Robert Neale began his career as a journalist, but changed his career after reporting on the local fire departments. In 1973, Neale joined the Thurston County (Wash.) Fire District, later serving as fire inspector. Neale spent 15 years in Bellingham, Wash., in a variety of roles including fire marshal. After a short stint as the first career chief in Lynden, Wash., Neale took over as fire chief in Whatcom County, Wash.

Neale worked as a training specialist in technical fire prevention for the National Fire Academy. After the academy realigned in 2008, Neale became deputy superintendent. In his off hours, Neale also is an on-call volunteer.

What are some of the changes to NFA courses?

We have tried to freshen up some of the more popular classes for the field, the Leadership 1, 2 and 3 series. We've brought in new videos and new lessons learned, and we're bringing in a new fresh approach to the content.

We're also trying to expand more in the EMS arena. … The first EMS course we're offering is a quality-management course — which our students have told us that we need — that will help EMS leaders establish quality-control programs in their jurisdictions.

We conducted a national EMS curriculum needs assessment and brought in 20 EMS experts from around the country. We asked them to tell us what the gaps are in terms of training at the local level and what the needs will be in the future.

We're not doing anything particularly related to EMS field operations. We're not going to teach anybody how to start an IV or combi-tube. We're going to be looking at the management systems and how to make their good system that much better through management, planning and leadership skills.

Our first venture is the quality-management course, and then we'll take the feedback from the EMS curriculum advisory group, expand that and have a second meeting with fire-service leaders to help us tweak where we need to go. We'll start developing some curriculum plans based on their input.

What's your take on the future of video conferencing or classes?

I think it's a great opportunity, and I think we're going to exploit it. But I don't think it's going to happen as fast as we'd like. Part of the problem we have is we serve such a diverse audience; we have customers who not only have access to high-speed Internet, but we also have people who are on dial-up connections. We have to develop our material to the lowest common denominator.

What programs have you been involved in creating?

One of the things I've been working on is to take a look at the fire-prevention technical curriculum. If you look at the three or four core classes — Fire Inspection Principles, Principles of Fire Protection Structure and Systems, and Plan Review for Fire Inspectors — these are essentially the same courses we have been offering for the last 30 years. I've tried to update the material and also come up with some new courses titles.

One of the things we're working with right now is to develop a sprinkler/standpipe/fire pump class that would cover how to review those systems.

We're creating two-day courses, one of which is called Commissioning New Occupancies for Code Officials. Buildings have become so sophisticated and complex with fire-protection systems, lighting systems, power-generating systems, and green-environmental systems. When code officials — fire or building officials — sign off on the certificate of occupancy, they really need to have some level of confidence that all those complex systems are working — and working the way they were designed.

We're also developing a two-day residential-sprinkler plan review class to get ahead of the International Residential Code's requirements for residential sprinklers. The class is for fire officials and building-code officials.

Another course we're working on is Special Hazards and Highly Protected Risks. People are knowledgeable about what building and fire codes can or can't be done, but what do you do with a project that comes in that's outside the scope of a code? How do you deal with solutions for life safety and fire protection?

Another class in development is Fire and Life-Safety Modeling Analysis. We have a lot of new building designs that employ fire-modeling strategies to prove they are in compliance with the code. We're going to give students some training on the different models in the market today and give them a design so when an architect proposes a performance based design that uses a fire-based model, they'll be able to identify what the strengths and weaknesses are.

What are your responsibilities as second Deputy Superintendent for the National Fire Academy?

My main responsibility is to help facilitate and develop long-term plans for what the National Fire Academy curriculum is going to look like. We have eleven different curriculum areas and we try to be the best that we can be delivering fresh content and to meet the students' needs and help improve their leadership and technical skills.

We scan the environment for new trends and identify important issues in the American fire service and determine what the training needs are for a solution. Not everything has a training solution, but those that do have a training component, we try to develop courses for them.

I like to think I'm the facilitator for the training specialists. I can't give them everything with other priorities and budget restraints, but my goal is to be their successful advocate, to get their curriculum approved and where it needs to be offered.

For a number of years, we haven't had any resources to upgrade curriculum or make the changes we need to, but we now have a fairly generous budget and with the right players in place, we're going to be making some real positive changes both in updating courses and in modernizing the curriculum courses overall.

DHS introduced strict procedures for NFA instructors. Have those requirements had any impact on your ability to find instructors?

It is a bureaucratic challenge, and I don't mean that in a negative connotation of bureaucracy — but it is work. … Whether you're a DHS employee, contractor or an employee of a contractor, anybody who gets paid by DHS has to have a suitability check.

It is time-consuming and not as fast as we'd like, but we've tried to expedite the processes as much as we possibly can and pretty much handhold candidates through the process so it's pretty much invisible to them.

When a contract instructor or potential instructor turns in their application right now, it goes to the Secretary of the Curriculum and Instruction branch. She routes it to the training specialist for the first check. If the person looks like a viable candidate, we send them a note to get their fingerprints taken either on campus or at a local office. Once we are notified by the FBI, it's a green light. The person in procurement takes care of notifying them that they have to go through the suitability process and as soon as we're hear back on that, they are notified to get their ORCA, DUNS or CCR number and from there we try to walk them through the process.

It's lengthy, but I think we've worked all the bugs out of it to make it as painless as we can.

You have quite an emphasis on prevention.

We have a lot of other areas being developed too. In the arson curriculum, we are just finishing a pilot one called Forensic Evidence collection, which partners field investigators with laboratory technicians to help them understand the importance of collecting evidence and protecting the integrity of that evidence until it gets to the lab, is processed by the lab, and gets into the courtroom. There is a lot of hands on skills learning to take plaster casts and collect evidence at a burned out fire scene, collect fingerprints.

Last comment?

The last comment is for people to recognize the importance of training and education. Sometimes we focus so much on standard operating procedures, and they have value for enhancing safety and performance, but sometimes you have to step back and throw a rock at it and say, Is this really the best way to do things?

Has anybody ever thought of fire as an opportunity rather of a tragedy? Look at all the people it employs, look at all the products developed. I wasn't trying to embarrass anybody, but poke holes in the way we traditionally look at things. Get the education, get the training and think outside the proverbial box and be willing to be creative.

Are we really solving the problems that are out there or are we doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different outcomes?