What’s the Plan? Tactical Planning for Tactical Success

VOLUNTEERS CORNER ❘ By JERRY KNAPP

During the planning for the Normandy D-Day invasion, General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “The plan is nothing, but planning is everything.” Military members know that the plan never survives first contact with the enemy. So, as firefighters, why not just grab your hoseline and charge in without a plan?

• How to Plan and Execute a Large-Scale Training Drill
• Incident Planning Meeting: Yes, You Can
• Suburban Firefighting: Plan B, Force Multiplier
• Five Steps to a Successful Annual Training Plan

Our fire departments are paramilitary organizations, and our planning is likely on a smaller scale and less intense than General Eisenhower’s. However, like Eisenhower, civilians’ and firefighters’ lives depend on our ability to plan, update the plan, and then execute the plan. Although fire departments spend a lot of training time on strategic and tactical concepts, we may not have been taught the critical steps that lead to the successful planning, briefing, and execution of missions assigned to you, both on and off the fireground.

This article will use a target hazard in a notional first-due area to help you understand the steps you should use for planning anything from a target hazard to your drill schedule to your department’s medal day. As Ike said, “planning is everything.” You can use the planning sequence for almost every task you’re assigned—tactical, training, and even social events. On the fireground, the planning may take place only in your head; for other events, it may be formally written plans, briefings, and in-progress reviews (IPRs).

Your Mission

Scenario: You have been tasked by your chief to preplan a target hazard in your first-due area. You are also tasked with conducting a high-volume water flow drill to test the actual water flows from the municipal water system. The drill must be executed within the next 90 days. Your target hazard is a large, old mill building complex that has a limited municipal water supply around it. The Type 4 heavy-timber buildings were built between 1865 and 1900 to accommodate only a large textile manufacturer. This complex now is home to an arts community with many diverse occupants, businesses ranging from water-color artists to wood and metal working shops. The large complex of interconnected buildings has an elevated water tank supplying sprinklered buildings off a loop of fire system piping of unknown age and condition. Historically, the sprinklers have saved these buildings from multiple fires over the years, sometimes with the help of fire department hose streams. There is one siamese connection near the entrance for all the buildings.

One year ago, a fire in a target hazard in a nearby jurisdiction claimed the life of a county firefighter when it collapsed after he assisted in making several rescues of trapped occupants. Your chief now recognizes the value of a plan for this target hazard, a “firefighter killer,” in your first-due area. Focus on the planning steps described below and not the strategic and tactical actions we are using as examples.

So, now you have a clear picture of your mission. This is rule number one in the planning cycle: Clearly define your goal. If your boss does not make it crystal clear, ask questions until it is.

The Planning Sequence

The sequence in planning for this or any operation follows.

Initial Planning Meeting

Describe/discuss the mission with all subordinate and supporting leaders who have roles in executing the end goal (mission). Start developing your written orders and include pictures, maps, and diagrams to show how you envision the operation being executed. This meeting allows subordinates to begin to consider how you want the mission to go and gives them time to consider how they can and will support it.

At this point, your written plan can simply be a list of facts that describe the mission such as the date; time; purpose; phases broken down by time; and tasks for supporting agencies such as the police and water departments, fire inspectors, building occupants, and so on. A couple of pictures, diagrams, or plan views will also aid you in this process—a picture is worth a thousand words in the planning process!

Planning assumptions are also a critical part of your overall plan. In this case, assume (and have verified) you will have three engine and two ladder companies to conduct the exercise as well as support from the local police department. As a leader, you must confirm that these resources are available from your exercise.

Two other important parts of your written plan are coordinating instructions and a synchronization matrix. Both are simple but very powerful planning tools. Coordinating instructions describe how participating supporting units will execute their tasks and key points such as how the police department will stop traffic at 0900 hours so you can lay supply lines across the road; how they will maintain traffic control points for the duration of the exercise; and how you will recover hoses immediately after the exercise, starting with removing supply lines from across roadways. You should add a simple safety message that points out the most dangerous and most likely health and safety threats you expect to encounter. Identify medical support as well, if appropriate.

As with every fire department operation, timing is everything, so build a synchronization matrix, which is a chart with times associated with key tasks that you must accomplish to make the operation a success. Essentially, it is a checklist, so everyone understands the “when” in the “who, what, where, when, and why” planning milestones.

Current Plan

Present your subordinates with your mission and your plan so they can provide their input, which gets their buy-in for the job. This will be their first chance to suggest alternatives—i.e., brainstorm ideas you may have missed; confirm or deny that they have the necessary resources; and help you fill in weaknesses or gaps in your original plan.

IPRs

Schedule and conduct IPRs to update and gather details from your subordinate planners or executers and make any changes necessary from your original plan. Typically, the number of IPRs is directly related to the complexity of the mission. IPRs are a great time to review the written order, maps, and diagrams and to make sure the sequence of the operation is correct and the most efficient. Through the IPRs, the plan moves toward a finished product.

IPRs are like a polishing process—improving the final product at each step. Although the steps may be repetitive, IPRs ensure success and resolve any problems or miscommunications before gameday.

Final Briefing

Conduct a final briefing based on your written order and then a back brief to the commander. The final brief is led by the mission commander in the last IPR prior to execution. Back briefs are when you ask your subordinate leaders to describe key parts of their tasks that support the overall mission. This ensures your message has been clearly received and is executable.

Rehearsal/Walk-Through/Tabletop

The military calls this a “sand-table exercise” or “terrain walk.” This will provide another opportunity to make certain your subordinate leaders understand and can execute their tasks that support the overall mission. Alternatively, you can go to the site and do a walk-through, discussing the tasks and timings that will lead to smooth execution.

Gameday

So, gameday arrives, and you set up your current plan long before you expect any of your units or supporting units to arrive. Your planning office has the synchronization matrix at your current plan to use as a checklist to keep the operation on schedule. You have assigned an aide to conduct the communications for you. Your job is to run the exercise and provide command and control to not talk on the radio. Units respond to their staging areas, then, on order, begin to execute according to your plan. This is the plan in which they have had input and perhaps even rehearsed.

Your drill goes off like clockwork and achieves its objectives. You have tested and measured the actual flows from the two closest municipal hydrants and prepared your first-due units for a dangerous target hazard. When the working fire occurs at the facility, you are armed with the knowledge of how much water is available from first-due units, and you can plan second and third alarms accordingly.

The last step to close out your plan is an after-action review (AAR) as soon as you can after the operation. Given enough time, we all sanitize our memory of things we did not do quite correctly. The AAR is not a critique—no one likes to be critiqued. First, look for and highlight three things units did well and you want to sustain as well as three areas that may need improvement. The planning process described above will help guide you to success in large and small tasks assigned to you.

---

JERRY KNAPP is the chief of the Rockland County (NY) Hazmat Team, has a degree in fire protection, is a 46-year veteran firefighter/emergency medical technician (EMT) with the West Haverstraw (NY) Fire Department, and is a former paramedic. He served on the technical panel for the UL residential fire attack study. Knapp is the co-author of House Fires and Tactical Response to Explosive Gas Emergencies (Fire Engineering). He is the author of articles in Fire Engineering and other fire service trade journals and the author of the Fire Attack chapter in Fire Engineering’s Handbook for Firefighter I and II. He retired from the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, where he served as the plans and operations specialist at the Directorate of Emergency Services.