Last month I spent a fortnight in the UK meeting people and helping/participating in some great training.
I joined the K Lamb Associates team of Katherine Lamb and Costa Olymbios as they delivered Phase 1 of the Skills for Justice (SFJ) Level 5 Award in Designing and Delivering Incident Command Training Course hosted by Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service at the stunning Stone Community Fire Station.
Coming from the other side of the world, the ability to participate in a course with fire service delegates from Staffordshire, Greater Manchester, Essex as well as the Sweden’s MSB (Civil Contingencies) was a great opportunity to reflect on my own training as both a student and an instructor, and reinforced my ideas and understanding of designing, building presenting and evaluating exercises. Spending time with such a diverse student group allowed me to gain a really wide perspective of the challenges in training and exercising experienced in the UK and Sweden and reminded me why joint training is so important.
What do I think I offered the course? Australia and the UK have very similar approaches to exercise management, but there are subtleties which have evolved due to our different systems and structures. From my own experience, I spoke about aim and objective setting and how I personally stay within the aim and objectives while designing exercises. We also discussed techniques in designing exercises
What I really enjoyed was sharing exercise and incident experience with the delegates. I learnt a lot about a range of everyday and major incidents from across the UK and Sweden which I now appreciate I had only a cursory understanding of.
Great course, great instructors and students.
About the Course (from http://sfjawards.com/portfolio-item/incident-command-training/)
SFJ Awards Level 5 Award in Designing and Delivering Incident Command Training
Qualification Number: 603/2436/3
The objective of the SFJ Awards Level 5 Award in Designing and Delivering Incident Command Training is to provide learners with the knowledge, understanding and skills to design and deliver incident command training. The qualification is aimed at incident command trainers for emergency services including: fire and rescue, police, military, ambulance and others. It reflects the aim of the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Program (JESIP) to standardise multi-agency command of incidents. However, it is written in such a way to enable individuality and focus on the needs of each specific service.
To achieve this qualification, learners must achieve three mandatory units.
• Understand the wider context of incident command training
• Understand incident command training design
• Design and deliver incident command training
Total Qualification Time (TQT): 110 hours
Guided Learning Hours (GLH): 80
Pre-entry Requirements
Learners wishing to take the qualification must already hold a recognised training qualification, and have experience of delivering training. Learners must also have a minimum of three years’ command experience, or demonstrate competence in a command role if less. Learners must also demonstrate a thorough understanding of the current frameworks, policies and environment that commanders are expected to operate within.