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The NIMS Refresh – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 4 Comments

The current National Incident Management System (NIMS) doctrine document, dated December 2008, has guided NIMS for over seven years.  This iteration, as I recall, wasn’t much of a change from its predecessor (2004), with the most significant updates being some changes to the NIMS components and the inclusion of the concept and arrangement of the Intelligence function within ICS.  We now have a new draft NIMS document which has been posted for a national engagement period.  If you haven’t had a chance to review the document, it can be found here.

While I certainly intend on providing my comments directly to FEMA through their feedback mechanism (which I encourage you all to do), I wanted to provide a bit of an overview of the draft document to my readers, which of course will include some of my opinions on the changes they are proposing.  I remain a huge proponent of NIMS and fully believe in the positive impact it has had, although I have been quite outspoken (and will remain so) about the issues associated with ICS training.

In this NIMS refresh, as they are calling it, there are some significant changes to certain areas while largely maintaining the foundations of the system.  The significant changes include:

  • NIMS has consolidated its five components to three, dropping the components of Preparedness and Ongoing Management and Maintenance.
  • The introduction of the Center Management System (CMS) as part of the restructured Management and Coordination (formerly Command and Management) component
  • Incorporation of the NIMS Intelligence and Investigations Function Guidance

First off, the consolidation of the five NIMS components to three.  While I’m disappointed with the preparedness component being deemphasized, especially with so much preparedness work to always be done, I found many of the concepts of preparedness to be sprinkled throughout the document, including a nod to the National Preparedness Goal (NPG) in the introduction of the draft document.  The NPG should certainly be the guiding document of all preparedness efforts related to emergency management.  While there are some aspects that are NIMS-specific, I’m fairly confident they won’t get lost in the shuffle.  Withdrawing the Ongoing Management and Maintenance component, similarly has seen some of these activities being mentioned elsewhere in the document, although only a few of them, with some of the important elements simply not being apparent.

In my review of the document, I was pleased with the inclusion (albeit small) of the concept of Unity of Effort as a newly introduced guiding principal of NIMS.  Unity of Effort is an concept essential to the success to all components of emergency management and homeland security and certainly in incident management.  This is definitely a positive.

Credentialing – the first major component discussed in the document is Resource Management.  Within Resource Management is the concept of credentialing.  Despite an intent of the document being to emphasize that NIMS isn’t just about ICS, the narrative on credentialing essentially focuses only credentialing through use of a position task book – which is generally only used for ICS positions.  While this is an important element of personnel qualifications, credentialing of personnel within ICS positions is not the only aspect of personnel qualifications.

Based upon the content of the NIMS Intelligence and Investigation function guidance published a few years ago, the NIMS refresh has officially decreed that the Intelligence and Investigations function will reside at the general staff level.  You might recall that the previous version of NIMS allowed for several options, including general staff, command staff, or imbedded within Planning or Operations.  While the flexibility of ICS is one of its greatest benefits, people didn’t seem comfortable with all those options.  It’s not to say those options still can’t be employed for incidents involving much smaller or potential criminal components, as the option of placing a technical specialist in any of those positions is still available.

Next up, the long awaited Center Management System (CMS).  To be honest, I’m not crazy about the name, and I’m not sure we need fully developed separate guidance on operations/coordination centers.  I feel that specific application of ICS concepts to an operations/coordination center should be kept simple and would be an addendum to the ICS portion of the NIMS document.  That said, the NIMS refresh has saw fit to include a whole section on the CMS as part of the revamped Management and Coordination component, so we’ll break down some of the highlights.  It’s important to note that the CMS is expected to be guidance and not a requirement.

While I can live with the introduction of a formal Center Management System, they have chosen to declare the title of the individual in charge of an operations/coordination center a Center Director.  If there is anything that I 100% disagree with in this document, it’s this title.  Let’s step back and look at the principles of ICS, which, thankfully ,the CMS is largely based upon.  From our common organizational terminology, we know that those in charge of facilities (which an operations/coordination center is) are called managers, not directors.  Directors are found at the branch level.  It’s for this reason I have always been in favor of the Center Manager title and will continue to be.

A positive about the CMS narrative is the important mention of a policy group, as a MAC concept, as those providing advice or direction to the Center Director.  Not only is the policy group a reality in many jurisdictions, inclusion of this in the CMS is an excellent compromise to those systems which centered on a policy group and operations group as their EOC organization.

Within discussion of the CMS, the NIMS refresh identifies primary functions or reasons a center might activate.  While they are headed in the right direction, they need their explanations to be a bit more inclusive of other options.  They only make a minor mention of the possibility of an incident actually being run from an operations/coordination center, such as a public health incident, which could be a departmental operations center or some type of a multi-agency operations center.  I just think this needs to be shored up some.  It should also be mentioned that EOCs may take primary responsibility for actions that are decided to be outside the scope of incident command, which may desire to remain focused on incident suppression activities.  Activities such as sheltering/mass care, evacuation, or assessment and evaluation may be run out of an EOC instead of an ICP.

Now on to the CMS organization.  Along with the Center Director, the NIMS refresh has tried to make several other positions distinct from their ICS counterparts (although not all of them).  While I certainly acknowledge that the focus of an operations/coordination center is often different than that of an ICP, I see little reason to change the titles of some of these positons.  I think this has more potential to add to confusion rather than detract from it.  While the command staff (yes, still being called ‘command staff’) positions have remained the same, the following has been identified as the CMS general staff positions:

  • Strategic Operations Section
  • Intelligence/Investigations Section
  • Information and Planning Section
  • Resource and Center Logistics Section
  • Finance/Administration Section

As for some of the specific language within the sections, there are some positives.  Two particular ones are the inclusion of ‘future planning’ within the Information and Planning Section, and the acknowledgement that in most EOCs, the Logistics Section/Resource and Center Logistics Section tends to handle tracking of resources.

There is additional and expanded information on the CMS found in Appendix B.  These show some different organizational arrangements, particularly within the Information and Planning Section and the Resource and Center Logistics Section.  All in all, I think these proposed arrangements are practical and a reflection of reality in most operations/coordination centers.  Well done.

Lastly, Communications and Information Management has included mentions of different reports which may be required, including flash reports, status reports, and situation reports.  This is a good reflection of reality. They have also listed important considerations for elements of essential information (EEI) (I’d love to see this list added to a field operations guide!), which must be constantly monitored for the maintenance of situational awareness, and they have bolstered the incident information portion of this component.  All great positives!  Interesting to note that the term ‘common operating picture’ has been significantly de-emphasized.

After reviewing this document, I’m overall encouraged with the direction NIMS is taking, although I obviously have some reservations.  I’m confident that, over time, the kinks will shake out as they have done with other aspects of NIMS.  I’m looking forward to some of the other changes that will spin off of this central document, such as new planning guidance and training.

As always, I’m interested in your feedback on my ideas as well as your own reactions and analysis of the NIMS refresh.

Thanks for reading!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions – Your Partner in Preparedness

“No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy”

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 2 Comments

This quote is credited to a German military strategist named Helmuth von Moltke, who served in several wars in the mid-1800s.  He had a certain theory of war, understanding that several strategies must be identified in planning, as it is difficult to ascertain exactly what will happen after first contact with the enemy.  What can we in emergency management learn from this?

First off, we should all recognize that it’s a rare occasion that anything goes according to plan.  That is a reality which we must identify as a foundation of our planning efforts.  These realities are part of our planning assumptions.  In essence, we simply don’t know exactly what will happen, when it will happen, where it will happen, or what the impacts will be.  We also can never be completely certain about the resources we will have available to us to respond.

Based on these planning assumptions, we should not count on our plans working from the moment an incident occurs.  Very simply, there is always some catch up that we need to account for.  Most importantly, we need to gain situational awareness to determine the scope and magnitude of the incident.  Once we have a reasonable degree of situational awareness (often we never know everything we would like to), we can start making decisions as to how we will respond.  These decisions should be guided by our plans.

Our initial response – what we do when we first run in approach, assess, and begin our initial life saving measures – may not have a solid plan, but the foundation of it does follow a certain algorithm.  Many disciplines, especially the traditional first response ones, often underscore the importance of a scene size up.  While this varies a bit based on our respective disciplines and the nature of the incident, the common themes involve seeking answers to the usual questions – who, what, where, when, why, and how.  As we begin to gain answers and process this information, we request and assign resources.  Our initial response is often unorganized.  We don’t know all there is to know about the incident.  We don’t have all of our resources readily available.  Mentally we are overwhelmed with information, trying to process everything quickly.  Eventually, though, we should begin to transition into our planned response, bringing order to the chaos.

While emergency and incident management isn’t war, there are certainly a number of parallels that can be drawn.  While von Moltke’s statement is often cited in our profession, devaluing the plans we create, I think the perspective of those who cite it is wrong.  We should not intend for our plans to be implemented immediately upon occurrence of an incident.  Rather than sticking a square peg into a round hole by trying to immediately apply our plans, our initial response should deliberately guide us to our planned response.

One of the chief elements of our plans is our organization – the incident command system (ICS) or incident management system (IMS).  Our ability to properly implement our plans is predicated on our ability to manage.  In a complex incident, one person cannot handle all the elements and tasks.  Delegation is necessary and ICS/IMS is the organizational model we should be following.  It is through our incident management organization that we manage resources, hopefully in accordance with a plan, which helps us to manage the incident.  The transition to managing the incident instead of responding to the incident can be a difficult one to make, especially for those not experienced with larger incidents.  Much time can be wasted resisting or struggling through this transition.  The transition, however, is a conscious and deliberate effort.  It won’t happen automatically.  It must be managed.

I’ve referenced in previous blog posts Cynthia Renaud’s paper “The Missing Piece of NIMS: Teaching Incident Commanders How to Function on the Edge of Chaos’.  Much of what I’m talking about in terms of managing our ICS/IMS through the transition of initial response into our planned response has also been cited by Chief Renaud.  The bottom line is that we can do better in our core ICS/IMS training to aid our incident managers in making this happen.  Much ICS training seems to have dropped the essential concept of scene size up/assessment, or simply glosses over it.  How can you make decisions about how to manage the incident if you don’t know what’s going on?  It’s also a rare occasion that ICS training has much mention of the planned response.  The focus is on incident action planning, which is certainly needed to guide us through tactical application, but courses often fail to indicate the indispensable reference of emergency plans when identifying objectives and strategies.  This is a clear disconnect in our preparedness efforts and must be fixed.  We can do better.

If you haven’t yet heard of my crusade to improve our current state of ICS training, there are a number of articles I would direct you toward.  Check them out here.

Of course I’m always happy to hear what you think – comments are welcome!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC – Your Partner in Preparedness!

Don’t Just Take It From Me – There are Issues with ICS Training

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

The February 2016 edition of the Domestic Preparedness Journal highlighted, among other things, some concerns with ICS training in the United States.  First off, if you aren’t subscribed to the DPJ, you should be.  It’s free and they offer good content, with few extraneous emails beyond the journals.  Check them out at www.domesticpreparedness.com.

The specific article in this issue I’m referencing is Incident Command System: Perishable if Not Practiced, by Stephen Grainer. Mr. Grainer is the Chief of Incident Management Systems for the Virginia Department of Fire Programs.  Steve has a significant depth in ICS and understands all the nuances of preparedness and application.  I first met him when serving on the national NIMS steering committee with him several years back.

The title of the article is a bit deceptive – it’s not just focused on the issue of the training being perishable.  Right up front, Mr. Grainer, who is a longtime supporter and advocate of ICS, outlines a few shortcomings and constraints related to the application of ICS and ICS training.  He states that “little attention has been given to developing the students’ ability to recognize an evolving situation in which more formalized implementation of the ICS should be undertaken”.  This underscores one of my main points on the failings of the ICS curriculum.  We teach people all about what ICS is, but very little of how to use it.

After giving a few case studies that reflect on the shortcomings he highlighted, Mr. Grainer expresses his support for continued training, refresher training (something not currently required), and opportunities to apply ICS in ways that public safety and emergency management don’t do on a regular basis.  He summarizes by stating that not only does training need to continue to address succession and bench depth, but also the need to address how to maintain competencies and address misunderstandings in NIMS/ICS.

Yes, training does need to continue, but it must be the RIGHT training!  We continue doing a disservice by promoting the current ICS courses which fall well short of what needs to be accomplished.  Mr. Grainer’s mention of the need for our training to address better implementation of ICS, particularly beyond the routine, is perhaps a bit understated, but nonetheless present.  Refresher training also needs to be incorporated into a new curriculum, as these skills are absolutely perishable – particularly the aspects of ICS typically reserved for more complex incidents.

In the event you aren’t familiar with my earlier posts on ICS and my crusade for a better curriculum, check out these posts.  As I’ve said before, this isn’t a pick-up kickball game… this is public safety.  We can do better.

Shameless plug:  Assessments, Planning, Training, Exercises.  Emergency Preparedness Solutions does it all.  Contact us to find out how our experience can benefit your jurisdiction’s or organization’s emergency and disaster preparedness.  We are your partner in preparedness.  www.epsllc.biz.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

ICS: Who doesn’t need it?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 16 Comments

In a recent discussion thread, someone shared some material for a new program that promotes resiliency for disaster housing.  While the intent of the program is good, there was one thing that struck me – it stated that it was based on the incident command system (ICS).  My question – why?

ICS is a great system.  It’s proven to be effective WHEN APPLIED PROPERLY.  That’s the catch, though, isn’t it?  A great many after action reports (AARs) identify areas for improvement relative to various facets of ICS after incidents, events, and exercises.  The organizations that the AARs are usually focused on are professional response organizations – fire, police, EMS, public works, public health, emergency management, etc.  These are organizations that generally get LOTS OF PRACTICE in applying ICS.  So what’s the problem?

The problem is that most organizations that do use ICS don’t get enough practice in applying ICS beyond smaller incidents.  So if responders, who are using ICS, have difficulty with expanded application despite some practice and more advanced training, how are organizations who don’t use it all expected to be able to remember it much less apply it properly on even the most basic of incidents?  (More on my issues with ICS training here, in case you’ve missed posts over the last year or so.)

So back to the main topic of this post – who doesn’t need ICS training?  I would suggest that those persons and organizations that don’t fit the broad definition of responders DON’T NEED IT.  While this may be blasphemous to some, consider the time and effort wasted on getting people trained to understand ICS who will NEVER USE IT.  “But what if they do need it?” you ask?

I’m challenged to really find that need.  Why does the management of an apartment complex need to know or understand ICS?  I find the thought of that foolish and wasteful.  Sure, they can be a partner in disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.  Does that make them a responder?  No. Will they become part of the ICS organization?  NO!  Is there any reason why they would need to use ICS to manage their own organization?  NO!!! They manage their organization every day through what should be a very effective model for them.  Why the hell do we want to change that?  We need to stop pushing our complex shit on other people who don’t need it.

I’m of two thoughts on this… One, there are people who are so gung-ho over including everyone under the sun into emergency management that they feel compelled to bring them into the profession.  News flash people – if they wanted to be emergency managers, they would.  There is no practical reason for them to be trained in the vast complexities of emergency management.  Two, there are people who don’t really understand the applications of emergency management themselves, and therefore try to make adaptations of the system for every variety of stakeholder out there.  This is something I’ve struggled with very often as people try to adapt ICS to their organization and, in doing so, change the foundational principles of ICS (span of control, terminology, organizational structure, etc.).  Further, every organization thinks they have an INCIDENT COMMANDER.  STOP!!!

ICS is not for everyone.  I’m not being elitist or exclusionary, I’m being practical.  That’s not to say that certain stakeholders shouldn’t at least be familiar with what it is, but still not every stakeholder or partner, and they certainly don’t need to know how to actually apply it.  For many, simply having a point of contact with certain departments or through the 911 center is enough.  Certainly if some have an interest in it they can ask, or take a class either in person or online.  (I would never withhold a training opportunity from anyone.)  This should certainly give them enough to satisfy their curiosity.

Along with my crusade to make better ICS training for responders (even non-traditional ones), I would suggest that we need to do a better job of advising other organizations about how they interact with the system.  Simply throwing ICS training at them DOESN’T WORK.  It creates false expectations and generates more confusion.

So please, fire away with your thoughts.  Who do you think shouldn’t have ICS training?  What would you change about the current ICS training model/requirements? 

Shameless plug time: Need ICS training or training in other areas of emergency management?  How about meaningful and practical emergency plans you can actually implement?  Exercises to test those plans and give staff an opportunity to practice implementing plans?  Emergency Preparedness Solutions can help!  Link to info below!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Failed Attempts to Measure NIMS Compliance – How can we get it right?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

Yesterday the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report titled Federal Emergency Management Agency: Strengthening Regional Coordination Could Enhance Preparedness Efforts.  I’ve been waiting for a while for the release of this report as I am proud to have been interviewed for it as a subject matter expert.  It’s the second GAO report on emergency management I’ve been involved in through my career.

The end game of this report shows an emphasis for a stronger role of the FEMA regional offices.  The GAO came to this conclusion through two primary discussions, one on grants management, the other on assessing NIMS implementation efforts.  The discussion on how NIMS implementation has thus far been historically measured shows the failures of that system.

When the National Incident Management System (NIMS) was first created as a nation-wide standard in the US via President Bush’s Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 5 in 2003, the NIMS Integration Center (NIC) was established to make this happen.  This was a daunting, but not impossible task, involving development of a standard (lucky much of this already existed through similar systems), the creation of a training plan and curricula (again, much of this already existed), and encouraging something called ‘NIMS implementation’ by every level of government and other stakeholders across the nation.  This last part was the really difficult one.

As identified in the GAO report: “HSPD-5 calls for FEMA to (1) establish a mechanism for ensuring ongoing management and maintenance of the NIMS, including regular consultation with other federal departments and agencies and with state and local governments, and (2) develop standards and guidelines for determining whether a state or local entity has adopted NIMS.”

While there was generally no funding directly allocated to NIMS compliance activities for state and local governments, FEMA/DHS associated NIMS compliance as a required activity to be eligible for many of its grant programs.  (So let’s get this straight… If my jurisdiction is struggling to be compliant with NIMS, you will take away the funds which would help me to do so????)  (the actual act of denying funds is something I heard few rumors about, but none actually confirmed).

NIMS compliance was (and continues to be) a self-certification, with little to no effort at the federal level to actually assess compliance.  Annually, each jurisdiction would complete an online assessment tool called NIMSCAST (the NIMS Compliance Assistant Support Tool).  NIMSCAST ran until 2013.

NIMSCAST was a mix of survey type questions… some yes/no, some with qualified answers, and most simply looking for numbers – usually numbers of people trained in each of the ICS courses.  From FEMA’s NIMS website: “The purpose of the NIMS is to provide a common approach for managing incidents.”  How effective do you think the NIMSCAST survey was at gauging progress toward this?  The answer: not very well.  People are good at being busy but not actually accomplishing anything.  It’s not to say that many jurisdictions didn’t make good faith efforts in complying with the NIMS requirements (and thus were dedicated to accomplishing better incident management), but many were pressured and intimidated, ‘pencil whipping’ certain answers, fearing a loss of federal funding.   Even for those will good faith efforts, churning a bunch of people through training courses does not necessarily mean they will implement the system they are trained in.  Implementation of such a system required INTEGRATION through all realms of preparedness and response.  While NIMSCAST certainly provided some measurable results, particularly in terms of the number of people completing ICS courses, that really doesn’t tell us anything about IMPLEMENTATION.  Are jurisdictions actually using NIMS and, if so, how well?  NIMSCAST was a much a show of being busy while not accomplishing anything as some of the activities it measured.  It’s unfortunate that numbers game lasted almost ten years.

In 2014, the NIC (which now stands for the National Integration Center) incorporated NIMS compliance questions into the Unified Reporting Tool (URT), including about a dozen questions into every state’s THIRA and State Preparedness Report submission.  Jurisdictions below states (unless they are Urban Area Security Initiative grant recipients) no longer need to provide any type of certification about their NIMS compliance (unless required by the state).  The questions asked in the URT, which simply check for a NIMS pulse, are even less effective at measuring any type of compliance than NIMSCAST was.

While I am certainly being critical of these efforts, I have and continue to acknowledge how difficult this particular task is.  But there must be a more effective way.  Falling back to my roots in curriculum development, we must identify how we will evaluate learning early in the design process.  The same principal applies here.  If the goal of NIMS is to “provide a common approach to managing incidents”, then how do we measure that?  The only acceptable methodology toward measuring NIMS compliance is one that actually identifies if NIMS has been integrated and implemented.  How do we do that?

The GAO report recommends the evaluation of after action reports (AARs) from incidents, events, and exercises as the ideal methodology for assessing NIMS compliance.  It’s a good idea.  Really, it is.  Did I mention that they interviewed me?

AARs (at least those well written) provide the kinds of information we are looking for.  Does it easily correlate into numbers and metrics?  No.  That’s one of the biggest challenges with using AARs, which are full of narrative.  Another barrier to consider is how AARs are written.  The HSEEP standard for AARs is to focus on core capabilities.  The issue: there is no NIMS core capability.  Reason being that NIMS/ICS encompasses a number of key activities that we accomplish during an incident.  The GAO identified the core capabilities of operational coordination, operational communication, and public information and warning to be the three that have the most association to NIMS activities.

The GAO recommends the assessment of NIMS compliance is best situated with FEMA’s regional offices.  This same recommendation comes from John Fass Morton who authored Next-Generation Homeland Security (follow the link for my review of this book).  Given the depth of analysis these assessments would take to review AAR narratives, the people who are doing these assessments absolutely must have some public safety and/or emergency management experience.  To better enable this measurement (which will help states and local jurisdictions, by the way), there may need to be some modification to the core capabilities and how we write AARs to help us better draw out some of the specific NIMS-related activities.  This, of course, would require several areas within FEMA/DHS to work together… which is something they are becoming better at, so I have faith.

There is plenty of additional discussion to be had regarding the details of all this, but its best we not get ahead of ourselves.  Let’s actually see what will be done to improve how NIMS implementation is assessed.  And don’t forget the crusade to improve ICS training!

What are your thoughts on how best to measure NIMS implementation?  Do you think the evaluation of AARs can assist in this?  At what level do you think this should be done – State, FEMA Regional, or FEMA HQ?

As always, thanks for reading!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Management: Coordinating a System of Systems

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

Emergency management, by nature, is at the nexus of a number of other practices and professions, focusing them on solving the problems of emergencies and disasters.  It’s like a Venn diagram, with many entities, including emergency management, having some overlapping interests and responsibilities, but each of them having an overlap in the center of the diagram, the place where coordination of emergency management resides. That’s what makes the profession of emergency management fairly complex – we are not only addressing needs inherent in our own profession, we are often times doing it through the application of the capabilities of others.  It’s like being the conductor of an orchestra or a show runner for a television show. It doesn’t necessarily put emergency management ‘in charge’, but they do become the coordination point for the capabilities needed.

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This high degree of coordination depends on the functioning and often integration of a variety of systems.  What is a ‘system’?  Merriam-Webster offers that a system is a “regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.”  Each agency and organization that participates in emergency management has its own systems.  I’d suggest that these broadly include policies, plans, procedures, and the people and technologies that facilitate them – and not just in response, but across all phases or mission areas.  Like the Venn diagram, many of these systems interact to (hopefully) facilitate emergency management.

There are systems we have in many nations that are used to facilitate components of emergency management, such as the National Incident Management System (NIMS), the Incident Command System (ICS) (or other incident management systems), and Multi-Agency Coordination Systems (MACS).  These systems have broad reach, working to provide some standardization and common ground through which we can manage incidents by coordinating multiple organizations and each of their systems.  As you can find indicated in the NIMS doctrine, though, NIMS (and the other systems mentioned) is not a plan.  While NIMS provides us with an operational model and some guidance, we need plans.

Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) help us accomplish a coordination of systems for response, particularly when written to encompass all agencies and organizations, all hazards, and all capabilities.  Likewise, Hazard Mitigation Plans do the same for mitigation activities and priorities.  Many jurisdictions have smartly written disaster recovery plans to address matters post-response.  We also have training and exercise plans which help address some preparedness measures (although generally not well enough).  While each of these plans helps to coordinate a number of systems, themselves becoming systems of systems, we are still left with several plans which also need to be coordinated as we know from experience that the lines between these activities are, at best, grey and fuzzy (and not in the cuddly kitten kind of way).

The best approach to coordinating each of these plans is to create a higher level plan.  This would be a comprehensive emergency management plan (CEMP).  Those of you from New York State (and other areas) are familiar with this concept as it is required by law.  However, I’ve come to realize that how the law is often implemented simply doesn’t work. Most CEMPs I’ve seen try to create an operational plan (i.e. an EOP) within the CEMP, and do very little to actually address or coordinate other planning areas, such as the hazard mitigation plan, recovery plans, or preparedness plans.

To be successful, we MUST have each of those component plans in place to address the needs they set out to do so.  Otherwise, we simply don’t have plans that are implementation-ready at an operational level.  Still, there is a synchronicity that must be accomplished between these plans (for those of you who have experienced the awkward transition between response and recovery, you know why).  The CEMP should serve as an umbrella plan, identifying and coordinating the goals, capabilities, and resources of each of the component plans.  While a CEMP is generally not operational, it does help identify, mostly from a policy perspective, what planning components must come into play and when and how they interrelate to each other.  A CEMP should be the plan that all others are built from.

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I’m curious about how many follow this model and the success (or difficulty) you have found with it.

As always, if you are looking for an experienced consulting firm to assist in preparing plans or any other preparedness activities, Emergency Preparedness Solutions is here to help!

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Emergency Management – Who Knows About Your Plans?

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 1 Comment

In emergency management and homeland security we put a lot of emphasis on planning.  Plans are important, afterall.  We need to take the time to identify what our likely hazards are and how we will address them.  But what happens when the plan is complete?  We congratulate members of the planning team and send them final copies.  Those copies get filed electronically or end up on a shelf, a trophy of our accomplishment and hard work.  Congratulations!

So… that’s it?  Is that all?

NO!  Of course not!  People need to be trained to the plan.  “Trained?” you ask.  Yes – trained.  Not just sent a copy and told to review it.  Let’s be honest, here.  Even assuming the highest degree of dedication and professionalism, many people simply won’t give it the time and attention it needs.  Very quickly the plan will get buried on their desks or the email will become one of dozens or hundreds in the inbox.  Even if they do give it a look through, most will only give a quick pass through the pages between meetings (or during a meeting!), not giving much attention to the details in the plan.

How effective do you expect people to be?

Sports analogy – when a coach creates new plays, do they simply give them to the players to become familiar with and expect proficiency?  No.  Of course not.  We’re all familiar with the classic, if not cliché, setting of the coach reviewing plays on a chalk board with the players in a locker room.  That’s training.  Then after that training, they go out in the field and practice the plays.

Back to our reality… The first real step of making people familiar with the plan is to review it with them.  This usually doesn’t need to be a sleep inducing line-for-line review of the plan (unless it is a detailed procedure), but a review of the concepts and key roles and responsibilities.  In fact, that’s who you invite to the training – those who are identified in the plan.  This is likely to include people in your own agency as well as people in other agencies (emergency management, after all, is a collaborative effort).  In states with strong county governments, we often see county-level emergency management offices creating plans that dictate or describe the activities of local governments and departments.  Most often, the local departments have no awareness of these plans, much less receive any training on them.  I’m guessing that plan won’t work.

Once you’ve trained these key stakeholders, be sure to conduct exercises on various aspects of the plan.  Exercises serve not only to validate plans, but to also help further familiarize stakeholders with the plan, their roles, and expectations of others.  When we plan, we tend to make many assumptions which exercises help to work through.  Through exercising we also identify other needs we may have.

Need help with planning? Training? Exercises?  EPS can do it!  Link below.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC 

 

Updating ICS Training: Identification of Core Competencies

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

The crusade continues.  ICS training still sucks.  Let’s get enough attention on the subject to get it changed and make it more effective.

If you are a new reader of my blog, or you happened to miss it, check out this post from last June which should give you some context: Incident Command System Training Sucks.

As mentioned in earlier posts on the topic, the ICS-100 and ICS-200 courses are largely OK as they current exist.  Although they could benefit from a bit of refinement, they accomplish their intent.  The ICS-300 course is where we rapidly fall apart, though.  Much of the ICS-300 is focused on the PLANNING PROCESS, which is extremely important (I’ve worked a lot as an ICS Planning Section Chief), however, there is knowledge that course participants (chief and supervisor level responders) need to know well before diving into the planning process.

First responders and other associated emergency management partners do a great job EVERY DAY of successfully responding to and resolving incidents.  The vast majority of these incidents are fairly routine and of short duration.  In NIMS lingo we refer to these as Type IV and Type V incidents.  The lack of complexity doesn’t require a large organization, and most of that organization is dedicated to getting the job done (operations).  More complex incidents – those that take longer to resolve (perhaps days) and require a lot more resources, often ones we usually don’t deal with regularly – are referred to as Type III incidents.  Type III incidents, such as regional flooding or most tornados, are localized disasters.  I like to think of Type III incidents as GATEWAY INCIDENTS.  Certainly far more complex than the average motor vehicle accident, yet not hurricane-level.  The knowledge, skills, and abilities applied in a Type III, however, can be directly applied to Type II and Type I incidents (the big ones).

It’s not to say that what is done in a car accident, conceptually, isn’t done for a hurricane, but there is so much more to address.  While the planning process certainly facilitates a proactive and ongoing management of the incident, there are other things to first be applied.  With all that said, in any re-writing and restructuring of the ICS curriculum, we need to consider what the CORE COMPETENCIES of incident management are.

What are core competencies?  One of the most comprehensive descriptions I found of core competencies comes from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, which I summarized below.  While their description is largely for a standing organization (theirs), these concepts easily apply to an ad-hoc organization such as those we establish for incident management.

Competency: The combination of observable and measurable knowledge, skills, abilities and personal attributes that contribute to enhanced employee performance and ultimately result in organizational success. To understand competencies, it is important to define the various components of competencies.

  • Knowledge is the cognizance of facts, truths and principles gained from formal training and/or experience. Application and sharing of one’s knowledge base is critical to individual and organizational success.
  • A skill is a developed proficiency or dexterity in mental operations or physical processes that is often acquired through specialized training; the execution of these skills results in successful performance.
  • Ability is the power or aptitude to perform physical or mental activities that are often affiliated with a particular profession or trade such as computer programming, plumbing, calculus, and so forth. Although organizations may be adept at measuring results, skills and knowledge regarding one’s performance, they are often remiss in recognizing employees’ abilities or aptitudes, especially those outside of the traditional job design.

When utilizing competencies, it is important to keep the following in mind:

  • Competencies do not establish baseline performance levels
  • Competencies support and facilitate an organization’s mission 
  • Competencies reflect the organization’s strategy; that is, they are aligned to short- and long-term missions and goals.
  • Competencies focus on how results are achieved rather than merely the end result. 
  • Competencies close skill gaps within the organization.
  • Competency data can be used for employee development, compensation, promotion, training and new hire selection decisions.

So what are the CORE COMPETENCIES OF INCIDENT MANAGEMENT?  What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) that drive organizational success in managing and resolving an incident?  Particularly for this application, we need to focus on WHAT CAN BE TRAINED.  I would offer that knowledge can be imparted through training, and skills can be learned and honed through training and exercises; but abilities are innate, therefore we can’t weigh them too heavily when considering core competencies for training purposes.

All in all, the current ICS curriculum, although in need of severe restructuring, seems to cover the knowledge component pretty well – at least in terms of ICS ‘doctrine’.  More knowledge needs to be imparted, however, in areas that are tangential to the ICS doctrine, such as emergency management systems, management of people in the midst of chaos, and other topics.  The application of knowledge is where skill comes in. That is where we see a significant shortfall in the current ICS curriculum.  We need to introduce more SCENARIO-BASED LEARNING to really impart skill-based competencies and get participants functioning at the appropriate level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Aside from the key concepts of ICS (span of control, transfer of command, etc.), what core competencies do you feel need to be trained to for the average management/supervisor level responder (not an IMT member)?  What knowledge and skills do you feel they need to gain from training?  What do we need a new ICS curriculum to address?

(hint: this is the interactive part!  Feedback and comments welcome!)

As always, thanks to my fellow crusaders for reading.

© 2016 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Preparing to Use the Incident Command System

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 4 Comments

For a bit of context, if you haven’t already read them, please take a look at these other ICS related articles I’ve posted:

Incident Command System Training Sucks

ICS Training Sucks… So Let’s Fix It

Preparedness – ICS is Not Enough

The crusade to improve ICS training and implementation continues…

We invest a lot of time and effort into training people in the use of the Incident Command System (ICS).  However, as a broad statement, the training we provide is massively inadequate.  We don’t actually train people to do anything – we simply tell them about ICS through an increasingly repetitive and complex series of courses.  At the risk of being repetitive myself, I refer you to the articles linked above for many of my foundational thoughts on the current state of ICS training.

The ICS core training curriculum aside, we – as both individuals and organizations – need to be better prepared to actually use ICS.  The thought that people are able to use ICS the minute they walk out of an ICS course is totally and completely false.  By ‘use ICS’, I don’t mean to simply function within an organizational chain of command that uses ICS, I’m referring to being a driving force within the system itself.  ICS isn’t something that happens automatically, it requires deliberate and constant actions.  This typically involves functioning at the Command or General Staff levels, but also within many of the subordinate positions which are absolutely critical to managing a complex incident and driving the system.

So how do we prepare to use ICS?  I often refer to the preparedness capability elements of POETE (Planning, Organizing, Equipping, Training, and Exercising) when I’m talking about preparedness activities.  These same concepts apply here.  We need to remember that planning is the foundation of all preparedness efforts.  If it’s not documented, then why are we doing it?  So we have to have plans, polies, and procedures which call for the implementation of ICS and direct us in the nuances of how we will manage an incident.  I’m sure everyone’s plan has taken a page from the NIMS Doctrine and includes language about the requirement to use NIMS and ICS.  That’s all well and good, but like many things in our plans, we don’t reinforce these things enough.

I’m not talking about simply giving NIMS and ICS lip service.  I’m talking about procedure level integration of these concepts.  This begins with good planning, which means plans that are implementation-ready.  Would you consider your plans implementation-ready?  Do they describe how to use the ICS structure and concepts to actually implement the plan?  Maybe yes, maybe no.   If not, your team has some plan updating to do.

Your organization must be ready to respond using ICS.  That means that everyone is familiar with their assigned roles and responsibilities.  Often ICS training falls short of this.  This article: Training EOC Personnel – ICS is Not Enough, details many of the reasons why, at least for an EOC environment.  Many of the points made in the article, however, can be reasonably applied to other environments and organizations.  While ICS provides us with overall concepts, the application of those concepts will differ for various organizations and locations.  Every location, county, region, and state have different protocols which must be integrated into incident management practices.  (Refer back to planning).  Our organizations, both those that are static as well as those which are ad-hoc (assembled for the response to a particular incident or event) need to be ready to act.  This means familiarity not only with ICS or our specific applications of it, but also with our plans.  How often do ICS courses actually talk about the implementation of emergency plans?  Rarely.  Yet that’s what we are actually doing.  Do you have people assigned to ICS roles?  Are they ready to take on the responsibilities within these roles?  Do you have backups to these positions?  I’m not necessarily talking about a formal incident management team (IMT), although that may be suitable and appropriate.  Absent an IMT, the responders within a jurisdiction or organization should have a reasonable expectation of the role/roles they will play.  This helps them and your organization to be better prepared.

The implementation of ICS generally doesn’t take much equipping, but there are some basics.  Responders love radios and we use them often.  How about people who aren’t traditional responders, but may be called on to function with your ICS organization?  Do they know how to use a radio?  Do you have a standing communication plan to help you implement their use?  How do you track incident resources?  I didn’t just ask about fire service resources – I mean all resources.  Do you have a system for this?  T-Cards are great, but take training and practice to use them – plus they require that all responders know their responsibilities for accountability.  The same goes with a computer-based solution.  For whatever equipment or systems you plan on using, you must ensure that they are planned through and that people are very familiar with how to use them.

Training… I think I’ve talked about the need for better ICS training quite a bit, so I’m not going to continue with that point here.  What I will mention is a need for refresher training and jurisdiction-specific training on incident management.  This isn’t necessarily ICS focused, but it is ICS based.  For many years now, FEMA has believed that by including three slides on NIMS in every training program that they are helping with NIMS compliance.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  You have to actually talk about how these concepts are key to implementing plans.  Responders need to be familiar with the emergency management system they are working within.  Train people to the plans and procedures.  Let them know who is in charge of what and when, who the decision makers are, and any other training needs identified in the earlier POETE activities.  Prepare them to implement ICS!

Lastly, exercises.  Incident management should be something that is practiced and tested in almost every exercise.  Applying these concepts is not something we do on a regular basis, therefore knowledge and skills erode over time.  Certainly we have to be familiar with the system, not just at an awareness level but at a functional and operational level.  Regardless of the state of the current curriculum, that involves practice.  Exercises don’t have to be elaborate, remember that they can range from discussion-based to operations-based.  Table top exercises are great to talk things through, drills are good for focused activities, and even full-scale exercises can be small and contained.  So long as the exercise is designed, conducted, and evaluated well, that’s what counts.  Don’t forget that evaluation piece.  The feedback to the entire system (plans, organization, equipment and systems, and training) is extremely important to continued improvement.

This is public safety, not a pick-up kick ball game.  We can do better.

Thanks for listening… what are your thoughts?

Does your organization or jurisdiction need help preparing to implement ICS?  Emergency Preparedness Solutions can help!

© 2015 – Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC

Musings of October – and the Crusade to End Bad ICS Courses

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Last month sure was a busy one!  Much of the focus was on marketing for our company Emergency Preparedness Solutions.  I had the opportunity to meet a number of county and local government representatives in a reverse trade show in the Poconos and see some old and new faces at the Vermont Emergency Preparedness Conference.  Pictures of our booth are below.  I also had the opportunity to present with their State Training Officer on the State-Wide Emergency Management and Homeland Security Training Needs Assessment project we completed for the Vermont Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security a few months ago.  We also need to congratulate Doug Babcock for being honored as Vermont’s Local Emergency Manager of the Year!

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While those trips were great, the highlight of the month was a trip to Toronto.  The impetus for the trip was the Emergency Preparedness staff of Public Health Ontario, who, after reading my blog posts on the necessity for improvements in Incident Command System (ICS) training, extended an invitation for me to sit in on some training they offer that came about from just that need.  The course I attended was Public Health Emergency Preparedness – An IMS-based Workshop.  Fear not – this is not a reinvention of ICS (or Incident Management System – IMS – as they refer to it in Canada), rather this is an enhancement to the current curriculum.

The Canadian provinces have each adopted curricula for their IMS which are near 100% mirrors of the ICS courses we use here in the States.  While in Toronto, I also had the opportunity to sit in for a bit on an IMS-200 course being conducted by the Toronto Office of Emergency Management.  They were great hosts and have made excellent enhancements to the curriculum for a Toronto-based audience.  (Thank you Sherry and Sarah!) The course offered by Public Health Ontario is truly workshop based, with little lecture and a lot of group work to walk participants through concepts of IMS.  The workshop is positioned between IMS-100 (which most took online) and IMS-200, and is public health focused.

While I’m often weary of discipline-specific courses in emergency management, since the essence of emergency management is cooperative, this workshop absolutely made sense.  Why?  Two big themes built the foundation for this… First, practitioners must be comfortable with their own sand box before they can play with the neighborhood kids.  Second, this particular application works for public health (and several other disciplines) because most of the public health response occurs at the population level, not necessarily at an incident site.  Because of this, public health will almost always function (at least the higher echelons of their incident management structure) from an emergency operations center or departmental operations center.  As such, it pays to invest some training time on a homogeneous audience.  That said, the scenarios that drove the workshop were in no way introverted only to public health concerns and the instructors encouraged thought and discussion toward other activities and associated agencies which would be involved in an incident.

With the positioning of this training between IMS-100 and IMS-200, Public Health Ontario has armed participants with better knowledge and familiarity of the IMS, allowing those who will progress through further (and multi-disciplinary) training a better perspective of how IMS is applied by public health which allows for a better understanding of the system itself.  Not only does the workshop address some internal incident management training needs for public health, it also addresses some of the issues I’ve mentioned previously with ICS training as a whole.  The workshop is expertly designed by the Emergency Preparedness team at Public Health Ontario, and embraces concepts of adult educational methodology which we need to pay more attention to.  The high level of interaction lends to improved transfer of knowledge and better outcomes.  They included information such as the phases of emergency management and the need to reference deliberate planning efforts such as Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) and Continuity of Operations Plans (COOPs).  This is certainly something we don’t have enough of in ICS courses yet is critically related.  Do you think the majority of our attendees know what these are, much less what is in theirs?  Guess again!

More information on this workshop can be found at https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/About/Departments/Pages/Incident-Management-System-for-Public-Health.aspx.  Many thanks to Moira, Richard, and Evanna for the invite and the hospitality!

With my road trips complete, I am returning back to the normal pace of work and preparing for another graduate course which begins next month.  I’ve also considered the need to ramp up my concern on this matter of poor ICS curricula from an occasional rant to a crusade.  This is a matter of public safety – from a sociological perspective there is nothing more important than our ability to effectively respond to save lives, stabilize the incident, and preserve property.  Let’s make some changes!

As always, many thanks to my readers; and if you are with a government entity, not for profit, or private interest that is seeking consulting services in the areas of emergency and disaster planning, training, exercises, and anything in between, please feel free to contact me.

© Timothy Riecker

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC