Managing Resources and Information - Assignment Example

Name Title Course Date Managing Resources and Information Introduction The proposed project, child fire safety awareness focuses on improving fire and safety awareness amongst young children of primary school age at Dover. The project’s objective is to facilitate the realization of the latest objectives established by the national risk management team. One goal Fire and Rescue Service is to offer wide range of preventative and educative services to the community. Therefore, this project will be fulfilling one of the Fire and Rescue Service’s objectives since it involves informing the community in this case the children regarding the necessary precautions to take in case of a fire breakout as well as preventative measures to take. Specifically, the project will involve recruiting competent workforce who will play an active role in informing the primary school children regarding the fire safety measures to ensure a healthy and safe environment for the community (Furness 22-28). According to Fire Administration, children set more than 100,000 fires every year. About 25% of all fire-connected fatalities are kids, and most of the fires that cause death to youngsters result from the children playing with fire. The most effective was of preventing such catastrophic consequences is to educate children respect for fire, fire prevention as well as the elementary principles regarding fire safety (Furness 55-62). Therefore, recruiting competent candidates is of great importance as such candidates will be able to effectively educate young children regarding fire safety as this is the main objective of the project. As a result, the line manager is expected to come up with a competent recruitment since this is the backbone of the entire project. This is because the successful candidates are the ones who will be interacting with the children as they educate them on fire safety; this clearly implies they are the backbone of the whole process. The team will be responsible for various activities within Dover. For instance, the team has the responsibility of visiting the primary schools within Dover and instilling the required fire safety skills to the children. Educating the children regarding fire safety as well as prevention will form a vital element of the work of the Fire and Rescue Service’s Education Team. The line manager will ensure that the team fulfils the goals and objectives of the project. Advertising Advertisement will be done through an agency which will be involved in the whole recruiting process. A specialist recruitment advertising agency will be used to make sure that there will be professional advice regarding media, design as well as copywriting specially related to the recruitment procedure. This will enable the advertisement to stand out within the appropriate publication and form an employment brand. The specialist recruitment agency will advertise the positions within the public media which includes internet, advertisement journals as well as newspapers. This will ensure that the information reaches a wide range of people and hence this will attract the most competent candidates for the positions. The advertisement will bring out the position, required skills as well as the responsibilities of the successful candidates. The closing date of the applications will be on the advert as well as the essential experience for the required candidate. Short listing and interviews On the expiry of the advertised application period, all applications will be collected by the relevant authorities within the human resource department. The applications will be sorted out and the most qualified applicants will be selected depending on the selection criteria which include educational qualifications, previous experiences as well as the required skills. The successful candidates in short listing will be contacted for an aptitude test. The candidates will be required to come with their identification documents in order to attend the aptitude test. The aptitude will mainly dwell on the areas regarding the Fire and Rescue Service, children relations and the basic skills that mainly test on basic knowledge. This will be a written test whereby the candidates will do it as a group but each candidate will be tested on his/her own. After the aptitude test, the tests will be marked and the most successful candidates will be invited for an oral interview. For the oral interview, the candidates who qualified for it will be asked to bring their original certificates. Their original certificates will have to be verified in order to ensure they are certified. The interviewing panel will interview each and every candidate and this where the candidates will show their original certificates and testimonials (Halibozek 67-89). Making the job offer The candidates who will be successful will be contacted and the panel will enquire if they are still interested with the Job. They will be given a period in which they are required to decide if they will be taking the offer. CRB clearance All candidates will have to be cleared by the CRB since they will be interacting with children. This will help in protecting children through provision of first class service since CRB will assist the organisation in recruiting candidates into positions of trust. The project involves children who are vulnerable and thus recruiting people with no criminal record and have not been involved with any form of abuse is of great significance since the safety of children is highly significant (Halibozek 78). CRB service will enable the organisation to make safer recruitment decisions through identification of candidates who might not be suitable for the positions more so, such positions where children are involved. The candidates will be requested to access the CRB checks as component of good recruitment practice. Therefore, the successful job applicants will undergo both Enhanced and Standard Checks (Halibozek 75-78). Health and safety/discrimination The successful candidates will also be required to undergo medical tests to show if they are fit for the job and to also work with children. Pre-employment medical tests will be used as a component of the selection procedure. The tests are important within the selection procedure for the positions since these positions require some physical or mental attributes mostly because they are dealing with children who belong to the vulnerable group. Physical tests will be necessary since these positions require physical activities. When performing the safety and health requirements, where specific attributes are essential to test, only the candidates who fulfil all other job requirements are the ones who will be tested as this will be more cost effective and will also protect the employers from assertions of discrimination on the opinions of disability. The pre-employment medical test will be completely and directly connected to the specific roles/duties of the positions and will not discriminate against individuals with disabilities; age will not be a factor on who is tested (Barry 105). During pre-employment medical tests, the following will be avoided since that could make the employer (Fire and Rescue Service) legally responsible for discrimination. Making use of the medical information regarding applicants as a component of the pre-interview culling procedure. Asking the applicants questions regarding their previous injuries, for instance back injuries, constant strain injury or even past employee’s compensation claims as a component of the selection procedure. The non-discriminatory pre-employment medical test that will be used for the candidates will have the following features: The medical tests will specially relate to the specific duties and roles of the job. The particular physical attributes that are necessary for the position will be precisely identified. It will be ensured that the attributes necessary for the positions will be reasonable in all the situations. The medical test will consider all the ways of accommodating individuals lacking these attributes. The facilities as well as the services required by the applicants having disabilities will be provided as long as it will not result into hardships that are not justified to do so. The evaluation of the individual’s ability to perform the intrinsic job requirements of the job will be made after the facilities and services will be offered. Finally, the medical tests will only assess the present ability of the candidates and will not make efforts to predict any future decline. Nevertheless, the pre-employment medical examination may be used at another stage to establish if there is any health deterioration, for instance, to establish sight loss in connection to blindness claim (Rasbash 85-96). Employment contract A contract of employment will be provided to the successful candidates. This will include terms and conditions of the contract as this will enable the project to get the best of the successful candidates. The employment contract will include the remuneration of the contract, working days and hours, the length of the contract, the duties and responsibilities as well as the overtime payments and the other allowances. The employment contract will also provide the disciplinary actions to be taken incase of any misbehavior of the successful employees. This will also include the instances where the contract could be terminated and the compensation that will be offered (Halibozek 106). Procurement Procurement for the needed equipments and materials will be achieved through cultural shift, offering leadership and capacity building, partnership and collaboration, conducting transactions electronically and stimulation of markets as well as accomplishing community benefits. Since the procurement for this project will be for the first time, some goods will be procured at a national level but still at regional and local level. This strategy will build a sole overarching framework for the project’s procurement and this will identify the manner in which procurement at national, regional and local levels will be run and co-ordinated to make sure that best value and constantly high quality results will be achieved for the project. The team project can also procure the needed materials and equipments through FiReBuy Ltd this is because FiReBuy Ltd tests and accepts initiatives on behalf of the fire authorities and as a result FiReBuy Ltd will ensure all purchases are of high quality and are purchased at acceptable cost (Barry 77-79). Procurement process chart o This procurement procet costs. Resources (Furness 2007). Resources Other resources other than staff will include offices, travelling costs, research materials, furniture as well as other office equipment. All these requirements will be acquired from the budgetary allocation at the Fire and Rescue Service for the project. The best method of proving that there is best of practice during resource acquisition is through stringent adherence to the budgetary allocation. This means that the project management team will have to make use of the best channel during procurement of the resources (Barry 15-17). Project evaluation The project will be evaluated in order to find out if the project is and has fulfilled its set objectives. Each and every step of the project will be evaluated and this is to make sure that the entire project process will run smoothly devoid of any faults. In order to adequately asses the entire project, SMART criteria (Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely) will be used (Halibozek 43-46). Specific An objective that is specific will be achieved easily when compared to a general objective. To set a specific objective, the project should be able to answer the following questions: Who: Who is participating in the project? What: Who does the project want to accomplish? Where: If the project identifies the location. When: Does the project have established time frame. Which: The requirements as well as the constraints of the project will be identified. Why: Specific reasons and the benefits of achieving the objective of the project (Yiannis 29-32). The goal is specific since it answers the above questions. The ones participating in the entire project involve the line manager, the successful job candidates as well as the children who will be the target of the entire project. The project aims at educating primary school children regarding fire safety and the location of the project is Dover town. Measurable A concrete criterion will be established to measure the progress of the set objectives. Attainable After the project’s objectives have been identified, the most significant goals will be figured out. Attitudes, capabilities, skills in addition to financial ability to achieve them will be developed (Yiannis 39-43). Realistic For the project to be realistic, it is supposed to represent a goal towards which the participants are able to work on. The goal should represent a considerable progress. The goal of the objective is almost certainly realistic if those involved in the project truly believe that the objective of the project can be achieved. It would be possible to know if the project’s goal can be achieved through determining if the Fire and Rescue Service achieved something similar with the project within the past. Furthermore, the conditions that will have to exist for the project’s goal to be achieved should be explored (Yiannis 54-56). Timely The project’s goal is supposed to be grounded within a given time frame. This is because it will enable the project to be carried out effectively and to be accomplished on time (Yiannis 56). Policies to be adopted The policies to be adopted during the project work are evaluation methods which include formative evaluation as well as summative evaluation methods. Formative evaluation This method will be used to examine the worth of the entire project while the project activities are taking place. For instance, it will include collection of continuous feedback from the project’s participant in this case the children in addition to workers within the project in order to revise the entire project as needed (Halibozek 35). Summative evaluation This method will be used in examining the worth of the project at the end of the project activities. This will include collection of data to assess the impact of the entire project operating within Dover town. This means that, data will collected from the primary school kids at Dover to assess if the whole project benefited the children (Arthur 21-25). Conclusion The child fire safety awareness project is an important approach for the Fire and Rescue Service within Dover as it will inform children a lot regarding fire safety. This is very significant since this will be of benefit to the entire community because the fire incidents that are mostly started by the children affect the entire community at large. Therefore, this will lead to considerable reduction of fire incidences within Dover town. This why recruiting candidates who are efficient, conversant with children and competent will be of great significance in the project. For the project to be successful, it would require the management to have effective procurement process which ensures purchases for project are of high quality and cost effective as this will facilitate the team in adhering to the set budget for the project. After the completion of the project evaluation is necessary since it will be used to measure the outcome of the entire project. This will illustrate if the children at Dover town acquired skills regarding fire safety. If the Dover town’s children will gain the targeted fire safety skills, then the team will have accomplished the objective of the project. Works Cited Arthur, C. Organizing for Fire and Rescue Services. California: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2005. Barry, L. Fire Safety Education Resource Directory. Massachusetts: DIANE Publishing, 2007. Cote, E. Organizing for Fire and Rescue Services. New York: Bartlett Learning, 2004. Dare, A. Good Practice in Child Safety. Toronto: Nelson Thornes Publishers, 2005. Furness, A. Introduction to fire safety management. Berlin: Elsevier, 2007. Great Britain: H.M. Fire Service Inspectorate . Fire and Rescue Service Manual. Belfast: The Stationery Office, 2006. Halibozek, P. Project metrics management: how to measure the costs and benefits of project. Chandler: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006. Martine, G. No dragons for tea: fire safety for kids and dragons. Sydney: Kids Can Press Ltd, 2005. Rasbash, D. Evaluation of fire safety. Los Angeles: John Wiley and Sons, 2004. Yiannis, G. Organizing & Organizations. New York: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009. Read More