates and transcripts, access to detailed training records, class curriculum, and class invoicing in one centralized system. Moreover, Acadis reduces the Academy’s reliance on paper process and ensures the accuracy of the data for better decisions regarding staffing and budgeting.

“We got rid of our inefficient methods and have streamlined our processes and procedures with Acadis. Having access to real data is big for the future of the Academy.”

Director of Training

CT Fire Academy

The Change

By implementing Acadis, the Connecticut Fire Academy was able to digitize their training program and manage comprehensive student records from a centralized system, which made it easier to keep track of who had completed which training courses and which certifications they had earned.

In addition to streamlining their record-keeping processes, the automation capabilities of Acadis made it easier for the Academy to schedule and manage their training courses. With Acadis, the Connecticut Fire Academy could now create and manage course schedules online, and students could sign up for courses electronically. The pre-requisite and waitlist functions of Acadis ensure students have met requirements before being admitted to a class. The system will automatically add students to a waitlist until pre-requisites are met or a seat becomes available if the class is full.

“That’s key. Acadis is really streamlining the process of student registrations,” said the Director of Training.

Transitioning to digital process has led to “real savings” for the Connecticut Fire Academy by eliminating significant expenses related to printing and mailing. In addition to the cost savings realized by moving to a digital certification distribution process, the Academy has also realized a time savings from 8-12 weeks to only 2 weeks for students to receive their certificates following the completion of a class. Furthermore, two staff positions have been able to be reclassified to other Academy needs since Acadis is automating and streamlining processes that were previously manual and time-consuming.

Another significant benefit of Acadis is the easily accessible training records. Acadis makes it easier to track attendance and ensure that everyone is getting the training they need. It also makes it easy to show what students were taught, who the instructor was, and how the student performed should the Academy receive a training records request.

“Being able to link the curriculum to each specific class is huge,” said the Director of Training. “In the past, we would have to dig through cardboard boxes and paper files to piece together the information.”

Even the class invoicing is managed through Acadis. In one centralized system, the Connecticut Fire Academy can now access accurate data, including the number of students who attend classes each year and the revenue from the classes to better budget and plan for their training operations.

The Academy is even leveraging the survey function of Acadis to collect feedback on the classes and instructors to continue improving its training offerings. Prior to Acadis Surveys, the Academy used paper forms and Google Forms to collect feedback but had no mechanism to encourage students to complete the surveys. Now, the surveys must be completed prior to accessing a certificate, which is a much more effective way of ensuring student input is received.

Acadis is helping the Academy fulfill its mission of serving the Connecticut fire service.

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