Professor Francis L. Brannigan provided more engineering knowledge to firefighters over his 60-year career than any man who ever lived — some might say even more than Ben Franklin. We will miss his presence and we should honor his legacy by reducing firefighter injury and death through the unwavering commitment to understanding the fire building and the threats from panelized and trussed roofs.

One of the things I always appreciated about Brannigan was that he spoke our language, on our level. Any educated professional engineer can present the subject of building construction from the very basic to the very complex. But after a couple of sessions of this stuff, the average firefighter student will have had enough. Brannigan always presented his lectures, seminars and presentations in context for a fire service audience.

There's a lot of information that we can present to these students from the third edition of Brannigan's Building Construction for the Fire Service, but we want them to learn within the context of their current position, duties and responsibilities.

We want to keep the building construction knowledge at a pretty basic level for a recruit-level firefighter. We also want to present it as a survey course, maintaining the level of instruction at the awareness level and resisting the urge to go too deep. The context that we wish to teach these students could be limited to structural fire situations, floors, columns, walls and roofs. Perhaps we also will add something on loads and how contents affect the structural environment.

As firefighters advance through their careers and exhibit a mastery of basic building construction knowledge, we will want to build on the previous training and expand the knowledge base to more content. To be successful, we again have to view the context in which senior firefighters will be working. They may face more advanced structural fires. Perhaps they may be assigned to the nozzle on a primary fire attack team. They also may be involved in fire prevention inspections, so in that context we should now add to the instructional program how to look for concealed spaces, pipe chases and unprotected “poke-throughs” and how they affect fire behavior and the extension of fire in a multiple occupancy commercial structure.

Had we presented these more advanced concepts to the recruit firefighters, they would probably have had a more difficult time committing these concepts to memory without having the experience base in chasing and cutting off fire spread during an interior fire attack.

During the early 1990s, the Montana Fire School unveiled a formalized training-in-context concept. Retired Prince William County Fire Capt. Bruce Roemmelt taught basic fire recruits the same technical and manipulative skills that you and I learned in the fire academy, but he presented the skills in the sequence of actual fireground evolutions. Every skill was presented as a whole and not as a series of parts. These skills were presented in the sequence of actual fireground tactical operations, and they were taught in the context of the firefighters' job duties at specific incidents.

For example, the students would be shown a video of the appropriate tasks to set a ladder. The students then would go through the physical and kinesthetic movements of setting the ladder, checking the angle and climbing the ladder. After the evolution was complete, students would stand in place with their eyes closed. They would move their arms and legs and simulate all the kinesthetic movements that completed that evolution, using the entire body to improve memorization.

Both Brannigan and Roemmelt knew that you couldn't put 500 pounds of stuff in a 10-pound bag. They advocated presenting the material that was critical for success and saving the rest for another time in students' careers when they would better understand the content and have better perspective based on operational experience.

These concepts work even better if your organization is committed to life-long learning. Characteristics of a learning organization are obvious. There is an energy and excitement that you don't find in other organizations. There is a dynamic sense that the organization is moving and going somewhere.

The training specialists in these organizations are leveraging every available learning platform, method, venue and time of day to provide a flexible environment for the members to learn. If training changes behavior, then learning is a key factor in managing change. Change management is a key to effectively growing and staying ahead of the factors that affect service delivery.

Getting back to our Building Construction example, the officer needs an extensive knowledge of building construction as well as a commanding knowledge of tactics, strategies and effective tool use to perform various tactical operations. The knowledge of structural stability, roof construction, trusses, load-bearing members and the precursors to structural collapse are all critical areas of mastery for a company officer. If the student becomes a rescue or ladder company officer, the characteristics of structural and building materials after collapse is a new context to be mastered. Breaching and breaking, lifting and moving, identifying survivable voids and spaces, and gaining access to those spaces in a safe manner are concerns that must be taught, learned and refreshed throughout the fire officer's career.

As students' careers continue and those select members move into the chief officer — level positions, it's imperative for those officers to keep up with the context of their new positions. Can you predict the effects of fire and heat on certain construction materials? How do building construction and exterior structural finishes and protections provide a level of conflagration prevention or offer opportunities for stopping the fire of your career? How do building standards and fire codes work to improve the survivability of occupants and firefighters? Can you describe fire-resistant materials used to resist flame impingement and fire spread? In a learning organization, the context never stops changing.

As a trainer, Brannigan was committed to reducing fireground fatalities through education. On many stages and platforms he challenged the fire service to look for the signs of structural collapse. To paraphrase my favorite bit of advice from Brannigan, from the first day of completed construction, the building is negatively affected by defying gravity. It's just waiting to fall down on something, and the day of a fire is a pretty good day to go.

As students of fire engineering and control, we have an ethical commitment to becoming life-long learners. As trainers, we have the responsibility to develop customized training programs in context to better prepare our work force in this era where working fires are becoming less frequent. As senior administrators, the responsibility for developing a true learning organization rests with you. The benefits are measurable and achievable, and the entire community reaps the reward.

John Linstrom is a senior associate with Citygate Associates, a municipal consulting practice in Sacramento, Calif. He's an adjunct faculty member for Texas A&M University and the National Fire Academy. Linstrom currently serves as a battalion chief/paramedic in Apple Valley, Calif. He also serves as commander of the DHS/FEMA DMORT for Region IX and has been involved in the national USAR program since 1996.