The Beverly Hills Fire Department (BHFD) has received Accredited Agency status with the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) for meeting the criteria established through the CFAI’s voluntary self-assessment and accreditation program.
The honor is especially impressive, considering that there are only 278 accredited agencies (out of 27,171 registered fire departments, per the National Fire Department Registry) or 0.01% nationwide. Only 12% of the U.S. population is protected by accredited agencies. And there are only 23 accredited agencies in the entire State of California. The City of Beverly Hills Fire Department became the fourth accredited agency (out of 88 incorporated cities) in Los Angeles County, which puts it in the top 0.05% of departments.
The CFAI process is voluntary and provides an agency with an improvement model to assess its service delivery and performance internally and then works with a team of peers from outside agencies to evaluate the completed self-assessment.
To complete the accreditation process, the BHFD Accreditation Team logged thousands of hours in preparing all requisite documents, to include addressing assessment-related inquiries and peer team review action items. The team is comprised of both safety and civilian personnel.
“With a combination of dynamic community involvement and close collaboration from City stakeholders, we have been able to use the Commission on Fire Accreditation International’s process as a proactive mechanism to plan for the future of this agency and locate areas where we can improve on the quality of the services we provided,” said BHFD Fire Chief Greg Barton.
