One of the biggest issues in the fire service is how to train our personnel. There are many ways to prepare people to do their job, but it can be difficult to develop and implement a plan, because you must balance many factors: subject matter, mandatory training, resources, etc.
Like many departments, mine has struggled with developing a consistent training program. One of our main challenges has been our inconsistency at the training captain level. Historically, our newly promoted captains were placed in the training division, which has led to numerous personnel rotating through a very important and influential position in our department.
The frequent turnover in the training captain position has caused some frustration, so I took a serious look at how we’ve been doing business so we can develop some consistency in how we train our personnel.
What’s the Problem?
Before we could think about fixing anything, we had to determine the problems. I felt the best place to start was with the company officers, so I sat down with them and asked them what our training needs were. This isn’t something we had done very much in the past, so getting company officers to open up and be honest took a little time, but once they warmed up, we were able strike up some good conversations.
Training Captain Ryan Lewis and I then met to review the notes and identify the common threads brought up by the company officers. These included:
- Training wasn’t challenging enough;
- There’s little direction and we don’t know what you expect of us;
- We need specific training for each rank; and
- Battalion chiefs (BCs) should be more involved in training so we can learn from them.
Our next goal: Develop a training system that would meet these concerns and could be managed by future training captains. In other words, we had to come up with a training program that:
- Would be fairly easy to manage;
- Shared the responsibility to train our personnel;
- Held officers accountable for training their personnel;
- Developed training for individual ranks (core critical training); and
- Was based on competency, not a minimum training hour requirement.
Breaking It Down
To simplify the training system, we broke it down into three areas, each of which is the responsibility of a different group: monthly department drills, core critical skills and company drills.
Monthly department drills: These drills are the responsibility of the training division. Multiple companies train together on things like mandated training, advanced training, implementation of new policy training, etc. To make the monthly drills more effective, we try to send out pre-drill information and study material so our personnel show up prepared. This can include videos, case studies, standard operating procedures (SOPs), Target Safety classes or anything else that helps prepare the crews to perform at a higher level during a drill.
Such pre-drill preparation reduces the classroom time and increases the hands-on section because much of the classroom information is covered at the station prior to arriving at the drill. The other advantage we’ve noticed from these monthly drills: Crews are coming in more confident about their basic skills and knowledge level, which allows us to provide more advanced training at the monthly drills.
Core critical skills: The next area of responsibility lies with the BCs, who are responsible for setting up core critical skills training during the first month of every quarter. Core critical training is specific to each rank. Each rank has skills unique to that position but unfortunately we don’t often train on those specific skills. It seems that once you get promoted, you’re on your own, baby.
The concept is simple. Several months before the battalion gets together to train, assignments are handed out by the BC to a captain, an engineer and a firefighter. These individuals each create a class based on recommendations from the BC that concentrate on rank-specific skills. When the units arrive to train, each rank splits up and completes their drill or class. The only rule we have: Everyone must teach a class before someone else can teach twice (this gives everyone a chance to see what teaching is like and it helps us develop future department instructors).
Core critical skills training does more than concentrate the training for individual ranks. It allows peers to get together, without the distractions of the other ranks being involved, to speak freely and talk shop in a very small, non-intimidating environment. This opens up discussions not found in larger groups and invites people to share information and ideas about how to do their jobs better. From my experience, large mixed groups aren’t conducive to asking questions that may seem basic or elementary because you know the guy next to you is thinking, “What a dumbass.”
Company drills. The final area of responsibility is placed neatly on the company officer’s shoulders. Each company officer is responsible for training their crews on the basic skills that we call “firemenship” skills. If you’re on a fire truck or engine, you need to be good at the basics, no matter your rank.
We break everything down into yearly quarters. Like I mentioned, the first month of the quarter is dedicated to core critical skills training, but each company gets several basic evolutions to work on as well. They work on these basic skills for 2 months and are asked to complete a drill or series of drills in front of the BC during the third month of the quarter. It’s up to the company officer to figure out how much training their crews need to be proficient at the drill observed by the BC. I don’t believe in hours-based training because it doesn’t correlate to competency.
Example: If you have a standard hourly requirement that each crew must train for 4 hours on a ladder evolution and one crew is able to perfect it in an hour and another crew needs 4 more hours to figure it out, what have you accomplished? You’ve wasted one crew’s time for 3 hours and never trained the other crew because they needed more time.
In my opinion, proficiency-based training makes more sense than setting some arbitrary hourly requirement. Hourly-based training is simply based on a SWAG (Some Wild Ass Guess) of how much time it takes to train someone without concentrating on results.
Adjust as Needed
Every time we try something new, we must understand that the best laid plans may need to be adjusted from time to time; flexibility is key to the success of a program like this. No training program is perfect out of the box; you must start with a solid foundation and adjust as needed. Periodic program evaluation will ensure you’re meeting your goals and the needs of the end users–the firefighters and company officers in the field.
Other than emergency response, there’s no more important function in a fire department than training, and everyone must take responsibility for it. I can’t be certain this training philosophy will work, but it seems like the concept of shared responsibilities between our training division, BCs and our company officers is a good place to start.
