By Brian A. Carr
Response planners and operational personnel must embrace a progressive approach to emergency response and foster “competitive advantage” when it comes to challenges involved with all-hazards emergency response. Using the national security (NATSEC) community as a starting point, I propose the creation of a Futures Command for fire department strategic planning. A Futures Command (or directorate) can focus on maintaining a proactive “modernization strategy” and experimentation in the emergency response field.
In the NATSEC setting, an organization like the Army can achieve benefits from a Futures Command through unity of command, willingness to experiment, and the bundling of concepts with available of current and near-term technology. Neil Hollenbeck and Benjamin Jensen shrewdly delineate these steps in “Why the Army Needs a Futures Command” (https://warontherocks.com/2017/12/army-needs-futures-command/)
Their guidance for America’s land-based military force–the U.S. Army–also suits the fire service. Although the type and severity of challenges between the two organizations are obviously different, guidelines presented by Hollenbeck and Jensen to modernize the Army’s strategy are easily modified for fire-service all-hazards emergency response. Additionally, our civilian law enforcement partners can also adapt and adopt a Futures Command to meet goals for 21st century police functions.
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One may initially object, “Why a Futures Command for the fire service?” Whereas the armed forces and NATSEC communities (and to a reduced degree, civilian law enforcement) must face an ever-evolving threat environment complicated by the human element of competition, violence, and political maneuvers, the fire service’s strategic jurisdiction is generally assumed to be static in type. Fires, although dynamic and complicated by natural and man-made conditions, are physical and chemical processes free from malice; rescue and prehospital emergency services follow the same logic. Firefighters respond to incidents whose causes may be vastly different but whose end goal is generally similar–the protection of the public. Water fights fires, tools and training complete rescues, and thorough protocols and critical thinking manage medical emergencies.
Maintaining modernization, it seems, is a passive occurrence in the fire service. Because there is no competition for superiority between emergency situations and fire service personnel enlisted to prevent and mitigate these emergencies, future technology and concepts can supposedly trickle into fire department traditions. Gradually, then, fire departments modify administrative and operational strategy. Provided small space is made for a minimum of consideration about future development in a fire department, the status quo directs overall planning. In the end, maintaining modernization is regarded as something only vanguard fire departments do, and fire trade journals report on. It’s interesting to read about, fun to consider, but would hardly be feasible for most fire departments.
This type of approach unfortunately places fire department planners and stakeholders at a disadvantage. Unless they “sit atop an efficient and responsive modernization enterprise,” fire department leaders will repeatedly find themselves playing catch-up when the operating environment of emergency responder suddenly changes. This fact is well illustrated in the current race to consider, adapt, and adopt teams of emergency responders capable of skillfully operating within a mass violence or tactical environment. Although progress has been made in response to the increased frequency of these incidents, can fire departments position themselves proactively for the next challenge?
A Futures Command within its organization will help. While coordinating a Futures Command will take some time and outlay of labor, benefits will outstrip investment. Departments must also formalize the process, choosing representatives and designating roles. Irregular actions will never achieve the full force that an officially appointed command or directorate can accomplish. Indeed, when fire department leaders work with affiliated response agencies and stakeholders, a localized pivot toward future challenges comes into being. This is the civilian approximation of Hollenbeck and Jensen’s discussion regarding “unity of command” and the development of a “single, coherent strategy driving modernization.”
Within this coherent strategy, dedication to proactive development of mobilization, resources, and technology used to prevent, predict, and mitigate emergencies will benefit command and company officers in a variety of ways. Command officers will have projection data at hand to make informed decisions about station locations, predicative posting of apparatus, and real-time monitoring of resource mobilization. As for the company officers, when once a culture of proactive modernization becomes the norm, they will find themselves formulating tactics and tasks commensurate with future challenges before they become future obstacles, e.g. emergency response to autonomous vehicles, UAV-associated incidents, and medical response to emergencies related to synthetic pathogens developed by biohackers. These examples are hardly in the realm of science fiction.
Implementing an organizational mindset open to a Futures Command starts the process of proactive modernization and has the advantage of encouraging a second, equally important, aspect. Experimentation is key to addressing future challenges, and the fire service needs to foster a commitment to experimentation. This will push operational boundaries and stimulate an atmosphere where strategic mistakes have room to be analyzed and modified into successful strategic practice. Chiefs who implement a Futures Command and demand experimental perspectives for current and future challenges will find their department able to meet these challenges quickly and creatively.
Fire departments are conservative by nature, and firefighters thrive on succeeding in the skills they’ve accomplished before. It’s a hand-me-down culture with mostly positive results. Still, when chiefs demand new attempts for new problems, experimentation thrives, enlarging organizational perspective. The feedback from the top-down will push firefighters and emergency responders to new methods of understanding their craft. Additionally, because experimentation breeds collaboration, fire departments will naturally strengthen interagency knowledge and ties. Previously, only law enforcement officers worked in tactical environments and conceptualized such an environment as a “battlespace.” Fire departments have gradually entered these areas, adopted a mindset suitable for tactical operations (admittedly modified), and by working with law enforcement and accepting new roles, more lives have been saved than if fire-based EMS services had never experimented with tactical response.
Change is inevitable, and the healthiest departments will ready themselves for it through experimentation and a willingness to accept fresh perspectives from all sources. Like the challenges associated with creating a coherent, future-minded strategy, however, experimentation must be formalized through planning and appointment.
A Futures Command must also be expected to exercise authority on how to implement new concepts and technology into emergency response. This will offset the passive nature of change commonly accepted by fire departments. Indeed, a Futures Command will also be empowered to communicate the value of proactive strategy, experimentation, and utility of concepts to the fire department at large. But this is secondary to how concepts and technology will shape and benefit incident operations and management. Think how suggesting engine companies use ALS equipment first surprised leadership. Now ALS technology and training are standard on many engine companies. This has extended the reach and rapid response of medical intervention and has helped save many lives. At one time, ALS engines were eyed suspiciously; now they are hallmarks of a robust fire service.
Conceptualizing and application of technology and expanded response deserve greater attention and recognition. A Futures Command would assure this, helping to bring ideas forward on a regular basis, advocating for expanse in public safety, and allowing theories an open-minded arena for research. A Futures Command could also help make sense of technological advances applicable to emergency response. Again, not unlike the challenge Hollenbeck and Jensen report the Army faces, fire departments must usually deal with a flood of technology “changing too quickly… to painstakingly develop a single, specific operational concept and then build to it.” A Futures Command can answer, “What is the best fit and the best way to make a technology work?”
The three elements taken as a single injunction for any Futures Command–securing unity of command, fostering experimentation, and aligning concepts of proactive response with current and near-term technology–will ultimately streamline strategic planning for fire department administrative and operational growth. A chief’s imprimatur to support ongoing modernization will only strengthen the department’s role in public safety. Waiting in the wings, on the other hand, will ultimately retard a department’s readiness, since oftentimes training programs and strategies will need to play catch-up when a new model for emergency intervention arises.
Creating a Futures Command—or a similar body with another title–may lead some chiefs to fear enlarged bureaucracy. “Paralysis by analysis” and the perils of group think have shown themselves to be genuine issues of concern, and surely the department’s annual strategic planning can tackle issues mentioned above. In response to the first concern, a Futures Command will counterbalance bureaucratic deadweight because of its clear function to promote, test, and accept or reject projects for a chief’s approval. It need not concern itself with other items. Leaning in to the future and streamlining future response are its goals. This leads into the second possible concern. Fire department strategic planning already uses compartmentalization. Unfortunately, the strategic viewpoint for future response receives only passing attention. A Futures Command will alleviate this and keep a fire department poised for success.
Fire departments operate in dynamic, evolving environments. Technological innovation and the speed of communication shrink the time between the moment when new emergency response challenges were distant, rare occurrences and when they happen in local jurisdictions. Fire, medical, hazardous materials, and security response are all part of the fire department. Changes and challenges await, and the fire department must always be ready. A Futures Command will help make this possible.
Brian Carr is a captain and paramedic at Jackson Hole (WY) Fire/EMS, Station #1, A-shift. In addition to structural firefighting and hazardous materials response, Brian is interested in how strategic policy analysis and development can drive research, decision-making, and operations in contemporary fire departments.
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