By Donovan Slack
The Boston Globe
BOSTON — The Boston Fire Department has for years employed a “loosey-goosey approach” to “virtually all areas of fleet management,” failing to perform adequate preventive maintenance on fire trucks, keeping shoddy records of repairs, and relying on a staff of insufficiently trained firefighters without such fundamental knowledge as how often oil changes are recommended by manufacturers, according to an outside review.
The review by a Maryland-based fleet-management consultant also concluded that firefighters who drive the trucks are inadequately trained and do not complete sufficient daily inspections of the trucks. Overall, the department suffers from a lack of defined policies and procedures for maintenance, repair, and procurement of city fire trucks.
“The current business culture or philosophy in the Maintenance Division simply is not one that emphasizes objectivity, precision, thoroughness, accountability, economic efficiency, or myriad other goals or values that characterize a technically rigorous approach to management,” the consultant, Paul T. Lauria, wrote in a report of his review.
Full Story: Review slams Boston Fire’s ‘loosey-goosey’ approach to firetruck maintenance