Two chiefs from different departments talking beside a command vehicle, apparatus from both agencies visible behind them.

Mutual Aid

Technology problems are easier to solve together

Somewhere another department has already integrated that CAD, already run that pilot, and already found out what the demonstration did not show. Mutual Aid is where that gets said out loud.

Open questions

2 questions

Ask the fire service

Ask it the way you would ask another chief. No account needed. Your first name appears with the question; your surname, your department and your email never do.

Questions are read before they appear, which usually means the same day. Answers are not moderated in advance, so a useful thread can build without waiting on anyone.

Questions and answers are read before they appear. If you work for a company that sells in this space, say so in your answer — vendors are welcome here, sales pitches are removed. Read the rules.

Optional, but the detail is usually what makes an answer useful.

Only your first name is shown publicly.

Shown publicly alongside your first name, so people can see who an answer came from. Your surname and email are not shown.

Never shown on the site. We use it to email you when someone answers, and if we need to reach you about this post. Every one of those emails has a link to stop them.

Reviewed before it appears.

How it works

01

Ask in operational terms

Post the problem the way you would ask another chief. No vendor pitches, and nothing here is sold.

02

Answers from departments who did it

Everyone posts under their own first name. The value is someone saying what it actually took, including what went wrong.

03

Connected to everything else

Threads attach to the technology area they are about, so a discussion sits alongside the approaches and the learning for that problem.