The National Integration Center (NIC) has been busy with developing more National Qualification System (NQS) tools for incident management.  Here are the titles for the latest release open to public comment:

• Damage Assessment Coordinator
• HM Community Education and Outreach Specialist
• HM Community Planner Specialist
• HM Engineering and Architect Specialist
• HM Floodplain Management Specialist
• EHP Environmental Specialist
• EHP Historic Preservation Specialist
• Incident/Exercise Evaluator
• Public Assistance
• State Disaster Recovery Coordinator

There may be some incident management and response purists out there wondering why they should care about these particular titles.  I’ll agree that most of them aren’t used in a life-saving response capacity, but these are the people you want to have backing you up – otherwise you may never get away from the incident and you will find yourself in a very foreign land where complex requirements from FEMA and other federal agencies are the rules of play.

Having worked disaster recovery for some massive incidents, such as Hurricane Sandy, I can personally attest to the value so many of these people bring to the table.  It’s great to see qualification standards being established for them, just as they are for core incident management team personnel and resources.  While my experience with most of these is ancillary, however, I’ll leave specific commentary on them to those functional experts.

There is one role in here that I’m particularly pleased to see and will comment on, and that’s the Incident/Exercise Evaluator.  I wrote last year on this topic specifically and have reflected on its importance in other posts.  I see the inclusion of an Incident Evaluator in the NQS as being a huge success and the beginning of a conscious and deliberate shift toward evaluation and improvement in what we do.  Looking at the resource typing definition, I’m pretty pleased with what the NIC has put together.

What I like… I appreciate that they include a note indicating that personnel may need additional training based upon the nature or specialization of the incident or exercise.  They include a decent foundation of NIMS/ICS, exercise, and fundamental emergency management training across the various position types (although most of these are FEMA Independent Study courses -which I think are great for introductory and supplemental matter, but shouldn’t be the only exposure personnel have), including a requirement of completion of the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) for a Type 1.

What I feel needs to be improved…  Considering that the Type 1 Incident/Exercise Evaluator is expected to lead the evaluation effort, I’d like to see more than just HSEEP training being the primary discerning factor.  Just because someone has completed HSEEP doesn’t mean they can plan a project, lead a team, or extrapolate HSEEP exercise evaluation practices to be effective for incident evaluation.  I suggest HSEEP should be the requirement for the Type 2 position (which would correlate well to the position description), with additional training on project management and leadership supporting the Type 1 position.  While the note is included re: the potential need for additional training, there is nothing in this about operational experience, which I think is rather important.  Lastly, this seems to identify a need for course and/or guidance specific to incident evaluation, which can and should use the principals of HSEEP as its foundation, but identify the differences, best practices, and approaches to applying them to an incident or event.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on incident evaluation as well as the other positions being identified in the NQS. Do you participate in the national engagements and provide feedback?

© 2018 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

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