B Shifter
Fire command and leadership conversations for B Shifters and beyond (all shifts welcome)!
B Shifter
Why Incident Action Plans Matter
This episode is hosted by Josh Blum, Chris Stewart, and John Vance.
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This episode was recorded on August 15, 2025 in Orlando, Florida at Fire Rescue International.
The B-Shifters explore why incident action plans matter for fireground operations and firefighter safety, emphasizing the importance of a single, coordinated approach versus multiple disconnected plans.
• Incident action plans require proper size-up, evaluation of critical factors, risk management, and strategy selection before implementation
• "Size-up plus three" helps company officers think about what their company will do and what the next 2-3 companies should do
• IAPs must be continuously evaluated and revised based on changing conditions
• Command transfers require clear communication about the current plan and whether it should continue or change
• Effective IAPs must adapt to resource limitations, including staffing challenges
• Task, location, and objective assignments provide clear responsibilities for companies
• A poor plan directly impacts safety and effectiveness on the fireground
Join us for the 2025 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference in Sharonville, Ohio, September 29 through October 3rd. Visit bshifter.com for information and registration. Workshops are filling up quickly!
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Welcome to the V-Shifter podcast. It's Josh Blum, chris Stewart, john Vance, and we are still at FRI, although when you're listening to this, fri is over. We're gone from Orlando, but we're here on the last day and since we were together, we wanted to record another podcast. We're up early and talking about stuff, so we will be talking today about incident action plans and really you know why is that so important? So we'll dig into that topic in just a little bit.
Speaker 2:We still want to remind you about the 2025 Blue Card Hazard Zone Conference coming to Sharonville, ohio, september 29th through October 3rd. You can go to bshiftercom and find all the information about that. You can meet the instructors, see the class descriptions. The schedule of what's going on is on there right now. As soon as you sign up, we'll send you our app so you can start planning out your visit and really looking at the classes and giving you an agenda for the trip. Do you have anything new on the conference? We are full right now with the certification lab, so that pre-conference workshop is full. How is the counts looking and what else do we have available for folks?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the I think there's maybe 10 seats left in all the total and all the workshops 10 or 12 seats in all the workshops. So if you're looking to jump into one of those, take advantage of a full week of training, whether it's the. There's only three seats in the Mayday workshop, so that I'm sure that that might be filled up by the time this airs. But either way, yeah, the workshops are filling up, so that'll be good. And then, yeah, our conference numbers still look good. Looking forward to it. People from I think we picked up the furthest traveled yesterday from right outside of Seattle area coming to Cincinnati, so that's almost like going halfway around the world, all the way across the country.
Speaker 2:We'll do that conference trick. Who's the farthest away? Show us your driver's license and give me a prize.
Speaker 3:We're looking forward to it. Looking forward to catching up with everybody, looking forward to talking about where we've been and where we're going and what we have coming out new and the general session stuff and then the breakouts at the conference. We've got some great sessions going to take place there, so get an update from Dan. That's going to be nice. Being here at FRI and hearing a little bit of the buzz about Narus and the rollout of that coming in January. I mean, I guess it sounds like they're going to flip the switch and turn it all on in January, right, yeah?
Speaker 1:Well, they're going through waves right now of logging people in and I think they said yesterday they're in the triple digits of places that are already reporting into the system.
Speaker 3:So it's going pretty quick, yeah. So that's not Dan's big piece, but he's going to give us a little update on what's going on with that, where it's at, what that rollout looks like. So, yeah, a lot of takeaways from the conference. It's not the same old, same old thing. Like a lot of the places that you go, we try to put out new what's the latest thing going on and try to give people tools to take back to their organization.
Speaker 2:And there really isn't another conference for incident commanders and fire service leaders like this one. This is really about the work where the rubber meets the road. Great for anybody aspiring to be an officer, chief officers, folks who are leaders within their organization, both on the scene and off. So we have a lot of topics for that. The strategic decision-making workshop I think the material that Chris and Eric put together for that is really good. What can we expect from that workshop, Chris, and tell us about what those two days are all about?
Speaker 1:I think the simplest way to put it is we're going to focus on not what to think, but how to think and how to use the strategic decision-making process as your critical thinking platform for the fire ground.
Speaker 1:And that critical thinking should be done by everybody on the fire ground, from the firefighters to the officers of all levels.
Speaker 1:Right, and when we're actually approaching it from the same perspective, utilizing the same process, we tend to be way better aligned and looking at the actual things that we really need to get done in the most reasonable way, fastest, most efficient, is typically the safest right, and so when we utilize and practice a system and process regularly, it makes us a lot better. So really, what we're going to do is kind of define all that talk about it and then give examples, and then we're going to exercise it right, and it's very simple low technology, as Bruno would say, the low fidelity exercise of utilizing the system and practicing. And it can be done individually at the company level, at the battalion level, at the department level, and it requires literally absolute minimal technology to do. The technology required is what every fire department already possesses, so it's not like we've got anything crazy going on here. So it's, how are we going to exercise and use the system better and more and more efficiently to make better decisions on the fire ground?
Speaker 3:So I think with the critical thing, classes, it's, it's, it's exercising the biggest and probably most important tool we have and that's our brain. Right, that's the we have to think, and I think, as Grant Light says, you can't beat your way through every problem, but sometimes you can bully the fire into submission. But we call that accidental success, not really thinking about it and doing things the smartest way. So I want to put out there that every workshop that we have at the conference is also available to be delivered on the road in person at organizations or in a region. So we've got several May Day workshops coming up that are full Washtenaw County, michigan, lenexa, kansas.
Speaker 3:We're going to Kernersville right outside of Winston-Salem, north Carolina. Got a big box class, john, in your area in Minnesota. Still I think two or three safety training trainers coming up, los Alamos, right outside of Charlotte, north Carolina. So I just wanted to put that out there, as all of our workshops are available for delivery regionally and it doesn't have to be one fire department that fills them. If you have people to fill part of the class, we organize and help fill those with people from all over your region.
Speaker 2:So if someone wants to host a workshop, say a big box workshop, because I know we can only do like five of those a year based on Shane's availability how do they do that? How do they go about trying to schedule a workshop for their area?
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you're wanting to schedule something for like maybe the fourth quarter of 2025, we have a little bit of availability there.
Speaker 3:But 2026, I actually just looked this morning we have like 17 workshops forecasted right now for 2026. We don't have many dates assigned, but organizations that have reached out saying you know, we want the Mayday workshop, we want the critical thinking workshop, we want the big box workshop. So if you're wanting to do something with that, you can reach out to me, my email, joshatbshiftercom. As, as everybody that's connected to our system knows, if you call me and I'm not sitting on a podcast, talking to somebody else or sitting in front of a class, I'll answer, I'll be on the phone with you and we'll we'll figure it out and you know our mission with that is to be able to deliver deliver the message so that you can do better and understand the program better in your region. Right, it's about that. It's about what does it look like in the end? And, anyway, any way that we can uh, help an organization or a region to deliver the service, um, that's, that's what we're about.
Speaker 2:So all right, joshabshiftercom, you can reach out to us and get those booked for 2026 or the end of 2025. So we've been on this series of why it matters and you know we talked about strategy a couple weeks ago, we talked about risk management and today we wanted to talk about incident action planning. And why does it matter, especially there being a single incident action plan? Because the fire service that I started in there were several incident action plans because people would just show up and do whatever the captain told us to do and it really wasn't coordinated by an ic. A lot of times we had an ic there but the ic didn't really coordinate that.
Speaker 2:I've ridden along with other metropolitan fire departments where they operate that same way, where the company officers have that under their responsibility for the incident action plan, and when I see that happen, I see a duplication of effort a lot of times where two or three companies are doing the same thing, where then something else isn't getting covered, you know, like either a search or checking for extension or whatever else. So that's just my example of it. But let's talk about the incident action plan and why it matters today.
Speaker 3:So I think to start with the incident action plan, you have to.
Speaker 3:If you're listening to this, you should go back and listen to the other podcast that we've done the last two or three that came out before this one to kind of get to this point though it there'll be a lot of takeaways here without. It'll just help you connect the dots, I think, if you listen to the other ones. But you know, the incident action plan we I want to put out there right in the beginning. You know so many people are like blue cards, a communications program. Well, we communicate the incident action plan over the radio, but we can't get to the incident action plan unless we've gone through the process and made decisions on the front end of the incident, which is really the Topics that we talked about in the previous two podcasts about. You know size up, evaluation, critical fire, ground factors, deployment how many people do I really have to go through and fill out these roles Like what? What can I do with what I have? So in our focus with that always is, you know, fire control and life safety. You know that we want to fill that out first and if we can't do that then we shouldn't be doing any other, uh, any other support work. The primary focus should be, you know, fire control and and life safety. Um, so, as we think about incident action plan, we want everybody to be on the same page and I I throw this out a lot with the whole, you know, sports thing If the, if the play is called for, you know we're going to on the football field and we're gonna pass and the wide receiver and the quarterback are not on the same page. You know, we see it several times a year and it's like that wasn't an intentional throw, like we're not throwing it out of bounds there, we're not. We're not throwing it on the field to somewhere where somebody's not the quarterback thought that's, they were on the same page and that's where the wide receiver was going and they're not. So when we talk about that, the fire ground's the same thing. Chris and I may think close to the same, but when we pull up and we have two different mind frames of what we're going to do and I have my incident action plan and he has his, and then John, you get there and you're going to be the strategic guy.
Speaker 3:See, have three different plans. And you know when we have a, when we have a single objective in mind. Really, really, that ties two things together. Of you know, fire control and life safety. Everybody has to be on the same page and we have to be working towards that same end goal. It can't be, it can't be the race.
Speaker 3:You know, last week when we were in Orlando at the I-Chiefs conference, we talked to several people from several organizations that currently have that SOP-driven response and you know they would say you know, our second engine gets there and pulls a backup line. And he said the problem is is the second engine is always trying to beat the first engine and then the lines get wrapped up and then we don't get water on the fire. And we don't have to look very far to find out that when we don't get water on the fire, things are not getting better and it's going to get worse, and we shouldn't be surprised when it gets worse. So that's two clearly different incident action plans. And then the other part of that is, if it's not communicated and documented, I can't verify that it's going to happen. So I've seen this, you know, all across the country and I talk to people every week about it.
Speaker 3:Of you know, the first truck is supposed to get there and they're supposed to do this, and we found out that that's not what they did, and and and. Several cases it was like, uh, yeah, the first truck supposed to go in and and search the first floor at a, at a two story house. You know, when they have some kind of SOP driven, you know thing, and and and none of that is communicated. And it's like, well, they never made it to that point because something they chose to do something else or there was something better that they wanted to do, or whatever it is. And when we're looking at solving the problem and the end goal, it's like, well, there's a whole piece missing there.
Speaker 3:And then people act surprised when they're like what do you mean? We didn't get an all-clear of the building. I mean, we've heard a couple of very recent stories about the. Well, we thought we had an all-clear of that, we thought we thought that was searched, but nobody assigned it, nobody verified it. And then it comes back oh there, they found somebody in there, you know, three days later, and it's like what? Well, how did that happen? Were they like totally buried under something? Were they digging it out? Or like what it's like? Oh, no, they. I guess nobody ever made it into the area or whatever, and it's like no, I guess nobody ever made it into the area or whatever and it's like no. That's why we have a system and that's why it's so important with the incident action plan, and I hit, you know, several pieces of that. But we'll break it. We'll break kind of all of that down further now, I think yeah.
Speaker 1:So what work especially any work in public safety or in dangerous environments or high risk or has consequences? Do consequences? Does anyone approach the work without a plan? Right, it'd be insane not to, or you would just learn to deal with repeated failure, right? So plan is in the word, incident action plan, and so we have to know and understand how do we develop that? And then, what is the importance and the value of actually having one plan that is managed by whoever the incident commander is, whether it's a fast attacking mobile IC or a stationary IC, number two strategic level incident commander? There has to be a plan and that plan, for us, has to have a standard set of objectives that, when we show up on the fire ground this is the work we are here to complete Ours is the tactical objectives fire control or hazard mitigation.
Speaker 1:Is the tactical objectives fire control or hazard mitigation, life safety and getting it all clear and loss control and property conservation, right? So if we look at what is the academic description or definition of an incident action plan, is what needs to occur on the fire ground to achieve the tactical objectives? Well, you have to be able to process and measure the problem before you actually put a plan together. Any professional risk manager would tell you the less effective or the lack of understanding of the problem is, you have a high likelihood of coming up with a dumb solution or a poor solution. And so our incident action plan is part of a process. It's part of size up and evaluation for critical factors. There's a risk management part that it looks at and then the strategy from what position should we be working? All right, well, based on those three things, here is my plan. Here's my plan to put the fire out, to get the searchable places searched and to save the stuff or the things that we can. And it gets confused a lot with assumed expectations. Well, I had a plan, and so everybody needs to kind of assume what that plan is based on their evaluation of the conditions. Well, that doesn't work. That's SOP-driven stuff.
Speaker 1:When an incident commander gets there and shows up, develops their plan and says, okay, based on this plan, I'm on engine one, I'm going to do this. Engine two I need you to do this. Ladder one I need you to do this. Engine three I need you to do this. And then we're putting into place people in positions doing the functions that need to happen on the fire ground. That now provides some accountability for the work, and I don't mean the accountability in the position and function meaning of that. I mean now I know where a search is getting done, I know where fire control is getting done, I know where it's not, I know where I need to send other companies and I'm now ready to receive some feedback about. You know, are they able to do the job or can't they? Right? We're going to do that in a standard communication process.
Speaker 1:So there's a, there's a. It is part of a bigger system. To know and understand it actually is very simple once you start learning and understanding it and the confusion becomes with we start to use assumed expectations or multiple perspectives simultaneously and since human beings are involved, they will never ever come out perfectly aligned. So it's important to have it as part of your process and know and understand what it is and that the IC, at any given point of the incident, should be able to communicate very simply to anybody. Well, here was our plan from the beginning. Here's what we've accomplished, here's what we need to accomplish.
Speaker 2:So IC number one gets there. They look at the critical fire ground factors. They're going to size up the building, they're going to describe the problem and then they transmit it into an action plan. And when we talk about thinking company officers, they're going to key the mic and verbalize what needs to get done on the scene from their perspective. How often should that be revised then, during the course of the time that they have command, before command is transferred?
Speaker 3:during the course of the time that they have command before command is transferred. Yeah, so anytime that there's a change in the problem, a perfect example is the company officer gets there, does the size up plus three goes down. What strategy they're going to be in starts down the path of we're stretching a line to the front door, primary search fire control. They're doing a 360. They get there and they're like we got a victim hanging out the window on the second floor. Well, they're maybe still going to do the same thing they were doing, but that's going to change the assignment. But if they get to the Charlie side and we got a basement fire, well, that's going to change the action. Right, no-transcript there.
Speaker 3:And they were called us for chest pains. It's like getting called to a structure fire. Well, you get called to a structure fire and people want to take this. We take the same action. We do the same thing every single. Well, we got hold to a fire. This is what we do. Well, when you get called to chest pains, you don't just do what you do, right, you get there and it's like, oh, you're having chest pains and you know, goes through questions and we're going to go through some other diagnostic things and we're going to put them on a monitor and we're going to get shocked today Like that's what we're going to do. And it's like, well, if it says that's what we need to do, based off of going through that algorithm and making decisions because that's what we're doing on the MS run is making decisions based off of information that we're getting from tools, diagnostic tools, what they're telling us, you know whatever, then that's what we're going to do. Well, on the fire ground, it's the same thing, right? Like you got called to whatever and you sized it up from what I could see at this point, and anytime that you see something that changes the incident action plan, we're going to communicate that. No different than you stretch a line. You said I'm going to stretch a line to the front door. I stretch a line through the front door, and we've had plenty of podcasts with this, three or four, I think. Now they stretch through the front door, they see the seed of the fire, but they also find a victim. Well, they communicate that it changes the incident action plan, right? I mean, maybe they're still going to put water on the fire, or maybe they say, hey, we put some water on the fire, but we're going to remove this victim. We need another company to replace us. Or they already assigned the second company and they're going to, because at that point the question was if IC1 still has it, well, they're making all the decisions. So what do they need to do and what do they need other companies to do to solve the problem, to meet those objectives, as Chris said?
Speaker 3:So it's not a, it's not working, so let's do it harder, thing, right? I mean, and we have this tendency to do that right, it's like we're not getting it. Let's do it harder, thing, right? I mean and and we're we, we have this tendency to do that. That right, it's like we're not getting it, let's just push harder. And it's like, well, what you're doing isn't working, and sometimes pushing harder, maybe it's like we're going to get a second line here, but okay, I'm not going to put a third line there, potentially, because it's like, no, you're just pushing harder. What you're doing is you're not going to win doing what you're doing, right, it's not working.
Speaker 2:I want to back up to size up plus three, because with Blue Card we talk about thinking company officers and I don't know if I can stress this enough Blue Card is not a script. You know, we hear that, we heard that at FRI in Orlando. Oh, it's a script. No, it's not a script. It's a decision making process and really a format that is standard, that allows people to go through the flow of everything and disseminate that information out to the folks that are coming in. So what is size up plus three and why do we want the company officers to practice that tactically as they're making their initial incident action plan?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the size of plus three is. You know they get there and it's the first part of the strategic decision making model. They evaluate the critical factors, what is the problem, and they go through that process. And if you want a full breakdown of that, you know we have a podcast two back from this one, I think it is. That is just that you know size up and size up plus threes talked about in that. But I evaluate what the problem is and then what am I going to do and what am I going to do with the next two or three companies to support the incident action plan that I have communicated to everybody, right? So it's going through that company officer's head of not just what am I going to do, but what do I need everybody else to do to solve the problem? Cause they're they're in the best position to make that decision.
Speaker 3:You know, when you're coming down the street three blocks away, uh, and you're thinking that, well, when I get there, this is just what I do. It's like you don't have, you don't have all the information and you you're not seeing what's going on and the incident action plan is forever changing, right? Like you know, residential building fires in the line and the next engine's two minutes behind them and they got water on the two rooms that are burning in this 2,000 square foot house. Well, your incident action plan is changing right now. Right, I got water there and that's setting the stage. And it would come out during the command transfer that, yeah, we have the fire knocked down and you know, in our system, like system, like what does that mean? Yeah, I haven't checked for extension yet, but that puts that strategic, I see, in a different position too as far as getting all clear, so I don't have to focus as much on that. Yeah, I don't have fire control, they haven't checked for extension yet, but they got the fire knocked down. So I feel a whole lot better about where we're going to work and what we're going to do and we're making it better for the building, for the firemen, for any victims inside.
Speaker 3:And my whole thought process of I still got to work on fire control is it gets lowered a little bit, right, because this company has water on the fire and they're starting to get that. And if they're not making progress, then in our system that's where they're going to use the priority traffic piece of. You know we're not making progress. And if the strategic IC is not there and engine one, the incident commander, at that point needs other support, then they're going to change the incident action plan by communicating to one of those other companies what they need in that position, right? So when we're talking about all this, it seems like in the American Fire Service we get our minds all wrapped around residential building fires, and I mean single family residential building fires. Right, and that's why it's so important.
Speaker 3:I think that the strategic decision-making model and creating think environment is important in the process, because if you treat an apartment building like a house fire, it's not going to work either. And if I treat a fully protected you know, fireproof building like a house fire, it's not going to work. And if I treat Home Depot like a house fire, it's not going to work. And, as Chris Stewart, every fire is different. Right, I get there and it's boarded up and there may be somebody in there. Yeah, we're still going to search and we're still going to do all of that. But if I get there and Ms Smith stands in the front yard and says my kid's in that window, that changes it. Right. So we make decisions and deploy to solve the problem, not just. I don't want robots, I don't want somebody just getting there and just doing whatever, whatever some piece of paper says, or maybe even worse, whatever they want to do, we want to deploy to solve the problem.
Speaker 1:So I think a couple of things to support what Josh is saying is IAP plus three is not the same everywhere, right? What are the variables in that? The variables are the critical factors, the incident conditions and what's critical going on right there in that moment on the fire ground. The other parts of it is what are your resources? Right? So you may be getting three engines and a ladder company, say for your initial response, right? How are they staffed, how are they equipped, how are they trained and at what time are they going to arrive? All of those things play into your plan.
Speaker 1:I can have very clear objectives. I need to get fire control and I really want to get an all clear here and so. But I have to build my plan around the resources that I have coming and their abilities and capacities to actually do that work. And a lot of that is dependent on how many folks are going to show up on those rigs. So if I'm in an agency that is suburban or rural and maybe I have two, maybe I have three coming on those rigs, then my plan I have the same objectives, but my plan of how I'm going to go about it's going to be a little bit different than if I'm showing it up in a metro fire department and the first three engines are showing up with five people, right, that's a very different capacity to actually do the work. So that has to be figured out inside your organization to be able to know and understand what IEP plus three is. So it's yeah, we can have the same objective, but there are things and variables that go into that that may change and or drive our plan.
Speaker 1:The other thing is the incident plan, action plan is never stagnant. It is constantly and persistently should be revised. At the very least it's evaluated, and that is through size up, that's through re-evaluation of action, that's through meeting objectives on the fire ground. Those things cause the fire ground to evolve. Very few fire grounds stay the same.
Speaker 1:They're either getting better or they're getting worse, right, and so that re-evaluation process helps me decide. Does the plan need to change based on those conditions or based on some other variable, or does the plan stay the same? No, we're in the right place, we're doing the right things, things are getting better, we are going to continue to march, push on with this plan, and so it is the idea to say that we show up and this is the plan in the beginning, and this is what we're going to do, no matter what that's not, you build an increased potential for failure if that's the way we do it. So the system then allows for that re-evaluation part of it in adjusting and changing the plan based on the conditions, risk management and strategy choices.
Speaker 3:Chris, as you described and we talk about this all over the place what's your real resource capability? What's on the apparatus? What is the apparatus capability? Is it a tower, a ladder, an engine? What's its water capacity?
Speaker 3:Foam, you know any and all of that, but even in a single organization that looks different. I mean, john, at Clay, right? I mean, if you're, there was areas where probably four or five companies and you know five minutes, and there's areas where it's like no engine, 23 or whoever whatever. That is that outlying area. They're going to be by themselves for a minute, right? We just got some audio from a very large county fire department right here in Florida that I think they cover 600 square miles and the first engine gets there and they did a nice job, pulled off a rescue, put the fire out First company officer was tasked but had a system and was trained on the system and that deployment model looked quite different than if they were in. You know more of their metro area, right, this fire happened in. You know, maybe a little bit more of a I don't want to say rule, but an area where it's being developed right.
Speaker 3:And the staffing was just different. And I'll take that a step further. The incident action plan has to change. When your fire department is the first emergency first-type organization which is all over the country, right, everybody isn't riding five or four, it's looking more like two or three. I mean last week at the conference we heard a whole lot of that. Right, you know everybody isn't riding five or four, it's looking more like two or three. I mean, last week at the conference we heard a whole lot of that, right, another very large Georgia metro county fire department. It blew me away when the guy told me, yeah, we ride three. And he said, typically we end up having to put two engines together to make one attack team, to make a stretch. And it was like, wow, you're like that's Atlanta Metro, very highly populated area. And he was like, no, that's just what we have, right. So with that said, with incident action planning and that deployment piece, you take one engine out. That changes your incident action plan. Who's normally second isn't second, it's two, they're two minutes. The next engine now is two minutes delayed. So what does that look like?
Speaker 3:And then all everywhere that that is doing that first emergency first. Or I got five people in the station, but two of them are on the medic unit. Where I have four people on the station, two of them are in the medic unit, and if all four of them are there, they all get on the fire truck. But, uh, all, all four or five of your stations are staffed like that, but all four or five of your stations are staffed like that and you have four ambulances on the road, which that happens all the time. You can't talk about your staffing being 16, and you're going to pull up in seven minutes with 16 people. You need to talk about your staffing being seven. And what does that look like? And now I'm going to have to pair up companies to create a whole company, right, and we, you know, we know that's it's not ideal, that's not what any of us want. We all want fully staff.
Speaker 3:We know that capability is bigger, but that that I think that number is 90 plus percent, I would say 95% or more of the American fire service has less than four people, and three is a pretty close, I think, number.
Speaker 3:And we see it more and more and more that there's two, and it's like even metro cities, right, that they don't advertise that they have two people on it.
Speaker 3:But I think a fire department, just in the top 10 largest fire departments in the country, has some areas that are in some rural areas that have an engine in there that have two people there, right, and it's like several engines that have two people on it and they, that fire department has well over a thousand people on their fire department and it's like, well, they do that because not as much happens out there or whatever.
Speaker 3:But that thought, that thought process, is a little broke. But the company officer at that station has to think totally different than the person who's downtown and is like, uh, engine one, two, three and ladder seven are going to pull up at the same time and battalion one's pulling up, well, at the same time if everybody's in quarters, right, but one run changes that. And that's why it's so important to go back to the, to the process and the, the thinking thing, and why we uh, why we size up the factors and then base our deployment based off of what resources do we really have to solve the problem? There's very seldom, is it look exactly the same. I mean, it seems like our service is getting busier and busier with incidents because we keep on taking on more, so the availability of apparatus is less and less.
Speaker 1:So one thing that I think is important for ICs, at whatever level, is to recognize that having a knowing and understanding your incident action plan is one thing. Deploying companies is a totally separate thing. That's a deployment plan. That's taking the plan, and you have to have a plan in order to effectively deploy your companies. If you don't have a decent plan of how you're going to achieve all clear fire control and stop, then you have a high likelihood of your deployment not being effective. You have a high likelihood of your deployment not being effective. So, although you know we don't pause and narrate our incident action plan on the radio, right, that incident commander needs to have a very clear picture of what that is. And they, as they start to assign companies through task, location and objective, they're now communicating those pieces of hey, here's where I want you to go, here's what I want you to do, and these are the objectives I'm looking for you from that assignment. And that's the cue of, that's the information you're going to have to feed back to me when you finish it, or you can't finish it or you need help, right, and so the plan is integral to that.
Speaker 1:So many places just assume well, our incident action plan is our deployment and that's ineffective. But they believe that that's okay because of accidental success. Well, we've done it before and it didn't prove to be a problem. So I want to make sure that we clearly delineate that fact. That was actually a big deal that I learned, you know, growing up in the system with Bruno and the shift commanders that we had is no, no, you need to know and understand the differentiation of those two incident action plan and the offensive strategy. And what are the standard elements of an incident action plan and the defensive strategy, right. So I'm going to do this stuff up on the front end of sizing up and figuring out my critical factors, determining where am I at my risk, and those things are going to define all right, should we be in the hazard zone or should we be working from outside the hazard zone? That's strategy, right. And then so, if we're working in the hazard zone, these are the typical standard critical elements of a plan to execute in the offensive strategy room inside the hazard zone. And then, conversely, when those things line up and say, no, I need to be defensive here, well, here are the standard elements of the defensive incident action plan and they are not the same as an offensive incident action plan, and that's where we get into this idea of crews working in offensive positions during defensive fire conditions.
Speaker 1:The IC didn't clearly recognize the critical factors and select their strategy effectively maybe, or they did, but the action and the incident action plan aren't aligning with that strategy and that's creating big problems for us. We had a battalion chief from a larger county fire department describing to us a strategic level mayday of no, we declared this fire defensive, but they were working up next to the building and the building fell on them and they spent six or eight minutes digging them out. That's a problem. That was a strategic level mayday because the plan didn't match the conditions and strategy right. So again, this is all system in process, and incident action plan by itself is not nearly as effective unless you describe how you come up with that plan and then how you reevaluate and either change or support that plan moving forward. So it's a critical element that we can't dilute. We need to know and understand what it is and then how we actually use it.
Speaker 2:When it comes to that task, location and objective, one of the things people just miss a lot is the objective.
Speaker 3:Why is it so important for us to verbalize and put it out there what the objective of that task and the location is as we're assigning it or just stating it on an initial radio report that that's what we're going to do. So who won it? You know it tells everybody else where everybody's working right. And then if I'm going to give somebody an assignment, I want them to go to a specific place and do a specific thing. Then I want them to acknowledge that and that's why we use the order model. Right, and you know the order model helps with that because they verify that they understand that assignment. And then as long as I give the assignment, I feel much better as an incident commander knowing that, okay, they're going to the second floor for primary search and fire control and then if they confirm that they understand that, then that's what they're going to do. You know no different than engine seven. I want you to lay a water supply to tower seven and if you're okay with the we got it Don't be surprised when tower seven is like we're still waiting on water. Command engine seven Are you getting? Uh, yeah, we got a water supply to ourself, or you know whatever. It is Right and they missed the assignment.
Speaker 3:And then the objective piece. It is Right and they missed the assignment and then the objective piece. You know, part of the objective piece is the reminder to the company of this is what I want you to do. And then, when you've completed that, I need to know that, like it's typically something that I want to know. So, you know, in our system that would come out as like status change, right, like if they're getting fire, if they're getting fire control, or they got water on the fire or they got an all clear of an area, because I'm tracking that, because that's going to impact my incident action plan, right. Like all of the parts and pieces tie together and one is connected to the other and one, any one piece by itself probably has some value, but you can't put all the puzzle together when you're missing one piece, and that's that's the beauty of having a system that everybody's using and is on the same page with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the objective part is the simplest way we have to pointing out to those companies. This is what you're responsible for, and it's simple. There's only three things, all clear, under control, lost stock. And it's simple. There's only three things, all clear, under control, lost stop. Sometimes under control, lost stop or, excuse me, under control. And all clear are coupled together hey, go to this place, get me an all clear check for extension, all right. Well, the officer needs to then figure out OK, what's the most effective way to actually do that and what tools do I need to actually accomplish that? So it's giving them that last piece of hey, this is what you're responsible for, simplifying it. And then I want that back and it's going to come back as a status change if they've completed it, or priority traffic right Exactly.
Speaker 1:And if they can't, or they find something they didn't expect or something that could drive a change, or they need assistance, then priority traffic Absolutely, so that objective becomes a critical piece of information for them. The other thing is, once I give them that task, location objective, me as an IC I've got to be disciplined enough to shut up unless I really have some legitimate, serious concern about what they're doing. And I don't want to hear from them until they've completed or they can't complete it. And I am not going to bug them and badger them and have them narrate to me what they're actually doing. Because you can micromanage that at very small fires and be successful and feel like you're you know you're a really good incident commander doing that.
Speaker 1:But once you get half a dozen or eight or 10 companies doing the same thing right, you can't micromanage all those. So and but you'll try and you'll be, you're horribly ineffective at it, so you don't do it to begin with. Give them that clear objective, let them do the work, let them come back to you, and that's when it calms the radio traffic down. So a clear plan and well-communicated plan actually has a direct connection to improving, decreasing and maximizing communication on the fire ground. And the question earlier is why do we use radio communication to do all this? Is because we haven't mastered mind control yet and we can't telepathically let the IC know. So it has to be done over the radio. But it's got to be way more disciplined.
Speaker 2:So we do a command transfer. We've covered IC1, size up plus three. We could talk about that all day, but before we wrap up we need to talk about the command transfer and then how. That incident commander and you explained this with a group recently and I heard you say it, so hopefully we can. You could say it the way you said it because it just made so much sense to me. But you're either going to take the incident action plan that IC1 set up and say, yep, that's what we're going to continue, or IC2 changes course. So they have to be a part of that because now they're coordinating what they see from the exterior with the CAN report from the inside. So let's address the transfer of command and the acceptance or change of that incident action plan.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So to review, you know, our standard process of the transfer of command is command communicating to IC1, making sure, yeah, ic1 making sure they're ready for the command transfer. The first thing I will go through is a unit rundown. I want to verify that I have the positional function everybody on the fire ground. Quickly, very briefly, very, very efficiently, very briefly, very, very efficiently. Once IC1 validates it or changes it or, you know, corrects me, then I'm going to say, okay, give me a CAN report and then that's the opportunity I have position and function down, accountability done. Now it's the opportunity for IC1 to give me an update on the conditions and I guess the most important thing I want out of that is the needs part of it. I want the conditions and actions, clearly, but then I need needs. All right, that's the forward looking part is what are we going to do? And then the then IC number two takes command and they they finish that off by verifying strategy and resource determination. So at that moment the IC has a choice. The IC there are really only two selections here is based on the conditions, the information, the accountability or lack of.
Speaker 1:Am I going to continue with this incident action plan that I see number one set up or, through my evaluation, have the critical factors changed and or gotten worse, where we have to make a change in the incident action plan. That change can be very subtle. It can be, oh okay, I need to reinforce some positions or I need to assign a couple more companies to key tactical positions. Or it can be, oh no, no, if this thing's gotten way worse, we're making a wholesale change and doing a 180, and we're going to go from the offensive to defensive strategy. Those are kind of the two ends of the spectrum in the changes. But if things are going along smoothly, we're headed in the right direction. Companies are where they need to be, we're seeing progress, we're getting good reports.
Speaker 1:I'm going to support that plan, that initial plan. I'm going to build on top of it and then to a successful completion of the tactical objectives. And if not, then I'm going to make some adjustment. And I have this big, I have a bunch of leeway here in what I can do in these adjustments, and so that is utilizing the system, clearly understanding, maybe, the initial plan and what the plan should be now, because it's changed from whenever the initial plan. The conditions have changed from whenever the initial plan was implemented, so I need to adjust it. I'm going to be fluid and I'm going to measure these variables and figure out is it right or is it isn't.
Speaker 3:And if it isn't, I'm going to be fluid and I'm going to measure these variables and figure out is it right or is it isn't, and if it isn't, I'm going to fix it. Yeah, so the very first thing I guess when that strategic guy sees pulling up is and it's an obvious thing in our system, but I just want to mention it is if they're in the wrong strategy when you're pulling up, then you need to change that, like right now, Number one job.
Speaker 3:That's a strategy, has, you know, the biggest impact. So, and it's possible, you know you're pulling up seven minutes later what it looks like now, what they described when they pulled up, and they are in there working for seven minutes and it don't look like they've made progress. We're going to change, like we would change Right, and then that's not very often at all, but we would do that Right, we're not we, we, we wouldn't even go through any other process, probably it would just be no, this is not looking good. We're going to change strategies. And then the beauty of the system and we have tons of examples of this during the command transfer, where that IC1 is giving IC2 the can report the needs part, very specific on yeah, my next assignment is I was going to have truck seven who may be on deck already, or level one, they were going to do this, and it's like, oh, that, just that is. That's like the hug and the kiss of the system, right there, right, it's just like OK, it's dialed in, like everybody's on the same page. The incident commander is like oh, I like it. Yeah, we're, we're going. That's when you're going down that same path, right. Yeah, we're going. That's when you're going down that same path.
Speaker 3:Right, ic1 had this. They know what needed to be done, they know who's there, what's the next assignment, what needs to happen. We kind of had that in a way with a recent audio thing from Cobb County where you know what was Truck 17's assignment. I was going to have them do search or I hadn't assigned them, but I was going to have them do search and the next assignment is, you know, truck 17. I want you to make sure you're getting all clear of that. First, you know whatever, so that's everybody being on the same page, right, and then you're verifying position and function and all of that. And to circle back to, if you want to hear what some of this sounds like, listen to some of these, listen to all of these live audio things that we put out from these working incidents. Uh, you want to know why we give, um, we, why we put an incident action plan out and why we communicate the way we do.
Speaker 3:Well, uh, the cop, the Cobb County audio from you know, late July, early August, um, a company keys up, you know we, we can get an all clear of this area and other companies like engine 17. We already got, we can get an all clear of this area. And another company's like engine 17,. We already got, we already got an all clear of that, it's all clear. Or truck 17, or whoever it was, it don't matter who.
Speaker 3:The company was Right, it's like no, everybody's on the same page, and that that's what kind of goes back to that duplication of effort thing. Right, well, I want to go do this, that's what I do. Well, it's already been done. So why do you really want to do that anyway? But they probably didn't know that it had been done. But in the system that company had, it was important that they say that. Because, like, why are we going to put them in there? Because everybody on that incident knew they were going down the path that we're changing strategies here. We already got significant fire and we got a collapse. We're just waiting to get an all clear of these other spaces and we're going. This thing's transitioning to defensive and again going back to it. That's the beauty of the system and everybody being on the same page and while we communicate the incident action plan so that everybody on the fire ground is on the same page, there's no secrets.
Speaker 2:Well, before we wrap up this part of the conversation and get to the timeless tactical truths, if you're watching us on video, you know that the buzz is pretty exciting here.
Speaker 1:Is that what I just felt?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was the buzz. Okay, they're getting ready to open the doors here pretty soon, so we're going to get to a timeless tactical truth. But do you have any last thoughts on incident action plan? I know this is just a surface view, but we wanted to talk about why it is so important.
Speaker 1:As your plan goes, so goes your safety and effectiveness on the fire ground. If you suck at coming up with plans because you don't take the time to actually size up and you have no ability to measure risk and you have no ability to define strategy, you have a chance that your plan will suck. And if that plan sucks bad enough, you will end up with bad things happening to your community or your firefighters on the fire ground and we'll chalk that up to a predictable surprise Right. Anybody looking from the outside who knows and understands the process will go oh no, I know I can tell you exactly what occurred there and why that was, why that was problematic.
Speaker 2:And we can. Everybody else can act like, oh, we had no idea that could have possibly happened. No, you actually can't pick it out. This is another volume two We've been hitting this lately. We're going to go back to volume one next week because that is now available at the B Shifter store for 10 bucks. I believe it has been out of print for such a long time. But now you can get the book at B Shifter dot com. I know we saw some of them on eBay going for big dollars. I've seen guys photocopying it and sharing it, so now you can actually get it for yourself. So last one from volume two for a period of time. This one says from AVB certain street knowledge does not begin with information. It begins with experience and perception. But there is a dark and twisty road from experience and perception to correct action. And when we talk about the company officer, the chief, coming in and developing this IAP blue card training is one of the very important elements of that, but there are some other important elements in being a good officer.
Speaker 1:good officer, yeah Well, when I hear that JV, I think of folks who take particular experience and action and they try to apply that everywhere right Now. It becomes universal truth for everything in their own mind. And it's no, it's not the only thing that's universal is the process. Your evaluation of the process or your utilization of the process really becomes your success. So that deep and dark place I think he's talking about becomes using that experience whether it's accidental success or legitimate success and applying it everywhere. And that doesn't work. You have to actually connect that too. And so to your point is utilizing the system, practicing the system as a part of your. The way you train keeps you out of that right, because then you start actually approaching every incident very independently. And I'm focused on the process, not experience or what I want to do here.
Speaker 3:we're going to do actually what we need to do here yeah, I think it's a a matter of fact thing is you, you can get away with what you get away with until you don't get away with it, and that's that accidental success thing, right? So, uh, for 30 years, this is what I did and it worked and I never got caught Right. And, um, that doesn't mean that it was right and I'll make it the simplest thing possible of I never wear my seatbelt. Well, you never wore your seatbelt until that day and you didn't have it on and you got caught right and whatever happened to you happened to you. Well, that's kind of that. Like your, your experience matters.
Speaker 3:But, uh, when you look at it, big picture, if you're just, if you're getting away with what you're doing because of that experience, that doesn't make it right. So it kind of comes back to a line of you better be doing everything right when something goes wrong and you know what, know what does that look like? And I think in the system, um, that means you're, you're, you're using the system and you're actually, you know, diagnosing the problem and you're taking action based off of what, what you have and what you can do, what you have the capability of doing. Um, and we hear, and we hear it all the time when you're a fireman we were just talking about this recently and I think Nick and Terry and Pat were just talking about it as well when you're a fireman, you have a totally different perspective than when I'm a lieutenant, and when I'm a lieutenant I have a different perspective than the captain and the battalion chief and the operations chief and the fire chief, right. So I have the opportunity and I'm thankful for it to talk to so many people all across the country on a very regular basis that are making transitions to our system or trying to figure our system out. Or you know, we're not doing that system because we don't like it, but I do want to talk to you about it because what does it do? And you know, sometimes they oftentimes they were in a battalion chief's role and they're like, yeah, we are not doing that.
Speaker 3:And I got like five cases in the last year where people were promoted from battalion chief to operations chief and they're like, yeah, we, how do? How fast can we start this? Because I had no idea that the companies outside of my battalion were doing what they were doing or not doing what they were doing, right, and it kind of comes back to that experience thing that their street credibility, that person's street credibility. When they were a fireman, company officer, battalion and a battalion or in a area they saw that they maybe didn't see what was going on everywhere else. And then they get to this other position and they're looking at it from 30,000 feet and they're like I own all of this and I'm responsible for it and we're going to do something different because we are all over the place.
Speaker 3:And I mean a very good friend of mine at a large Metro city, you know, made that transition four or five years ago and was totally against it SOP driven, his entire career worked in the same district, didn't have, you know, exposure to everybody, he knew everybody, whatever, but didn't have becomes the ops chief. And I was like no, we, how have we gotten away with what we've gotten away with?
Speaker 2:So well, and I think firefighters have this perception of of chiefs and maybe even their company officers that well. Why do we have to do it this way? Because when you're 25 and you're two years into the job, your perception and your experience level even though you might be a very smart person is way different, as well as your responsibility level. When you're the company officer, now you're responsible for the company. When you become a battalion chief, now you're responsible for everybody inside the hazard zone. When you're the ops chief, you're responsible for everybody on the fire department. So that's how those decisions are made, and you don't get it until you get it. I mean, once you land in that seat, then your eyes open up and you realize like well, now, now it's different, and that's that's when we see people make that change. Yeah Well, josh Bloom, chris Stewart, thanks so much for hanging out. We've had a great week again.
Speaker 2:This is a week removed from Fire Rescue International in Orlando, but that's where we're recording this right now. I want to ask you to do me a favor. If you haven't done so already, please like and subscribe our podcast. If you subscribe, you get it in your inbox every week and you don't miss one of them. So we want you to be able to continue to support the V-Shifter podcast that way Until next week. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks, guys, We'll talk to you later. Thanks, john, see you, we'll see you next time.