OFCA

30,000 firefighters. 100,000 training records. One system that finally works.

Northwoods transformed workflows from paper and shared files to a streamlined digital system in less than two months.

OFCA wildland fire certification platform on screen

Engagement: Design, build, deploy, operate
Capabilities: Wildland fire, Certification management, AI workflow

The problem

Before a wildland firefighter can step onto a fire line, their training and certifications have to be verified — it's a federal requirement.

OFCA manages that process for 30,000+ personnel across hundreds of companies and government agencies. For years, it ran on paper, emails, and spreadsheets. No common language. No single source of truth. Approvals that should take hours took weeks. And when records were wrong or missing, people couldn't work.

What we built

01A single system of record for every company, instructor, and government agency — training approvals that used to bounce between inboxes now move through one place.
02Every firefighter's certifications, accessible instantly — no more hunting through files or waiting on someone to dig up a record.
03AI that monitors regulation changes and flags what needs to be updated, so compliance doesn't slip through the cracks when rules change mid-season.

How we worked

Embedded, in three beats.

01
Listen
Ten years working directly with OFCA members and instructors, learning how the organization actually operates before a single line of code was written.
02
Build
Two months to reimagine the entire system — rebuilt from the ground up with weekly check-ins to make sure every detail was moving in the right direction.
03
Operate
Builds happen in near real-time to respond to regulation changes and incidents as they happen. This one didn't end at launch.

Outcomes