What Is The Front Range Fire Consortium?

The Front Range Fire Consortium (FRFC) is made up of eleven fire departments in Northern Colorado. The membership includes:

• Boulder Fire Rescue
• Boulder Rural Fire Rescue
• Front Range Fire Rescue
• Greeley Fire Department
• Lafayette Fire Department
• Longmont Fire Department
• Louisville Fire Protection District
• Loveland Fire Rescue Authority
• Mountain View Fire Rescue
• Platte Valley Fire Protection District
• Windsor Severance Fire Rescue

The FRFC started in 1998 with five departments: Boulder Fire, Greeley Fire, Longmont Fire, Poudre Fire Authority and Mountainview Fire Protection District. Cheyenne Fire (WY), Loveland Fire, Laramie Fire (WY) and the Windsor-Severance joined these departments later. By 2005, the fire consortium had changed its name to the Front Range Fire Consortium (FRFC).

The FRFC is active in Recruit Academy Training and Professional Development Training for its member departments and for other regional departments as well.

What Is The Purpose Of The front Range Fire Consortium?

The FRFC has two primary training functions for its member departments:

• Recruit Fire Academy Training
• Professional Development/Leadership Training

Recruit Fire Academy Training

Recruit Fire Academy Training began for the FRFC in 1998. Since that time, the FRFC has offered its membership the opportunity for firefighter recruits to train in two academies, offered in the spring and fall of the year. The FRFC academy is a fifteen-week training experience with over 800 hours of mostly hands-on/skills training. The basic curriculum is developed around the NFPA 1001 skills and utilization of the IFSTA Essentials textbook. However, the FRFC academy goes well beyond the basics for complete recruit training with a goal of graduating recruits that are fully functional and fully capable firefighters on day one of their fire company assignment.

In the last twenty years, the FRFC has offered nearly 40 recruit fire academies with over five hundred recruits graduating. The organizational goal for the FRFC academies is to engage in continuous improvement and look for ways to provide even greater and more effective training for member department recruits. Most recently the focus of the academy has shifted to include more emphasis on modern fire behavior and graduate highly trained and skilled “legacy freighters” that are educated and equipped with the requisite knowledge of modern fire behavior theory, tactics, and task level skills.

Professional Development/Leadership Training

The FRFC was originally created to address the needs for professional development and leadership training for its members. For fifteen years, the Professional Development for Career Officers (PFCO) and the Professional Development for Fire Officers (PDFO) were active leadership training courses for the FRFC member departments.

A new leadership-training program is being beta-tested in 2018, along with a comprehensive study and development of a new, future professional development program for the FRFC’s member departments.

The current leadership-training program is called All American Leadership. This will take place from November 2024 to April 2025 in Loveland, CO.

Front Range Fire Consortium