As the last step in the process, Mid-South's team went to Orlando Florida last week to face the final hurdle before the Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) board where they were approved for accreditation status March 14.

According to the CPSE, fire departments like Mid-South's led by Fire Captain Damian Johnston can work up to 2,000 hours preparing the required accreditation documents and up to 13,000 hours addressing all things they learn from the self-assessment. For most agencies it generally takes 3-5 years to work through the process to achieve accredited status.

"This Accreditation from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) is a very big deal for us," said Johnston. "As a department, we've been talking about doing this since I started here as a firefighter over 11 years ago, and probably even longer than that. We've even started the process to varying degrees in the past, but over the course of the last three years, we've made this a priority and it's been an "all hands on deck" kind of effort."

Accreditation is an international recognition of achievement. It shows the community that their fire department is performing to industry best practices and is holding itself accountable through external peer review.
"To put the kind of work involved into perspective, CFAI reported as of 2015 there are an estimated 29,727 fire departments in the United States and of that number only 247 are accredited," said Johnston. "Only 8% of the U.S. population is protected by an accredited fire department. That now includes NSA Mid-South."

The process culminates in an appearance before the CFAI board which is comprised of 11 members representing various stakeholders like the Department of Defense, international fire departments, different sized municipal fire departments across the country, city managers, county managers, labor unions, the insurance industry, and the National Fire Protection Association.

The Commission reviews all of the department's documents and the report of a four member peer assessment team that is comprised of fire chiefs and other fire officers from outside departments. The peer assessment team actually spent about a week at NSA Mid-South verifying that what is submitted in their documents is accurate and ensuring that they are credible as an organization.

At the CFAI board each Commissioner has an opportunity to ask any questions they have about the department, their documents, or their operations and they vote on whether or not to grant each department accredited status.

"It's a nerve racking experience, because you're in a room full of representatives from fire departments from all over the world and you're being live streamed on the internet, so you know everyone back home is watching too," said Johnston. Of course, I wanted to make our department proud. As the representative of our department I also wanted to make NSA Mid-South as a whole, proud of their fire department. I hope I've accomplished that."

Johnston said he is honored to have worked with his team to make accreditation a success for not only his department but to the Department of Defense as a whole.

We've grown tremendously as an organization, and many of us have grown as individuals as well," said Johnston. "I couldn't be more proud of my team for this accomplishment. The work isn't over though. Now the challenge is to maintain the accreditation we've just received."

Moving forward we will have to submit annual reports showing that we're maintaining all of the programs and competencies that the accreditation model requires, and every 5 years we have to go through the whole process again.

"The fundamental principal behind all of this effort is to adopt and instill a culture of continual improvement in our department," said Johnston. "I think we've accomplished that. But, in 5 years we'll have to appear before the Commission again and convince them that we're still worthy of this designation. So, while this is certainly a huge accomplishment and a major milestone for us, it's not a finish line. We're just getting started."

For more news from Naval Support Activity, Mid-South, visit www.navy.mil/.