What makes a fire officer truly an officer, both professionally and culturally, emerged as a main theme at the eighth U.K./U.S. Fire Service Symposium, held in mid-April in Plymouth, England. The two areas where this was most evident were professional development and labor/management relations.

Frank Duffield, assistant chief fire officer with the Cleveland (U.K.) Fire Brigade, kicked off the professional development section with a briefing on the Integrated Personal Development System. (A draft of IPDS was presented at the 1997 U.K./U.S. symposium. For an IPDS schematic, see the January 1998 Fire Chief, page 46).

Under the IPDS, a process of functional analysis links the fire brigade's mission with the individual's job performance criteria. “Competence is the driver, not the vocational qualification,” Duffield stressed. The system also seeks to encourage personnel to take ownership of their own professional development.

One of the casualties of this system, it's hoped, will be “sheep-dip training,” in which everyone gets the same training whether they need it or not. The example given was a former Royal Air Force firefighter joining a civilian fire brigade.

All U.K. fire brigades were scheduled to implement IPDS by April this year, though some had started earlier and others will be delayed by the current labor problems, described below.

One side effect of IPSD, Duffield said, is that it potentially opens the door to multi-tier entry into the U.K. fire service. Jeff Goddard, chief fire officer of the Buckinghamshire Fire Service, noted that multi-tier entry is common in the rest of Europe and shouldn't cause a problem in the United Kingdom, as long as there's still “a way through” so some firefighters can rise into the officer ranks.

In his presentation on officer development, Chief Jim Broman of Lacey (Wash.) Fire District 3 also emphasized the importance of focusing on competencies, not degrees. The centerpiece of his talk was the IAFC's Officer Development Handbook, now in its fifth draft, which defines officer development as “the planned, progressive life-long process of education, training, self-development and experience.”

Broman also cited the annual Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education meetings at the National Fire Academy as a much-needed effort along these lines. After all, he pointed out, all four Wingspread Reports, from 1966 to 1996, mentioned officer development as a concern for the U.S. fire service.

Too many officers' attitudes are too closely aligned with labor, not management, said Paul Young, chief fire officer of Devon (U.K.) Fire and Rescue Service, the conference's host. “The experience of the past 12 months has changed my views totally” about multi-entry.

In those past 12 months, the U.K. fire service has been scarred by the worst labor conflict since a nine-week national firefighters strike in 1977, said presenter David O'Dwyer, CFO of the Hereford and Worcester (U.K.) Fire Brigade.

In May 2002, the Fire Brigades Union demanded a 40% pay increase over several years, which the government countered with a 4% increase, conditional on various modernization measures. A subsequent independent, government-commissioned review concluded that U.K. firefighters are generally paid appropriately in terms of their skills. The first strikes, ranging from 24 hours to eight days, began last November.

Between military fire apparatus and personnel helping to provide cover, and aggressive publicity aimed at fire safety awareness, the strikes' effects have been minimized. In addition, public opinion, initially for the firefighters, has tilted strongly against them.

In the discussion on why so many fire officers in both countries identify with their subordinates, not management, several U.S. chiefs commented that they're the only members of their departments not in the International Association of Fire Fighters local.

The observation was made that there's a sharper line in the military between officers and enlisted personnel, and Dennis Davis, Her Majesty's Chief Fire Inspector for Scotland and the symposium's co-founder, asked whether different officer selection, training and education could have affected the current labor situation.

Simon Hunt, of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, said what the fire service needs is a mechanism for changing people's mindset as they move from lower to officer ranks, to which Mike Wieder of the International Fire Service Training Association added that the fire service lacks an equivalent to the military's Officer Candidate Schools.

In a related briefing, CFO Doug Mackay of the Mid and West Wales Fire Brigade, listed the reforms needed in the U.K. fire service:

• A risk-based holistic approach to fire cover.
• A more-diverse work force.
• Revised training and recruitment, including an end to single entry.
• Better professional development (through IPDS).
• A new, performance-based pay and reward structure, including regional pay bargaining. (All U.K. firefighters are currently on the same scale, regardless of the local cost of living.)
• New negotiating procedures.

The FBU very quickly and effectively raised its members' expectations about pay, Mackay noted, but now that public opinion has turned against firefighters, faces the problem of lowering their expectations.

Interestingly, the very day these presentations were taking place, the FBU announced that they were rejecting the latest offer of 15.2% over three years, but because of the war in Iraq, said they wouldn't schedule any strikes yet.