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Round Table Revisited - July
In July, the Round Table question was: What steps does your department take to prepare future officers?Out of the 31 responses published, I found the following:
7 Departments used an "in-house" process that involved preparatory classes and a test.
7 Departments required specific college courses followed by a test
6 Departments did as mine did, you studied specific material on your own and then took a test
2 Departments required candidates to "act" in the next higher position
2 Departments required mentoring and or shadowing
2 Departments are in the process of developing a new process
1 Department requires candidates to work on administrative committees
1 Department required self study and then if the candidate passes the test, he or she received additional training
1 Department elected officers1 required in-house classes and mentoring
1 "other" which was hard to describe
Give me your comments.

Skip

posted by Skip Coleman
 7/27/2008 09:28:00 AM

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1 Comments:

Blogger George said...

Skip,

You are so very fortunate over there to have most officers rise through the ranks from hose handler, etc. onwards and upwards.
Here in Spain, there are several department chiefs and many senior commander who don't know the difference between flow and pressure.
In an open participation selection process for positions in the Spanish public fire services, a university degree in architecture, several engineering specialties or even teaching can qualify the holder for a command slot as a career public service employee, with all its associasted benefits, the most important being virtually lifetime employment.
As there are no fire science oriented university degrees here, the officers must obtain knowledge and experience on-the-job. There is only one Fire Engineer in the ranks of the some 2,500 Spanish fire officers, an equivilant to a Batallion Chief in the Basque region (his degree is from the Univ. of Edemburg, Scotland).
Fortunatly, there are many leaders at crew chief, station or shift command levels who HAVE come up from lower levels, and who have the "savvy" necessary to be real leaders.
Keep safe over there.

George H. Potter
Madrid, Spain

Wed Jul 30, 11:02:00 AM EDT  

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