Unit Hour Utilization (UHU) reflects how much time a crew spends actively responding to incidents compared to the total available time the unit is in service. It does not consider time spent on other necessary administrative tasks. The average UHU varies by unit type, but industry standards generally recommend a UHU of 0.10 for fire apparatus.
UHU is typically used to assess whether any of an agency’s crews and/or apparatus are being over- or under-utilized.
We arrive at a UHU percentage by adding up all response time for a given crew, station, or agency, and dividing by the total number of staffed hours for that crew, station, or agency, during the time period being analyzed.
Using the UHU Dashboard
The utilization dashboard can report UHU agency-wide, by station, or by staffed apparatus. UHU values displayed will also reflect the time period and other high-level filters applied in HQ.
On the UHU HQ card, and at the top of the UHU chart, you will find the top-level UHU number. This is the total utilization rate for the agency during the selected reporting period, taking into account all responses from agency apparatus, and all staffed hours for active apparatus.
UHU is reported in either Percentage (default), or Average Daily Utilization (in hours), this can be toggled via the Metric drop-down.
The Report by menu allows for UHU to be reported by station, or by staffed apparatus. Hovering over the chart will display more details on each specific group.
Note: responses are attributed to stations based on the recorded “home station” of an apparatus on a given day. In the unusual case that an apparatus responds to an incident from a station other than their home station on a given day, the response will still be attributed to the home station.
Reporting on UHU for a Subset of Incidents and/or Responses
By default, UHU is a total value that captures all response time for a given agency, station, or staffed apparatus. It’s important to note that using HQ filters, it’s possible to exclude some responses from the UHU calculation.
If you’ve excluded responses, each coloured bar on the chart represents a UHU value based only on the selected responses. The larger grey bar represents total UHU including all responses. When hovering over the coloured bar, the detail panel reports on “Selected Responses”. While hovering over the grey bar, the detail panel reports on “All Responses”.
In the example below, responses are filtered to include only those matching the “Fire” dispatch category. Engine 61 is showing a 2.2% utilization rate for that call type, although its overall utilization rate is much higher.
