A lucrative gig in New Westminster is nearing the end for a retired Surrey firefighter.
The city’s recently released financial reports indicate the city paid Ron Price $106,483 in remuneration in 2013. Price was an assistant fire chief for Surrey Fire and Rescue, where his jobs included initiating an attendance management program.
New Westminster Fire Chief Tim Armstrong said the local department brought Price in last year on a three-month contract to implement a new TeleStaff system.
“It’s a scheduling system. What it does is it allows the firefighters to check their schedules if they change shifts, or if there is overtime opportunities it phones them up in order of eligibility,” he said. “It manages, it has reduced the potential for grievances and other things tremendously.”
Price is the “resident expert” in the Lower Mainland in dealing with the employee scheduling software, Armstrong said.
“Nobody here really knows much about it and the software company that developed the software wanted a small fortune to come in and set it up because they are from California,” he told The Record. “We hired him to come in as a consultant to set it up.”
According to Armstrong, implementation of the software program wasn’t something the City of New Westminster’s information technology department was equipped to do.
“It’s all stuff that is tied to our fire department management software, and that’s all tied to E-Comm. It doesn’t really get involved in that,” he said. “From a hardware aspect they could probably support it, but not from actual software development and the software workings of it.”
A report about the Surrey Fire Services’ Attendance Management Program, done by the University of the Fraser Valley, stated that the program received a Community Excellence Award for Best Practices from the Union of B.C. Municipalities in 2004.
“Assistant Chief Ron Price, who initiated the project, discovered a program in the United Kingdom that ultimately served as the model for Surrey’s effort,” stated the report. “Nothing like it existed in Canada at that time.”
Armstrong said the city got good value for its money by hiring Price on a contract basis to implement the program in New Westminster.
“It was going to cost us three times that to go with a company to come in and do it,” he said. “Plus they wanted another $70,000 or $80,000 to do some advanced configuration work that we ended up having him do.”
After completing work on the scheduling software program, New Westminster Fire and Rescue Services extended Price’s contract to do some additional work. Because Price has some expertise in information technology, Armstrong said the department extended his contract so he could do some additional work on its management software, which includes its training records management system.
“We are probably going to keep him until I get this assistant deputy hired,” Armstrong said. “That will probably be the end of his tenure here.”
Brent Wisheart retired as a deputy fire chief in 2013, and his job has yet to be filled.
“I am hoping no later than September,” Armstrong said when asked when the position would be filled. “The process is underway.”
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