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Integral dimension proves valuable health check |
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This month’s issue features some of the harshest challenges to the FRS since the national dispute. From knowledge gaps in fire safety to operational training, contributors raise areas of growing concern. Fortunately, FIRE proposes a framework to invigorate performance
Historic, present and potential knowledge gaps within the Fire and Rescue Service have been the source of heated debate since our recent editorial (see FIRE December 2007, pg 5) and have led our contributors to turn their collective gaze on this thorny issue. Typically, each comes up with a different sore, but also – more encouragingly – a host of remedies concocted from decades of experience picking apart and reassembling FRS diseases. It is no coincidence that this volume also includes considerable contributions on leadership models: past, present and future. This device more than any other is the catalyst to bridge those perceived ‘knowledge gaps’. First, to the ailments.
The Diagnosis
Whilst commending the action of London and Manchester firefighters, FIRE correspondent Mike Fordham challenges the provision of firefighter safety within integrated response (see pg 13, 44). He claims: “There is a dangerous gap between expected outcomes of the integrated risk based approach and what is being invested in it.” From his perspective the gap may well be becoming a chasm. Such truculence may disturb some. Not FIRE. Turning the spotlight on firefighter safety with regular and searching alacrity is essential as part of a rigorous health check. Professor Rosemarie Everton provides a well considered update on the Regulator Reform (Fire Safety) Order. She surmises that whilst the Order operates from many sound principles, the critical aspect is time – to become established and grow stronger. She questions whether the ‘insatiable hunger’ of the ‘fire tiger’ will permit this. In our centenary year FIRE is momentarily stepping outside time and taking the long-term view: past, present and future. We look back to the devastating events of Blaina (see pg 16), whilst Dennis Davis charts the UK FRS ‘Periodic Learning Table’ (see pg 43, many of which we shall be analysing over the next 12 months).
Davis makes some interesting points on the notion of time. He suggests that the collective corporate knowledge that made the UK FRS the ‘best public service in the world’ is not lost. Tellingly, he adds: ‘The techniques that drive quality in operational response urgently need new national processes to record for analysis, assessment, and interpretation of past experience, and then to rapidly disseminate national guidance… this is about recreating for this generation of firefighters the glue that holds the operational side of the UK FRS together…’.
The scale of the task is not easy. FIRE correspondent David Wright (see pg 40) argues that the FRS can no longer cope with servicing the delivery of all aspects of change. ‘The Chief Fire Officers’ Association and regional management boards do not have the remit or capacity to help FRAs in the delivery of functions on a national basis’, he contests, leaving us struggling to assemble a Centre of Excellence (CoE) which plugs all gaps – an unlikely proposition indeed. As every model is considered for the CoE (yes, appropriately, it does sound religious as an acronym). In that spirit Wright dips into The Bible to renounce the proposals. ‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun’. And so back to leadership.
The Cure
Following last month’s editorial (January pg 5) we apply the Integral Approach to leadership (see pg 28). We shall unashamedly be banging this drum throughout the year as it is the most sophisticated instrument for evaluating every aspect of FRS functioning that we have come across.
Such a framework enables the considerable expertise amassed from previous and serving fire personnel to be re-positioned and evaluated on relevance for today’s and tomorrow’s FRS. At present, many services are utilising the transformational model (see pg 32 for a fascinating description of the development of the approach) and it will undoubtedly reap innumerable benefits for the future direction of the FRS. As such FIRE’s centenary conference, Creating the Climate for Change: Implementing Successful Leadership Strategies within the Fire and Rescue Service (see pg 31) incorporates ethical, transactional, value centred and transformational leadership. Beyond that fine work the Integral framework can be used to stabilise every aspect of perceived FRS frailty and consolidate every one of its many strengths. From fire safety, firefighter safety, corporate currency to CoE fervour, there is a place and a purpose for integrating appropriately the parts and members into the healthiest of FRS structures. The Service is far from sick; in many aspects it is in ruddy good health. But as the top performer it is, it needs close attention and dare I say, surgery, where necessary. |
