For 3 years VCA Ltd designed and managed ADCs for a collaboration of 3 Scottish Fire & Rescue Services (Highlands & islands, Grampian and Tayside). This partnership was established to share resources at all 3 ADC levels.

  • 7 ADCs across 3 levels, assessing over 220 candidates
  • Over 30 FRS assessors trained from Watch to Brigade Managers
  • One occupational psychologist and two VCA ADC support assistants involved
  • Largest ADC for 58 candidates for Middle Managers, over 2 weeks.
  • The smallest ADC was for 10 Strategic candidates

VCA designed ADCs which included:

Written Exercise

Either as an early sift or part of the full ADC
These exercises were set in an external organisation and provided detailed background documents from which the candidate had to write memos, respond to concerns, identify risks and outline plans.

One to One Role-play

A face to face interaction with one role-player
Often involving performance management scenarios, the candidate would need to address key issues presented in the task documents, generating open discussion and securing agreement for ways forward.

Group Role-play

A meeting or discussion involving two or more role-players
Consistent with the scenario presented in the other two exercises, the group roleplay would explore the candidates ability to listen to two or more viewpoints, identify main priorities and propose workable compromises.

FRS Partnerships Allow Services To Share Tools And Reduce Costs

Through our unique approach with our clients we delivered:

  • Reliable results using a streamlined assessment toolkit
  • Reduced overheads e.g. by using a staggered timetable
  • Minimised administration costs i.e. reducing paper wastage and staff time at events
  • Streamlined assessments for greater speed and efficiency
  • Outsourced written assessment; we reduced marking time by up to 50% , minimising pressure on internal resources and improving quality of candidate feedback
  • Improved candidate experience and satisfaction ratings with personalised sessions with an Occupational Psychologist pre and post ADC
  • Reduced assessor workload and improvements to assessor performance i.e. with each assessor only assessing one exercise per ADC
  • Excellent feedback, using unique reporting techniques to ensure each report was highly developmental and useable, drawing overall behavioural conclusions in addition to reporting on ADC performance
  • Reduced staff demands e.g. we tailored our assessor training to be conducted over 2 days instead of 3

“Thank you for all your hard work and efforts on our behalf.

I know that you always go the extra mile for us, and it is really appreciated. Yet again, another very professional and well run ADC!”

Margret Fisk, Head of People Services, Highlands & Island FRS