Roles + Responsibilities Flashcards
The incident commander has overall responsibility on the incident ground. In order to resolve an incident assertively, effectively and safely they should:
- Command and control the incident
- Identify hazards and manage risk
- Assess resource requirements
- Determine an incident plan
- Co-ordinate and deploy available resources
- Evaluate progress against the plan
It is important for the incident commander to create an appropriate command structure.
This may include:
- Setting appropriate reporting lines
- Delegating levels and tiers of authority and responsibility
- Agreeing spans of control for each commander
- What role the outgoing incident commander will take to maximise their situational awareness
The incident commander should establish effective arrangements for communication are in place to ensure a good flow of information is maintained. An incident commander should make sure that they can:
- Gather and share information
- Issue instructions to personnel
- Receive situation reports from all areas, including sector commanders
- Assess and provide for the needs of other agencies
The incident commander needs to gather information, issue instructions and receive situation reports. They also need to assess the needs of other agencies and plan to meet them. They should establish suitable arrangements for communications.
The incident commander will need to:
- Establish communication links with fire control
- Ensure radio channels and call signs are correctly assigned
- Establish communications with other agencies
- Establish communications with sector commanders and receive regular situation reports
- Ensure sector commanders can communicate between themselves
- Make use of site specific communication systems, for example, some complex buildings and structures, including those extending underground, have communication systems installed for use by emergency services
Levels of command
(4 levels)
Level 1 - Initial
Command and control operations at a task focused supervisory level or a more senior level at a serious escalating incident.
Level 2 - Intermediate
Command and control operations at a tactical middle manager level or a more senior level for large or significant incidents.
Level 3 - Advanced
Tactical command at the largest and most serious incidents, either at the scene or at a remote location. There is a requirement for tactical co-ordination and of having reached the stage of using a developed command support and a full ICS structure.
Level 4 - Strategic
Strategic command associated with commanding within a Strategic Co-ordinating Group (SCG), or Regional Resilience Partnership (RRP) in Scotland.
Senior officer taking over incident.
The following should be considered when taking over command:
- The rationale for taking over
- Whether the new commander has sufficient situational awareness or requires additional information
- Whether to confirm or amend the plan according to the agreed operational priorities and objective, risk assessment and tactical mode
- Ensuring safe systems of work are in place
- Checking resources are adequate and deployed to match the tactical priorities
- Reviewing communications, including with other responders
- Whether the command structure is appropriate
The operations commander supervises and co-ordinates operations. This is to allow the incident commander to maintain a workable span of control.T
This allows the operations commander to co-ordinate sector commanders to ensure that:
- Firefighting and search and rescue activities are co-ordinated
- Support is offered
- Resourcing issues are addressed
- Risk assessments to support the priorities and objectives are performed at the right times
- Assessments are of the expected quality and are appropriately recorded
At incidents requiring specialist equipment such as water rescue, USAR, HVP or mass decontamination, a specialist tactical adviser (TacAd) may be deployed to assist the incident commander.
When a tactical adviser is present, the incident commander will retain ultimate responsibility for tactics, deployment and safety. Tactical advisers should not take command; they are there to advise the incident commander or personnel nominated by them. They should also make sure that they understand the aims and objectives of the incident commander, and that any advice they provide the commander is understood and when applicable, recorded.
Interoperability and intraoperability
The key principles of effective joint working are:
Interoperability is defined as the extent to which organisations can work together coherently as a matter of routine.
Intraoperability means the ability of a fire and rescue service to work together with other fire and rescue services.
Safety organisation on the incident ground including risk information: Command support
These include:
- Acting as first contact point for all attending appliances and officers
- Maintaining a physical record of resources in attendance
- Briefing arriving resources on any safety related matters, including the tactical mode
- Maintaining a record of the findings of the risk assessment and any decisions or actions taken
- Recording information about the tactical mode and relaying that information both around the incident ground and back to the fire control room
- Liaising with other agencies, assisting in joint understanding of risk
- Supervising personnel from other agencies and conducting safety briefings for these personnel before they enter the incident ground
- Briefing designated people about their tasks and safety critical information
- Instigating the service system for logging fire and rescue service personnel on the incident ground
- Acting as the, or nominating alternative, muster points for an emergency evacuation
- Overseeing roll call with the incident commander after an emergency evacuation
- Logging and safety related decisions made and the reasons behind them
Safety sector commander:
The incident commander or sector commander may appoint a safety officer at any time. This person should have suitable competencies for the role. A safety officer at larger incidents may be designated as the safety sector commander. They will co-ordinate the role of other safety officers.
The safety sector commander may be responsible for the following:
- Surveying operational sectors, identifying hazards, and advising the sector commander
- Working with sector safety officers to support and exchange information
- Confirming the validity of the initial risk assessment and recording as appropriate
- Collating and recording an analytical risk assessment
- Acting as an extra set of eyes and ears to the sector commanders in monitoring the safety of personnel
- Working with the incident commander or operations commander
- Reporting health and safety issues, including accident investigation
Safety Officer
Responsiblities
Safety officers will be responsible for the following:
- Identifying safety issues
- Starting corrective action
- Maintaining safe systems of work
- Ensuring people are wearing appropriate personal protection equipment
- Observing the working environment
- Monitoring physical condition of crews
- Regular reviews
- Recording an analytical risk assessment
- Updating the incident commander when circumstances change
