Happy Anniversary to Tauranga Service Centre and congratulations on a successful year

It is a year since former Internal Affairs Minister, Hon. Jan Tinetti officially opened Fire and Emergency’s new service centre in Tauranga.

The Centre was set up to make sure firefighters across Ngā Tai ki te Puku have safe and fit-for-purpose equipment and resources, when they need them, so they can keep people and properties safe.

Thirteen Region-based members of the Organisational Strategy & Capability Development Branch – from Equipment and Logistics, Fleet, Information and Communications Technology, and Property – are based at the centre. Together, they manage, maintain, store, and distribute a huge range of firefighting and emergency response tools, equipment, information technology and other resources for the Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Tairāwhiti Districts and beyond.

Bruce Nilson, Region Equipment and Logistics Manager says over the last 12 months there has been a lot of work going on at the Centre and the team has introduced many internal processes and systems to help with workflow, particularly with hose transition.

‘We have completed hose changeovers at 31 of our stations and converted forestry hose and waterway to the new quick connect couplings.

‘We have also been busy fitting out 20 new and cascading appliances with the vehicles all coming on stream at the same time due to delays from COVID.’

Bruce says the team has also been involved in completing national rollouts of new Class B foam, emergency hygiene packs, and firefighter illumination capability.

Current work on the go includes working with Fleet to fit out all relief appliances with equipment.

‘We want to get these to a point where only BA sets, IGC radios and brigade-specific equipment need to be changed when the vehicles roll into stations. At the same time, we will be testing all the equipment and are planning to get to a point where the appliances come through the Centre twice a year.’

The team also looks after the national hydraulic rescue equipment and thermal imaging camera programmes which involves the purchasing and distribution of this equipment across the five Regions.

Bruce says having the Region Coordinators all in one building has been ‘a great success story’.