By Paul Seager, South Australian Country Fire Service and Heath Stimson, NSW Rural Fire Service

How do we develop mastery in our incident commanders, to enable them to successfully lead their teams (and themselves) under the worst of circumstances? What development methods can be applied to maximise their ability to coordinate incident management teams under volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous conditions?

The NSW Rural Fire Service introduced the Incident Controller Major Incident (ICMI) program in 2011. The program has two key facets – developing a candidate’s individual capabilities, and equipping them to lead challenging, dynamic and high-consequence incidents.

As most complex incidents require a multi-agency response, candidates are selected from fire and emergency management agencies in NSW and across Australia. All candidates come to the program with substantial incident management experience, strong aptitude and organisational endorsement.

The ICMI program develops and assesses key capabilities that have been identified through fire and emergency management sector research. The program concentrates on human factors – including dynamic leadership, critical risk analysis, strategic thinking, decision making, communications, stakeholder relations and media.

While candidates undertake a shared journey, development is targeted to their individual leadership capability. The program structure offers different learning methods and styles. This includes facilitated workshops, a written major incident review, presentations, peer support, mentoring, targeted experiences and assessments. In addition, candidates are required to keep a journal allowing them to capture their experiences, develop insights, and identify areas for further development.

This presentation will explore critical capabilities for effective incident command, describe the ongoing evolution of the ICMI program, discuss lessons identified and describe the improvements made. Finally, an outline of the future intent for incident commander development will be provided, as well as the potential development of a strategic command training program.