Air Management

Ready to navigate air management in firefighting?

How do you ensure compliance with NFPA 1404? We are here to take a deeper dive into NFPA 1404 and SOG's to help your department achieve compliance. We look at operations of different fire departments, drawing vital lessons from each, and leaving you with practical tips for your own department. 

We are publishing a new SOG each week for eight weeks and this week the SOG addresses Air Management.

This episode features Josh Blum & John Vance.

Sign up for the B Shifter Buckslip, our free weekly newsletter and get the Air Management SOG and Drills here.

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This episode was recorded remotely on September 7, 2023

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:19

Alright, welcome to B shifter John Vance. Josh Bloom, welcome to the program today and we are going to be talking about air management in just a few minutes because that's the topic of the week. But first of all just want to remind everybody that the hazard zone conference is quickly approaching. It's October 5 and 6 and Cincinnati, ohio two days of learning. A ton of instructors, a ton of topics.

Speaker 1: 1:47

We've got the agenda out there right now on an app. So once you register we're going to give you all the classes that there are for you to attend. So you can already start planning right now, so you can go to B shiftercom to set that up. Or if you need more information, you can just reach out to Josh or I and we can answer in your questions there. But we're looking forward to seeing everybody at this year's hazard zone conference and I'm looking at myself here on the camera, if you're watching on YouTube. I got the new B shifter trucker hat and we're going to have that available for everyone to purchase over at the hazard zone conference. And Cincinnati will have a little store set up for folks to shop. How are you doing today, josh?

Speaker 2: 2:32

Fantastic, all good. I'm super excited about the conference. I am to the approaching, I think we're what. 2928 days away.

Speaker 1: 2:41

Yeah, we have a lot of people of RSVP. I know a couple of the hotels are full or just about fine. I know one hotel for sure is full right.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Yep, yeah, the main host hotel connected to the conference center is full, and then the other ones are pretty much so filled up. So, yeah, that's, that's always good. I mean bringing it back first time since 2017 and stand by because we're going to. This is just the beginning.

Speaker 1: 3:13

Yes, and we will be announcing dates soon for next year's conference. So if, for whatever reason, you're not able to make it this year, we're going to have those dates out very shortly here and also we will start registering people with an early word price right away. So that is coming up to be announced soon. So looking forward to that this week in the B shifter buck slip.

Speaker 1: 3:37

The B shifter buck slip is our weekly newsletter that we put out to incident commanders, fire service leaders. It's a one stop shop on what's going on the topics of the day, and we have a series going on right now where we are giving you free SOGs, and these are SOGs that are in PDF and word format. You can customize them for your department. If there's something in there that you want to change around, you can. But we've done, by and large, most of the work for you. So I know with SOGs that the heavy lift is just getting it going and getting something to start with, and this is definitely a start for everybody.

Speaker 1: 4:19

And every week that we feature something, we're getting more and more conversation about it, and I had a lot of conversation with folks online this week, so we thought we'd pop on do a little podcast on it and really go in depth on what these SOGs are all about, why it's important for you to have an air management SOG for your department and talk about some of the drills and stuff that we've offered as well.

Speaker 1: 4:42

So if you have not subscribed to the B shifter buck, slip the show notes, have the link in it so you can sign up and subscribe right now, and at the end of this entire series we're going to offer you the catalog too. So if you're just hopping on halfway through, we'll have an opportunity for you to go back and get all the SOGs that we've already issued for the last four or five weeks. So talking about air management, josh, I think starting off with a little historical perspective on the way that we used to manage air and why we need to have an air management policy to begin with, Many, many, many years ago, you know, long before Chemox or any of those things you know it was.

Speaker 2: 5:28

When they did go inside it was window to window and they, you know, would maybe try to, you know, protect themselves some way shape or form with you know a sponge or something just over their face, or you know some kind of handkerchief or you know whatever. And then you know, literally it was from window to window and something we talk about in some fire science stuff now, that tunneling right, maybe they would try to stay inside that tunnel, you know, and that was, you know, long, long ago. And then you know the Chemox thing. We've had a lot of discussion about that anyway, because we got Chief Bernassini's gear and his Chemox from when he was on the Phoenix fire department there at the CTC, and it was like they gave a lot more attention to air management then, about what it really meant and how, what can I really do and how can I protect myself. It seems, then, we do. Now, you know, we have all kinds of bells and whistles and computers and gadgets and widgets and all of this, and definitely technology and equipment is better than it's ever been. But the missing piece is, I think why? Why do we do air management? And then what does it really look like? And then how do you do it? So I have a few events in my time working in the fire service that I remember being in buildings and working too long and you know, you end up taking your mask off and you take that breath and you're like holy shit, I didn't realize it was that bad still. And I got plenty of events that I've been involved with as a doing review where one of them locally, right here in Ohio, seven feet inside the front door a couple of companies cluttered at the front door which is not best practice, but it happened A guy gets his mask knocked off, one breath, unconscious, right there, and they're like what in the world happened to him? I thought he had a heart attack, pulled him out, well, his mask was off and that's all. It took one breath and it was over.

Speaker 2: 7:26

So I mean you want to know why we do it. Well, you know, one breath in today's environment it's over. You know 212 degrees. You know your trachea is mostly water, right, I mean we're mostly made of water. When you, when it boils and blisters, it's over, right. And then the whole mine thing.

Speaker 2: 7:43

Right, we've all probably been in the burn building where you were burning all day and you know you're at the end of the day and you're, I'm just going in there to throw one more pallet on, or going in there to, you know, stoke the fire, or you know whatever. Or maybe you know the old MSA elephant trunk. You forgot to just plug it back in when you went through the door and you took that breath and it's like holy shit, it kind of catches you off guard. Well, you know, just think about what that, what goes through your mind if you're inside the building and you get to that position, right, and we've heard plenty of instances and recent times of people being out of air inside the building or they're running out of air and then it goes silent because when you're out of air inside the IDLH you're going to die.

Speaker 2: 8:32

And that's how the article started and I know it's kind of harsh and some people said something to me about that, but it's the truth. I mean, how long can you hold your breath? So, no different than divers consider, I can't dive any longer than I have air for. So when we dive through that front doors, firefighters, we need to be thinking about how long can I really work and did I have to give myself time to be able to get outside the building? So I know I jumped from the history thing like right into it because I got I mean, I got a lot of passion and interest about this because our industry seems to be struggling with this whole air management thing and we think that accidental success is success.

Speaker 2: 9:12

And incidents you hear it, you hear it on YouTube, you hear it on real incidents. You don't have to look far to hear the people think it's just normal that the low air alarms going off on the fire ground and it's like no, we've created this monster, that it's okay for that to happen. And then people come out all the time with their low air alarm going off and it works until it doesn't. And the time to figure it out isn't when you're having that. Oh shit, I'm out of air now.

Speaker 2: 9:39

So I mean that's what the whole air management piece was about and the whole SOG. I mean we have to do better industry-wide. You know, I think, training our people. What do those lights really mean? How long does your air really last? You know it's smoke and mirrors. People say 15 minutes, 17 minutes.

Speaker 2: 10:01

Well, we got a top 10 size fire department in the country right now that has been sharing a ton of data with us and the average work time for their crew by the time they get to 50% on a 4,500 pound cylinder, the average work time is under six minutes. So and they're starting, they're not the whole nother problem. They identified that people are not filling their bottles, so the average starting pressure they're starting with is like 4,200. So they're not even starting with a full bottle and we're seeing that too.

Speaker 2: 10:37

I've seen some people's air management SOGs. As long as your bottle has more than 4,100 in it, it's okay. Well that 400 pounds to 4,500, how much time is that? I mean, I'm gonna ask everybody on here and it's gonna listen to that question how much time is 400 pounds in your 4,500 pound cylinder? Like, how long is that for you? Because you know if it's two, three, four minutes, well, two, three, four minutes of additional air before you're out of air, it matters, right. I mean it's a whole mind frame and culture and training and expectations and yeah, there's more to it than people think about when it comes to air management.

Speaker 1: 11:25

In your article which was excellent that you wrote as a companion piece to the SOG that you put out this week, you said on top of this thing, two things keep us alive inside a burning building If we are operating in the correct strategy. That's water on the fire and air on our backs. It is absolute risk management for us to have air management, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 11:50

100%. I mean we can't do our job if we don't have air. We can't help anybody else if we can't help ourselves. So part of the whole air thing is we equip ourselves with this personal protective equipment and not to digress or get on something totally different. But you know, we ask so many times what's the real capability of your turnout gear and people don't know. Well, I don't know. They dropped it off to me and I put it on and this is what I wear because that's what they gave me.

Speaker 2: 12:18

And you know, people, it'll hold up to a flash over, it'll hold up to this, that and it's like, well, no, like, that's just another piece of it, right? So when I was putting that article together, I was thinking about, like, what really gets us inside of buildings on fire if we're in the correct strategy, right? So I mean, if we're getting water on the fire and we're getting rid of that thermal threat, then the next piece of it is that you know, ideal H piece of that toxic smoke and lack of oxygen. So, water on the fire, air on our back, and those two go hand in hand.

Speaker 1: 13:01

With this SOG. How much of this will get a department into compliance? Well, let's talk about NFPA 1404 and how much of the SOG will get us into compliance with NFPA 1404.

Speaker 2: 13:15

So the SOG addresses a lot of the NFPA 1404 standard. I mean some of the stuff you have to figure out, you know for yourself. But you know NFPA 1404 is the air management training. It's training on the equipment, right, and then it goes through and talks about you know some of the things about the SCBA and like, when we're working in that environment, what does that really mean and how is the air? What does air management really mean with when it comes to how much air we have and how much air we have left? And then the emergency reserve piece. So you know we're with a new standard 33%, 33%, 33%. When you get to that last 33%, you know you're into the emergency reserve.

Speaker 2: 14:02

And so many people think that the emergency reserve is no, it's my reserve just to get out. Well, it is your reserve to get out, but if you have an emergency so we should not be in the IDLH with our low air alarm going off and I mean we define that and line that out in the SOG. But you know, to get to that point you have to roll out the expectation. To roll out an expectation, you should really have an SOG. Once you have that, then you got to train on it and get people on the same page. As far as no, this is what we want. This is what we want you to do and then, just like anything, if you want to be successful, you got to be willing to evaluate yourself.

Speaker 2: 14:40

So I can't let John Vance come out of a building with his low air alarm going off because it was a thousand square foot house, and say, eh, it's okay, it's like no, john, we're not going to do that. This is the whole thing with me about this air management thing. We pay no attention to air management. But, by golly, if you're late, if it's 705, I'm going to write you up and it's like, yeah, it's like what the hell? No, this I mean we're talking about safety stuff that we should be enforcing, right, and if we don't do that all the time, then we're never going to do it.

Speaker 2: 15:10

So you know, I said the thousand square foot house piece. Well, people say, well, there's a window or a door everywhere. Well, there is, until there isn't right. And we don't have to look too far in the past to find where there was an air problem that resulted in some a firefighter being hurt, in another firefighter dying from running out of air inside of a house on fire, right, and then I think it was just last month the house fire. They may or may not have been in the correct strategy. There was a collapse and it took 23 minutes to get the firefighters out.

Speaker 2: 15:48

So you know, the only chance we have of helping somebody is if we're doing everything right when something goes wrong. And that's why it's so important that, with this air management standard and this SOG, that we do it right every single time. We don't get to decide when something's going to go sideways on us oftentimes. So that comes back to the better. We're doing everything right when something goes wrong. It could be. The simplest thing is you're at a house I worked until I was really close to my low air alarm going off and I fell into the basement stairs which happens to still have a IDLH smoke environment. Well, you got a problem right. I mean, it's a Mayday event and you're not giving us much time to be able to get to you and get you out. So that's why we have to do everything right. We can't flip a switch and make everything in that house the environment, time right. If it's IDLH, it's IDLH.

Speaker 1: 16:43

So going back to your historical perspective, that's how it was. You know, we always waited until those bells went off, until we left. That's how I was actually trained when I became a firefighter. You leave when that bell goes off. There was no talk of air management and that was only 30 years ago.

Speaker 1: 17:37

And getting ready for this podcast, I actually have spent the last few days drilling and I went into our hose tower and did the steps on a full bottle and I timed myself every time and until I got to halfway, which I get an alarm halfway and you start lighting up amber. Right, it was 15 minutes of what I would consider continuous work for somebody like me. I am a chief and I'm not pulling ceiling or stuff, but I'm inside walking around that's probably what I'm going to be doing and walking stairs. That's only 15 minutes of work time and you have to plan accordingly and that's for somebody who's a moderate shape. So you have different people that suck down that air differently. How do we learn the limitations of our crew and how do we get our crews to learn their limitations?

Speaker 2: 18:33

Well, you know, one thing I think that has happened throughout time is that we've we have trained people to work until that low air alarm goes off, and then we've told them, hey, you can work, you can keep going, even. Or we stop them when their low air alarm goes off and just haven't go sit in the corner and show them hey, this is how much time you really have. And I don't disagree with that. I think there's value in that right. So, you know, in this week's BucsLip we rolled out two different things, one of them from here in Hamilton County and another one from another blue card fire department. The one in Hamilton County was a working exercise. So they set up, you know, some some fire department like work, so that people were working at, I'd say, a moderate fire pace there's no heat involved, but so that they're working. And they measured, like, how much air did they have when they started? How much air did they have when they got to 50%? How much time did they have, how much time was it when their low air alarms started going off? And then at that point they'd have them stop. And then they basically show if you can get your breathing under control, which if you're having the worst day of your life and you're dying inside of a building, the chances of you doing that is not very good. But the whole mindset thing of my low air alarm just started going off, and if I can calm myself down, how long could I stay here? So I mean, there's some people you know it's basically between 30 and 57 minutes that some people got. If they could just sit in a corner and calm themselves down Now, granted, that's not the worst day of their life. You know they're having some, you know competition with other people and then you know they've tied that back to when their low air alarm starts going off.

Speaker 2: 20:19

The company who was in front of them doing the air management drill with under zero visibility does a transfer of that bottle. But they don't actually transfer, they just plug it in with the transfer bottle turned off, just as another piece of the exercise, and with that they were just measuring. How long does that really take? One and two, how successful are we doing that? So you know that's just a drill that we included into there that you could do and you could come up with your own information.

Speaker 2: 20:52

And you know it's pretty widespread when you see an SOG that says crews can work 12 minutes at this fire department. You got a bad SOG because I mean we've got data from a few thousand people now all using 45 minute cylinders with the same cubic feet of air in them and I mean we got times that are at seven minutes, some people's low air alarms going off and we got people that you know I think the highest one we've seen is maybe like 17 or 18 minutes and some of that is their sandbagging a little bit, not working, not working at a good fireman's pace, but it's good for people to see and know that right. So that's where it comes down to the task level and the company officer knowing the limitations and capabilities of the people that they're working with, because you can only work as long as your weakest link and your weakest link is the person who's going to use the most air right, the company officer.

Speaker 2: 21:51

In a lot of situations and a lot of cases and a lot of organizations are probably going to use the least amount of air because they're maybe not doing as much manual labor work. They're doing more thinking, evaluating, coaching, communicating, assigning right, and the firefighters are doing the more labor right. You know, one thing they saw was that somebody that is actually on the nozzle is using more air, it seems, than the person who was backing them up, and I guess in some ways it makes sense. They're getting some more exposure. Maybe their mind frames a little bit different they're. They are probably moving around a little bit more, and then your organization need to figure out what it looks for you and all of your personnel and then align that with your organization to figure out what does air management really mean for your fire department.

Speaker 1: 22:44

Have you ever seen a fire department that has a different policy, an actual policy for a small house versus a commercial building? Or is that just all make-believe stuff? Because you hit on it at the beginning of the podcast? We're talking about 1100 square foot building and you know the mindset that some have is well, I can just walk out of this building when I run out of air. But when you apply that mindset to a 5,000 square foot building or an 11,000 square foot building, what happens and why can't you have that mindset? You know what happens with that mindset. So you say there's, you know, one policy. Why do we have to follow one policy?

Speaker 2: 23:29

Really, it comes down to me for something as simple as this and I say this all the time and people look at me like I'm crazy, which maybe I am but you don't get to decide when you're going to have an accident and put your seatbelt on. So that's how I align at this house, right? You don't get to decide when something's going to happen. You don't get to decide when conditions might change, right? So if we don't do these things basically all the time, then we're not going to do them really ever. So you're talking about 1100 square foot house. Say I'm 12 feet inside of a building versus 100 feet inside the building. Well, when we have thinking firefighters, officers, tactical bosses and strategic ICs, we know right that if I'm at a thousand square foot house, that company can probably stay in there and work 8, 9, 10 minutes and still have enough time to get out before their milk is off.

Speaker 2: 24:32

I'm at. I'm 150 feet down a hand line. I can still be inside the building, inside the IDLA the same amount of time. It's just how much work am I actually going to get done at the fire location? Because, my travel time right, it took me three minutes to get to the seat of the fire and it's going to take me at least three or four minutes to get out right. So that only leaves me five minutes, six minutes, whatever it is working at the seat of the fire. So I mean that's that mind frame thing.

Speaker 2: 25:04

But the whole thing of and I have seen it that if we're at a house fire it's okay for my personnel to have their low air alarm come off at a house fire, but I'm not okay with their low air alarm going off when they come out of a commercial building fire.

Speaker 2: 25:20

And I know of two fire departments that I'm familiar with that have something similar to that or they have that mind frame anyway that it's okay to come out of a house through low air alarm going off. And I've been to commercial building fires with them. And what do you think happens at commercial building fires? They come out with their low air alarm going off because they don't flip the switch, because they work. They're only notice that they're having an air problem, or that they're going to have an air problem, or they're getting close to having an air problem, or that there is an air issue or whatever is when that actual low air alarm goes off because we spend. We don't spend enough time talking about. What does that heads up display really mean? And, john, you said something before at 50% you guys wearing MSA G1s or something.

Speaker 1: 26:06

No Scott.

Speaker 2: 26:08

So whatever pack you're wearing, so you can set it right. So at 50%, that's kind of a pre-alert that hey, you're at 50% you ought to be thinking about. You know, telling somebody that I probably have to be replaced, or you know, whatever, two things I think happen with that One. It just becomes the normal chirp that's in the background and everybody just knows that's no big deal. Or I know of multiple fire departments that said we don't like that chirp going off, so we're just going to turn it off. So you paid for this technology, this technology is available and you turned it off right. It just, I mean, it makes zero sense to me. And then the whole heads up display We've won the fire departments. That's doing a ton of work on air management right now.

Speaker 2: 26:51

When it comes to, you know, putting their people through some drills and exercises so that they know how much time they have and their company officers know, and then, department wide, they can kind of come up with what does it really look like for our entire organization? One of the things when people are showing up there saying, if this light is lit up, what does that mean? And people don't know. And they go back and basically say, well, in the Academy we really didn't talk about that because they just said this is how you put it on, this is how you don your face piece. You got it all hooked. It's like it's a disservice. It's a disservice no different than it's a disservice that we give people turnout gear but we don't tell them what the limitations and capabilities of the turnout gear is right the?

Speaker 2: 27:39

You know Chris Stewart, one of our colleagues, you know. Earlier today I'm talking to him. He was like, yeah, we spend zero time talking about that fragile body that's inside of the turnout gear and that's wearing that SCBA and what can it really hold up to? And we don't talk about that and what it can do. And we definitely don't talk about what does our PPE do and our SCBA do to protect us and when it doesn't protect us, what happens to our body. So I mean there's way more to this air management thing, I think, than we even put out. This is just a little snippet S-O-G, I think, to get people going down. You know the right path.

Speaker 1: 28:17

How often do you think we should be putting that SCBA on and practicing with it and being comfortable with it and understanding what all the chirps and lights and gauges mean? How often should our firefighters have that on their back If they're not going to fires on a regular basis?

Speaker 2: 28:35

I mean, I think that has to just come back to evaluating your training and performance and drills. So you know, we train people on all the basic skills stuff so that they become competent with those tools and then in a drill we should exercise and see what it really looks like, right? So if people aren't doing what we want them to do in a drill or people aren't doing what we want them to do at a live event, then we need to fix that. And you know, sometimes it can be fixed through discussion, but oftentimes that needs to be fixed through putting your stuff on right and actually going through the motions.

Speaker 2: 29:16

I know fire departments that are not going to be that will not make a first-do fire in their district this year and they cover 30 square miles and they got 20 guys a day on duty and they will not make a first-do fire in their district. You want to talk? So how often should they be doing it? To be honest with you, probably every day. Every day those guys go to work, they should probably put their. They should probably get dressed, put their air pack on, practice putting their mask on, get all their stuff on. So when they have to do it, that they do it right.

Speaker 1: 29:46

SEBAs, I think in a lot of ways are about confidence. I mean you've got to be in the right mental mind frame when you put it on your back because suddenly you're so aware of how you're breathing, how much you're breathing, the rhythm that you're breathing at. It tends to escalate your inner stressful situation if you're actually in a fire, so your respirations are going to go up. And to be able to have that ongoing practice not just an annual SEBA confidence course, but actually putting them on a regular basis matters a lot, because you're gonna have that confidence and you're gonna know how to fix something or what it means when you're looking at the gauge. And you're also gonna know your own physiology on how you're gonna react in certain situations.

Speaker 1: 30:35

When you're on air. It's like a scuba diver, right? I mean if you're a scuba diver and you're 85 feet down and you run out of air, you're done. I mean, yeah, and if you do make it up, you're gonna be going to a hyperbaric chamber somewhere because you're gonna have the bends and all kinds of other problems from depressurizing so quick. So using that scuba mindset, I mean you wouldn't go to the bottom of the ocean and oh shit, I gotta get out of here.

Speaker 2: 31:09

Now we need to adapt that to to firefighting and scba we talked about it earlier and I'm just gonna this air management thing is nothing new yeah right, I mean, it really isn't.

Speaker 2: 31:22

We just, I don't think, have given it the attention that it deserves and I know there's a ton of organizations out there that give it plenty of attention. But you know we want to try to Impact and help as many organizations as we possibly can. That's what this whole thing is about for us, and if you take one thing away from it and it makes a difference, then you know that's fantastic and it's been a long time ago. But my gag liano and a few of those folks came to Cincinnati and did a couple of classes here in Hamilton county at love on some fire department.

Speaker 2: 31:54

Air management isn't new and I'm just gonna show it because you know they wrote this book a long time ago now and I'll know exactly what the date was and that really is irrelevant. But it's been around for, I think, fifteen years, for a long time. And this whole thing air management for the fire service some of the people that got our so this week, or like, where does where management thing come from? I didn't even know that in fk 1404 existed. No, there's a standard for everything, right, and we've had a lot of accidental success with it and I think that's a piece of it.

Speaker 2: 32:32

But I just wanted to, you know, say, hey, this, this is not new. It there's a ton of great information and this and this book and I'm almost positive you can still get it just a fire engineering book, and if you don't have it it's it's probably something to Watch on to and those guys do a fantastic. You know class and discussion to on on Air management and when I return and what does that really mean, and you know best practice and how do you prepare yourself and All of that.

Speaker 1: 33:03

So I think that's a good way to wrap up this part of the discussion, because this is just scratching the surface. The, the SOG and the drills that we provided this week and the B shifter buck slip if you would like to get your copy, you can get it in the show notes will not only have An opportunity for you to get those and download them. If you sign up every week every Tuesday morning you will get in your inbox New SOG, new resources for you as an incident commander and fire service leader that you can put into use right away, and we're For helping you get that push start. But I think, as Josh says, there's so much to learn, so much to drill on, so many resources like the air management book out there and NFPA 1404. That you've got to dig into it to really do it justice. So you make sure you're doing the right thing for your firefighters, for your organization, and you Prevent something bad from happening.

Speaker 1: 34:07

As, as Alan Brunassini said, if we can't protect ourselves, there's no way we can protect our customers, and let's not become part of the problem. You said it we take one breath in the superheated Atmospheres with all kinds of stuff that's going to kill us. This isn't the 1970s anymore. You're going down there's. There's no way you're going to be able to help anybody else out Any more on the SOG or what's available this week, josh.

Speaker 2: 34:34

Like just you know. So the SOG is just a little overview thing real quick. We we lined those up. You know, the command SOG came out first and it was kind of just like the platform and then we did, you know, division ops, communications, air management, accountability. And the one that's coming out this coming Tuesday is Mayday management and it's coming out and it really ties together and gives the reason why the first five exists.

Speaker 2: 35:07

So you should do the first five so you don't have to do the main management part. But if you do have to do the main management part, you better be doing the first five to be able to manage the main day. So so I'm looking forward to that coming out this coming Tuesday and then after that we got the other two still coming out before the conference big box and the EV fire. So A lot of information out there. And again, if, if organizations take one thing from any one thing that we put out, it was worth it. Nobody's got to drink all the kool-aid or eat all the elephant, just just if it just helps a little bit. That's what this whole thing is about for us.

Speaker 1: 35:48

We're happy to help and we're glad to get the word out. So if you're not getting it again, sign up in the show notes and if you have any suggestions for us to let us know. Our information is in there as well. Alright, josh, thanks, man. Good seeing you. Looking forward to a lesson. A month from now, we're going to be in Cincinnati at the hazard zone conference. What class are you doing there? You got a couple things going right.

Speaker 2: 36:12

Yes. So Eric Phillips and I are doing the after action reporting. So we've been working on a project for a while now about what does the after action reporting piece of an incident look like? And Like trying to build some tools to help organizations streamline that, to make having the conversation with people about the continuous improvement model A little easier. So we do pretty good at giving people the ad, a boys, even maybe when they didn't deserve it. But you know, so often we don't do very good.

Speaker 2: 36:43

Having the conversation about this just wasn't quite where we want it and we want you to do this, that and the other, and it really the the S O G thing launched because of the after action reporting, because we kept having a discussion about how do you, how do you have the discussion with somebody if their organization and doesn't have an S O G and laid out the expectation is, trained them.

Speaker 2: 37:08

That's pretty good. That's pretty good like we really can't. So you know, blue card is the avenue to train people, the fire chief, ops chief, company officer is the avenue to roll out the expectation and the S O G is what's black and white that you know communicate Through basically of here. Here's what we're going to do. We communicate, this is what we're going to do, we train people on it and then the after action reporting thing. We can have that discussion so that we can always look to do better, because if we sell for how we did today and we think we were successful, tomorrow may not look like that and will likely not look like that. We can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

Speaker 1: 37:48

Well, thanks for all your hard work. I know this has been a labor of love for you and really a great project. So thanks for all the S O G. You are making our lives easier at my department because we're in the middle of updating. All our S O G is right now, so this has been a great push start for us. Thanks, josh. Thank you, john. All right, we'll talk to you all next time on the B shifter podcast. Thanks so much for listening.