Ch. 1: Introduction to the Fire Officer Flashcards
What creates a structure for managing the department as well as for directing fire-ground operations?
The chain of command
What is used to implement department rules, policies, and procedures?
The chain of command
Which organizational structure enables a FD to determine the most efficient and effective way to fulfill its mission and to communicate this information to all members of the department?
The chain of command
What four management principles are most fire departments structured on the basis of?
1) Unity of Command
2) Span of Control
3) Division of Labor
4) Discipline
What is the management concept that each fire fighter answers to only one supervisor, and each supervisor answers to only one boss?
Unity of Command
What refers to the maximum number of personnel or activities that can be effectively controlled by one individual?
Span of control. (usually 3 - 7) [Most experts believe should extend no more that 5]
What is a way of organizing an incident by breaking down the overall strategy into smaller tasks?
Division of Labor
What is used when the specific assignment of a task to an individual makes that person responsible for completing the task and prevents duplication of job assignments?
Division of Labor
What encompasses behavioral requirements, such as always following orders from superior officers and performing up to expectations?
discipline
What is the set of guidelines that a department establishes for firefighters?
discipline
What are the four functions of managements?
Planning, Leading, Organizing, Controlling [PLOC]
The four functions of managements were originally identified by:
Henry Fayol
What is developing a scheme, program, or method that is worked out beforehand to accomplish an objective?
Planning
What includes establishing goals and objectives and then developing a way to meet and evaluate those goals and objectives?
planning
What means putting resources together into an orderly, functional, structured whole?
organizing
What means guiding or directing in a course of action?
leading
What is a complex process of influencing others to accomplish a task?
the act of leadership
What is the human side of managing that includes motivating, training, guiding, and directing employees?
leading
What means restraining, regulating, governing, counteracting, or overpowering?
controlling
What are fire officers implementing when they consider the impact on the budget before making purchases, when they conduct employee performance appraisals, and when they ensure compliance with departmental policies?
the controlling function
The four functions of management [PLOC] constitute a continuous cycle;
the are never truly “finished.”
What are developed by various government or government-authorized organizations to implement a law that has been passed by a government body?
Rules and regulations
What are developed to provide definite guidelines for present and future actions?
policies
What are written organizational directives that establish or prescribe specific operational or administrative methods to be followed routinely for the performance of designated operations or actions?
SOPs
What are ethical choices based on?
the value system
What is the key to improving ethical choices?
To have clear organizational values.
What is unity of command?
The concept that firefighters answer to only one supervisor
_________ means “putting resources together into an orderly, functional, structured whole.”
Organizing
“Selecting employees who share the values of the organization” describes __________.
ethics
IAFC identifies the Fire Ofc. II as a Managing Fire Officer.
Administrative part as:
- Evaluate subordinates job performance
- Correcting unacceptable behavior
- Completing performance appraisal
- Project development
- Divisional Budget
- Purchasing
- Rewarding bids & solicitation
- News releases Prepping
- Reporting to supervisors
IAFC identifies the Fire Ofc. II as a Managing Fire Officer. Nonemergency part as:
- Conducting inspections
- Fire code violations
- Reviewing injury & exposure reports
- Identifying unsafe work environments & behavior
- Actions to prevent repeated accidents, injury or exposure
- Pre-incident planning
- Developing Policies & Procedures
- Analyzing reports and data for problems, trends, etc.
IAFC identifies the Fire Ofc. II as a Managing Fire Officer. Emergency part as:
- Incident Command System (ICS) use in multi-unit incident.
- Operational planning & deployment
- Determining area of Origin & Preliminary cause
- Post incident analysis
Written organizational directives that establish or prescribe specific operations or administrative methods to be followed routinely for the performance of the designated operations or actions
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
Directives developed by various government/-authorized organizations to implement a law that has been passed by a governmental body. They don’t leave any room for latitude or discretion.
Rules & Regulations
Term suggest that a specific step-by-step procedure that should be followed, but allows for deviation.
Standard Operating Guideline (SOG)
What is the Fire Officer III & IV generally associated with?
Generally refers to the senior chief officer positions.
How many forms of staffing used for Fire Departments
- Four forms of staffing fire department
- The main 2 used are career & volunteer.
What percent of the calls are fires?
5% of the calls involve actual fires.
2/3 are EMS calls.
What has served as an impetus for communities to establish building codes?
Fires have served as an impetus for communities to establish building codes.
What private industry played a major role in Building Code & Fire Code?
The insurance played a major role in the development of the first model codes, which were purpose to jurisdiction as a proposed minimum standard.
Who adopts NFPA code and standards into their administrative laws?
Many states and municipalities adopt NFPA code & standards into administrative laws.
Why can a Fire Dept legally enter a locked premise without permission?
Governments-whether municipal, county, state, provincial, or national- are charged with protection the welfare of the public against common threats.
The organizational structure of a Fire Department consist of?
The organizational structure consists of a chain of command.
Administrative level officer are called?
Often several levels if administrative fire officers, usually called Battalion Chiefs, or District Chiefs.
Unity of command refers to _____.
the principle in which each subordinate reports to only one boss.
What type of leadership is used at the Fire Department?
The Fire Department uses paramilitary style leadership.
What are the four management principles that most Fire Departments are structured on?
- Unity of Command
- Span of Control
- Division of Labor
- Discipline
What does Discipline encompass?
Discipline encompasses behavioral requirements, such as always following orders from superior officers and performing up to expectations.
How many form of discipline outline how things are done?
SOP’s, SOG’s Policies & Procedures are all forms of disciplines because they outline how things are to be done.
Discipline can be either _____________, when it defines appropriate action or, _______________, when it responds to inappropriate actions of behaviors.
Positive
Corrective
List 3 ways of Fire Department organization?
Function
Geography
Staffing
In all three types of departments the company officer functions as the?
Staffing coordinator & Gatekeeper
Implements the department rules, regulations and procedures to ensure proper fire company staffing.
Under the span of control, what is the maximum amount of people that a fire officer should supervise?
5
Officers make work assignments based on?
The company officers needs to make work assignments based on individual qualifications, experience, and capability.
The four functions of management identified by Henri Fayol, published in the Bulletin de la Societe de L’Industrie Minerale in 1916 are?
Planning
Organizing
Leading
Controlling
Define Planning:
Developing a scheme, program, or method that is worked out beforehand to accomplish an objective. Planning includes establishing goals & objectives and then developing a way to meet and evaluate those goals & objectives. It also includes emergency activities, such as developing strategies & tactics and an incident plan.
When a Fire Officer develops plan to achieve departmental, work unit, and individual objectives. The planning is done in Short-range, Medium-range or Long-range planning. What are the timeframe for each of these?
Short-range extends up to 1 year.
Medium-range covers planning from 1-3yrs in advance.
Long-range covers planning longer than 3yrs in advance.
List the emergency activities of Planning.
Planning includes emergency activities, such as developing strategies and tactics, and an incident action plan.
Define Organization:
Putting resources together into a orderly, functional, structured whole. The Officer takes the available people, equipment, structure, and time and develops them into a an orderly, functional and structural unit to implement the plan and deliver the expected service.
What is the human side of managing?
Leading is the human side of managing.
Define Leading:
Guiding or directing in a course of action. Leading is the human side of managing. It includes motivating, training, guiding, and directing employees. When most people think of management they envision this function.
What does the act of leading include?
Leading includes, motivating, training, guiding and directing employees.
What is the act of Leadership?
Leadership is a complex process of influencing others to accomplish a task.
Define Controlling:
Restraining, regulating, governing, counteracting, or overpowering. Fire Officers implement the Controlling functions when they consider the budget before a purchase, conduction employee appraisals, and compliance with departmental policies.
List 3 Controlling functions by a Fire Officer.
Budget impact actions
Performance Appraisals
Departmental Policies compliance
Who develops the Rules & Regulations?
Various government or government-authorized organizations implement the laws. The can also be established by local jurisdiction that set the conditions for employment or internally by the fire department.
Do Rules and Regulations give room for latitude or discretion?
No.
When using Policies are you expected to may any judgements?
Policies often require all members to make judgements and to determine the best course of action within the stated policy.
What do Standard Operating Procedures establish?
SOP’s are written organizational directives that establish or prescribe specific operational or administrative methods to be followed routinely for the performance or designated operations.
What is the difference between SOP’s & SOG’s?
Some departments prefer the term suggested (or standard) operating guidelines (SOG’s) instead of SOP’s because conditions often require the fire officer to use personal judgement in determining the most appropriate action. SOG’s allow for the deviations, if the conditions warrant. The distinction between SOP & SOG is very subjective.
A document that gives an officer decision making discretion is called a _____.
Policy
Which is NOT a method to increase ethical behavior?
Ignore ethics during employee selection.
The distinction between SOP and SOG is:
Subjective
What are ethical choices are based on?
Ethical choices are based on a value system.
If the organizations has no clear value what does the officer use?
The officer must consider each situation. often subconsciously, and make a decision based on his values.
What are the keys to improving ethical choices?
The key to improving ethical choices is to have clear organizational values.
List 6 ways to have clearer organizational values.
Having a code of ethics that is well know
Selecting employees she share the organization’s values
Ensuring top management exhibits ethical behavior
Having clear job goals
Having performance appraisals that reward ethical behavior
Implementing as ethics training program
What 3 questions can help you judge a decision?
What would my parents and friends say if they knew?
Would I mind if the paper ran it as a headline story?
How does it make me feel about myself?
Which of the following positions is most closely associated with Fire Officer II?
Captain
The Fire Officer duties can be divided into 3 parts, list them.
- Administrative
- Nonemergency
- Emergency
What are the administrative duties for a Fire Officer II?
Evaluating employees performance Correcting unacceptable performance Completing formal performance appraisals Project development Divisional budget Purchasing Soliciting & rewarding bids Preparing news releases Reports to supervisor
List the nonemergency duties of a Fire Officer II?
- Conducting inspections to identify hazards
- Address fire code violations
- Review accidents, injury & exposure reports
- Identify unsafe work environment or behaviors
- Taking approve actions to prevent reoccurrence of accidents, injury or exposures
- Developing pre-incident plans for large or complex properties
- Developing policies & procedures for his level of supervision
- Analyzing reports and data to identify trends or condition requiring corrective action
- Developing and implementing corrective actions
Which are the emergency duties of a Fire Officer II?
- Supervising a multiunit emergency operation
- Using the Incident Command System in emergency operations
- Developing operational plans to deploy resources
- Deploy resources to mitigate the incident
- Determine the preliminary cause of a fire
- Develop post-incident analysis of multi-company operations.
What is essential to when operating at emergencies scenes?
A rigid command and control process.
What are the most frequent activities undertaken by the fire service?
EMS calls are accounting for 66% of the fire company responses
What is the second most common reason for fire service responses?
Activated fire protection system alarms
What is the third most common response?
Investigating an odor, a hazardous condition, or other service call, a great time to deliver outstanding customer service.
Although the structure fires are on the decline, the rate at which fire fighters are being killed or seriously injured while working in them continues to climb. What are the main causes?
Flashover and structural collapse are the primary causes within a burning structure.
What era did the compositions of the fire service begin to change?
The initial integration of women and minorities was in the 1960’s.
The classic view of integration of women and minorities would include ____________.
Assimilation
Chief Johnson concludes his orientation about the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation pointing to the Everyone Goes Home poster, with two directives:
- Everyone has their seat belts on before the rig starts to respond.
- The rigs come to a complete stop at every stop sign and red light intersection.
What dose a Fire Officer I emphasize on?
Emphasis is placed on accomplishing the department;s goals and objectives by working through subordinates to achieve the desired results.
What part of management is responsible for the conduct of other?
The officer is responsible for the conduct, by applying policies, procedures, and rules to subordinates and to different situations.
What does the chain of command create?
Creates structure for managing the fire department as well as for directing fire-ground operations.
What type of leadership do fire department use?
Paramilitary style leadership, structure on the four management principles.
The fire departments are structured on the basis of four management principles, list them:
Unity of command
Span of control
Division of labor
Discipline
What are the examples given of ways to look at the organization of a fire department?
Function
Geography
Staffing
List the four functions of managing:
Planning Leading Organizing Controlling (PLOC)
What are ethical choices based on?
The value system
What are the administrative duties of a Fire Officer II include?
Evaluating subordinates job performance
Correcting unacceptable performance
Completing formal performance appraisals on members
When is a rigid command and control process essential and when is employee empowerment, decentralization making used?
- A rigid command and control process is essential in emergency scenes.
- Away from emergencies employee empowerment, decentralized decision making and delegation is used.
What percent of fire companies workload activities is spent firefighting?
Only 5% of the response workload is spent firefighting, making of of the least frequently performed activities.
What are the primary causes for fire fighters deaths in a burning structure?
Flashover and structural collapse are the primary causes.
For what reason are fire departments providing a wider variety of services, often as a multiagency effort?
Community expectations have changed.
A midlevel chief who often has a functional area of responsibility, such as training. and answer directly to the fire chief.
Assistant or division chief
Usually the first level of fire chief; also called a district chief. These chiefs are often in charge of running calls and supervising multiple stations or districts within a city. Also usually the officer in charge of a single-alarm working fire.
Battalion Chief
The superior-subordinate authority relationship that starts at the top of the organization hierarchy and extends to the lowest levels.
Chain of command
A code or standard developed through agreement between people representing different organizations and interests. NFPA codes and standards are consensus documents.
Consensus document
Restraining, regulating, governing, counteracting, or overpowering.
Controlling
The process of identifying problems and opportunities and resolving them.
Decision making
A moral, mental, and physical state in which all ranks respond to the will of the leader. Also, the guidelines that a department sets for the firefighters to work within.
Discipline
The production process in which each worker repeats one step over and over, achieving greater efficiencies in the use of time and knowledge; also, the formal assignment of authority and responsibility to a job holders.
Division of labor
Historically, an identifying symbol on a building to let fire fighters know that the building was insured by a company that would pay them for extinguishing the fire.
Fire Mark
A system that defines the role and responsibilities to be assumed by personnel and the operating procedures to be used in the management and direction of emergency operations; also referred to as an Incident Management System (IMS).
Incident Command System (ICS)
A complex process by which a person influences other to accomplish a mission, task, or objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent.
Leadership
Guiding or directing in a course of action.
Leading
Developing a scheme, program, or method that is worked out beforehand to accomplish and objective.
Policies
Directives develops by various government or government-authorized organizations to implement a law that has been passed by a government body.
Rules & Regulations
The maximum number of personnel or activities that can be effectively control by one individual (usually three to seven).
Span of control
The management concept that a subordinate should have only one direct supervisor, and that decision can be traced back through subordinate to manager that who originated it.
Unity of command
What is Unity of command?
The concept that fire fighters answer to only one supervisor
___________ means “putting resources together into an orderly, functional structured whole”
Organizing
“Selecting employees who share the values of the organizations” describes ________.
Ethics
In response to the Peshitgo Fire and Great Chicago Fire, communities began to enact:
strict building and fire codes
For fire officers to effectively coordinate firefighting efforts, it is vital that they have good:
communication
Building codes govern the type of construction materials and frequently, the built-in fire prevention and:
Safety measures
The fire chief is directly accountable to the:
Local government
The chain of command ensures that given tasks are:
Carried out in a uniform manner
The complex process of influencing others to accomplish a task is the act of:
leadership
Written organizational directives that establish specific operational methods to be followed routinely for the performance of designated operations are:
Standard operating procedures
Developing clear organizational values can be accomplished by:
- Having a code of ethics that is well known throughout the organization.
- Selecting employees who share the values of organization.
- Ensuring that top management exhibit ethical behavior.
Ethical choices are based on a(n) _____________ system.
Value
