UFBA Kōrero Executive Leadership Team Panel 2021
Fire and Emergency’s Executive Leadership Team (ELT) took the opportunity to engage with UFBA’s members at this year’s Kōrero series.
The Korero series was held in place of an in person conference due to the ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was the same approach as taken last year to ensure an engagement opportunity was not lost with UFBA’s valued members.
Fire and Emergency’s full ELT and Board Chair took part, discussing a range of topics of interest to volunteers. Question and answer time was made available throughout the 90 minute session, offering the best opportunity for people to engage about key issues or queries. Unsurprisingly, there was keen interest and discussion about COVID and mandatory vaccinations. Also high on the agenda was the establishment of the new Behaviour and Conduct Office and what was happening with fleet.
Board Chair Rebecca Keoghan welcomed everyone, acknowledging the contribution of our volunteers. She reflected on what an extraordinary year it has been due to COVID and the effects of significant weather events as well as the progress the organisation is making as it continues to develop into one unified entity. She was followed by Rhys Jones, our Chief Executive, who outlined the focus for the evening’s discussion and introducing the full panel of ELT.
The following topics were covered specifically in order of speaking:
| Speaker | Focus |
| Rhys Jones | Introductions, general reflections |
| Kerry Gregory | COVID, mandatory vaccinations, Tranche , Lake Ohau report release |
| Brendan Nally | Volunteerism (support, capability build, development, recognition) |
| Raewyn Bleakley | PWC, establishment of BCO, pathways to engage with BCO, Hiwa i te Rangi programme |
| Daryl Purdy | Information about volunteer demographics, incident support and our financial investment in volunteers |
| Russell Wood | Fleet, property, maintenance programme, Covid Response and Recovery Fund and Christchurch rebuild programmes, firefighters illumination capability (head torches), Mobility, AMS. |
A number of questions were answered by ELT on the night. A full outline of the responses given on the night and prepared after the event is provided below:
You can watch the video of Fire and Emergency’s Korero panel discussion here.
Questions and answers
Below is the full list of Q&A, segmented by the particular branch they relate to and whether they were answered on the night.
Can qualifications gained from other training organisations be cross referenced to a brigade member? Example of this is a chainsaw qualification gained through AgITO yet member is still required to do a two day course to obtain NZQA recognition to be able to use the chainsaw on our truck.
We currently manage this through our Recognised Prior Learning process, which is considered on a case by case basis. Fire and Emergency recognises a lot of prior learning with a procedure and application form available on the portal under Recognised Prior Learning.
It’s important to note that Fire and Emergency doesn’t award the Chainsaw unit. It’s not our buzz. Pardon the pun. We don’t have the accreditation to do that. We do recognise other chainsaw qualifications. The question is if I get a qualification from somewhere else, why do I have to do a longer Fire and Emergency course. The reason is NZQA is a minimum standard to get a qualification. In many cases the standards required by emergency services for risky situations are much higher.
Please also note there are some delays. NZQA providers take about a month to upload data into the system. This is why it takes qualifications some time to come through.
What will happen to everyone that is not going to get vaccinated. Will we still have a place in the Fire and Emergency structure to do firefighting under the new scheme or other community support work. We have five out of our seven firefighters that will not be getting vaccinated including myself.
If we go from the first step when we didn’t know the vaccination status of anyone, we were not required to understand it. There was a big push to understand the vaccination status of our people. As much as anything that’s not just about how to comply with legislation, but also so we can assess our operational capability across the country.
There are a couple of stations across the country, some of our smaller stations in some quite remote places, where we are going to struggle with the numbers in those brigades. We are looking closely at all of those brigades and looking at the surrounding brigades to see if they have the surrounding capability to support them. That’s the planning that we’re really deep into at the moment. Understanding for each and every brigade across the country how big the impact is on those brigades and where we’ll support those brigades that potentially may not be able to operate if we haven’t got enough vaccinated people to deploy for us there. A lot of work going on there in that area.
NB Update: Personnel covered by the Health Order were required to have had their first COVID-19 vaccination by 29 November, and will be required to have their second by 14 January. We have been working with those people have that decided to remain unvaccinated to determine potential next steps for them.
How are you working with other emergency service around COVID preparedness?
As most people will be aware, when the Fire and Emergency NZ Act came out, one of the strong themes was for the Fire Agency to come out as a more powerful agency, be a much stronger influential player in that wider emergency sector. That builds on the engagement that already occurs at every station level, every district level, its already there.
It was deliberately our decision to align our district boundaries with Local Government and Civil Defence boundaries to strengthen our relationship with our partners. As part of that, I as the Chief Executive sit on the Emergency Sector Leadership Board and have been chairing that for about the last two years. That brought us a lot closer together at the top, and during the COVID period of last year in particular, we did a lot of work at that working group level to make sure we are aligned with our Emergency partners, particularly the two ambulance services, Police, Defence as well as Civil Defence and Ministry of Health.
Since Fire and Emergency was formed there has been a lot of strong moves to engage quite heavily with our major partners, and Kerry Gregory heads the operational leadership group of that sector. This is really making sure we can co-respond in a much stronger way and that we are mutually supporting. That we are talking about where the contingences are and how we deal with those things. So, right from the start one of the major drivers has been to strengthen our engagement to really focus on what each community needs and how, collectively, do we think about how we respond to those communities. I am proud that we have always been doing that, but we can always improve and strengthen that, particularly at the higher layers.
Just to finish off there is a mantra that we are using in terms of that co-support that we are going through and that is, we, as well as ambulance services and the Police, are the major work force of the civil defence system. All of us are focused on how we support communities and to do that we need to engage the community, to find out what their risks are, what their needs are, how they envision recovering from incidents and how do we prepare ourselves. A lot of that is about Risk Reduction in the first place. Remember our vision – stronger communities protecting what they value, not about Fire and Emergency. It’s about those communities, and to do that we need to work really strongly with our emergency services partners.
What has the impact on FENZ been because of businesses being hit by COVID?
We see the impact of COVID on businesses in at least a couple of ways in Fire and Emergency. In our levy, which is 97% of our revenue and our revenue is somewhere around the $600 million mark, and also in the supply of goods and services. So when we look at our levy it certainly has been disrupted. We see in small to medium-sized businesses they are paying a lot less levy, but actually we have seen in larger businesses and in capital works, which take the form of contract works insurance, we have seen those actually being higher than they have previously.
Overall, while we have had quite a bit of variability in the levy up and down, much more than we used to, over a financial year its actually stayed pretty much on track and we have been able to meet our budgets. Even this year for the year to date, we haven’t seen much of an impact of the lockdowns in August and September and the continued lock down in Auckland over the last few months really impacting our levy. We are slightly ahead of budget at the moment so while we see variability and differences in the way levy is made up, we haven’t seen it impact our levy overall. We are very grateful for that. We do see it also in our expenditure, in the supply of goods and services. We are seeing, as our volunteers might be seeing in their businesses, logistics and supply slows, which has slowed some of our projects and our ability to get things done. We have also seen quite a bit of price escalation as well, particularly in the construction area and our property and station construction. While we see that coming through we haven’t actually been able to do as much as we want to. We haven’t spent as much as we could, so fiscally we see the impacts, but it hasn’t had an adverse effect on Fire and Emergency to date. This means we are well placed to move through this period where COVID is affecting the whole of New Zealand.
Will Brigades that were in Level 3 and had their Medical Co-Responder Refresher postponed due to COVID have their expiry dates pushed out so all the Brigade members don’t go Red Light and after 3 Months at Red Light they will have to do the 2 Day course again.
In normal time the OSM i.e. the red lights is there as a tool to assist the brigades to manage their training and to ensure our people maintain their skills. This is COVID time and nothing is normal, so we apply some discretion. We know that brigades in level 3 have not been able to train because we haven’t delivered it to them, so that would mean that that discretion applies. Someone in my team will write a really specific answer to that (see below). We apply discretion because the COVID world has upset the normal process. Also, we are currently negotiating with our suppliers on the medical co-response training so there’s a number of difficult elements in this.
NB additional info as noted above: Normally we have two years between our co-responder refresher training. This is in line with Work Safe advice on maintaining first aid qualifications, but also aligns with our reporting requirements for St John on NZQA unit standards. Further to that two year gap between refreshers, we also have an extra three months grace period where people in exceptional circumstances can attend a refresher course and remain current. This provides some flexibility for people who cannot attend a course within the two-year timeframe for reasons such as illness or injury, or bereavement.
With the recent resurgence of COVID-19, an extra three months has been applied to this timeframe now, meaning that if people meet certain criteria, such as being current in their training prior to a cancellation due to COVID-19, or being booked on courses that have been affected by COVID-19, then they now have a total of two years and six months to attend a recertification. This does not apply to people whose currency may have lapsed already prior to any COVID-19 cancellation and is being managed on a course-by-course or case-by-case basis. We are working closely with our staff at NTC and St John to ensure that anyone that is affected through no fault of their own (such as a course cancellation due to COVID restrictions) is not unfairly impacted.
I'm interested in how FENZ is going to show support to the role of Operational Support across NZ - there's nearly 2000 Op Support within the FENZ pool of volunteers. When will OSM for OS be set up nationally? When will structured training for ranks beyond OS-FF be made available?
Thank you and thank you to all the Ops support out there, the owners of the best jackets in the organisation I must say. OSM is one part of the question and the structured training package is the other. I will start with the structured training package. Currently we have an Ops support training package that covers 12 modules which are the basic requirements of Ops Support. It’s a well utilised course and the next course for that programme is in May 2022. Please get your nominations in if you have people you want on that course. Probably what is not as well-known is we also have the Ops support Officers in Charge of the units. They have access to the Volunteer Executive Ops programme and once again that is a great programme. I encourage you to be involved in it.
The specific question though, about what we are doing, when will structured training be made. The team are working on developing an advanced Ops support course. That’s in the pipeline and on our radar as part of our leadership development framework.
The second part of question is the OSM for Ops support. OSM is at the end of life at the moment, and we are busy preparing a case for a complete revamp of OSM, because not only does it not cover Ops support, it also isn’t set up to facilitate the needs of our natural environment firefighters. So, we have a need there to revamp the OSM. Whatever that looks like it will be there to capture the needs of all of firefighters, whether they are there in a front line Ops support role or Natural Environment.
When will the New SDPPP be available that aligns with the COVID-19 Protection Framework (Traffic Light System)
The SDPPPs will stay with us until the Traffic Light System comes in. We still don’t have a definitive line from the government as to when that will come into effect. Sitting in my inbox at the moment is the latest version of what the traffic light system will look like, as far as how our SDPPPs will relate to that. So we will move from the current SDPPPs in that alert system to align with the traffic light system and we expect they will be ready to roll out when the country moves to the Traffic Light System.
NB – The government announced on 29 November that the country would move to the new Traffic Light System on 3 December. Other information is available on the Portal(external link) about what the transition to the new Traffic Light System will entail.
What is the plan moving forward to get the tanker fleet up to a standard that is a more acceptable level, than the standard we have out there today.
When Fire and Emergency was created the Fleet team went out and surveyed all known tanker locations to make sure they were compliant. To be frank, there were some overloading issues. Historically, the repurposing of milk tankers for example had created issues. That’s the first thing, to make sure those vehicles were compliant. We are building new tankers now to a standard and they will be a good quality. But I think you are referring to the older fleet that is out now and I think the first question that we need to ask is what are our requirements in terms of numbers and distribution and location of those tankers. That will take a bit of time to work through as we work through our resourcing decision making and options. II know that fleet in terms of the new builds going forward will be built to a quality standard, and then we will assess the risk or exposure we might have in terms of aging tankers out there.
I don’t have an immediate solution, but it is something we are mindful of.
Can appliance allocations and resultant cascades, across all the appliance types, be kept a bit more accurate and updated on the Portal.
The Fleet team does its best on this. You might appreciate there are various moving parts to it and sometimes other things get in the way. The conversations we are having with some brigades now, such as a type 1 replacing a type 2, we don’t want to put something out there too fast and then find its wrong or incorrect and we have to pull it down and do it again. They do their best and will continue to do that to keep information as current as possible.
COVID
Is there any likelihood of Op Support being brought onto the 'traffic light system', for the purpose of IO's etc apart from them showing as 'grey' all the time? (I realise this 'may meet some resistance' from other Op Support personnel)
All personnel are able to complete OSM tasks under the new COVID-19 Protection Framework protocols (traffic light system). See section 4.3 of the Service Delivery COVID Protection Framework.
Why has Fire and Emergency not issued every firefighter with a reusable face mask with fire safety messages printed on the front, you have missed 14,000 opportunities for promoting our fire safety messages to the public?
We appreciate the suggestion. In this instance we were trying to get masks distributed as quickly as possible, so kept it simple. There were also further issues to do with the actual space on a mask that we could use. That said, we’ll consider your suggestion for the future.
Why are the current COVID SDPPP's [not] designed and fit for purpose to suit composite fire stations? Will the new traffic light protocols be more suitable for composite stations?
As you’ll know, the SDPPPs are no longer in use and have been replaced with the Service Delivery COVID-19 Protection Framework (SDCPF). The SDCPF has been designed to be reasonably high level as we cannot provide detailed guidance for every station around the country, when their circumstances may be quite different. By not being overly prescriptive, we allow District management to make decisions about how the protocols are operationalised, as required.
What's your commitment to keeping Brigade leaders at the front of connecting with their teams on the issues of brigade membership if unvaccinated? Why are GM/DM leading conversations/emails not CFOs?
Data on unvaccinated brigade members has been provided to DMs and GMs for contingency planning and employment process purposes, and where required for the same purpose, GMs have shared this with CFOs. If you have any questions on this, please speak with your GM.
Will the new SDPPP cover Co-located Fire/ St John Stations that use all the same facilities, like engine bays, training rooms, toilets etc? Two organisations sharing the same facilities with different rules and SDPPPs does not work.
There are many variations to the way stations operate around the country and we cannot be overly prescriptive in our protocols as we don’t know the specifics of every location. In this situation, District Managers, working with brigade leaders, are responsible for liaising with organisations that we co-locate with and they will come to an arrangement that works for all parties.
OTHER
Why is it that Volunteers are unable to join USAR? Volunteers have a number of skills through their civilian employment for example logistics, planning etc. We are unable to bring these skills to USAR and also to our ROC where we can bring extensive experience and skills.
I acknowledge that volunteers do offer plenty of skills and are able and welcome to join USAR. However, it’s not often practical for volunteers to do so due to the flexibility and significant time commitment needed. For example, everyone joining USAR agrees to make themselves available for international deployments, which means being able to be on a plane within 10 hours’ notice. The standard deployment length is 14 days and the individual needs to be able to commit to this. There is also monthly training that needs to be attended as well as regular exercises. When these standard terms are laid out and taken into account, a lot of people realise that it’s not a viable option for them. However, volunteers are welcome to apply. A call for applications will be made in the middle of 2022.
Is it a Fire and Emergency policy to relegate composite station volunteer brigades away for second truck in their own area to third or fourth truck and then having to watch out of area career trucks respond into a composite station area while the volunteer truck sits on station.
There is not any national policy in place to relegate composite station volunteer trucks to a third or fourth truck. PDA’s and Beatlists for turnouts are managed by the Region based Planning and Performance Teams and based on the requirements of the District Managers who have final sign-off on the makeup of response plans.
I'm with a dedicated OS Brigade. We feel we're treated as second-class members of the team despite being told constantly that we're really valued. Why don't we have the same trauma kits that are on other fire appliances, including defibs? Is there a structured training programme coming for OS?
The initial roll out of co-response kits, including AED, was intended to be only for those brigades and vehicles that have the MED attribute assigned to them – meaning that when a request is put through by St John/WFA for a MED incident, the computer system will recommend which truck to send based on that attribute. Given these dedicated OS units are generally part of a larger urban brigade as described above, these vehicles will not be presented as they are a support appliance only and respond to assist frontline vehicles.
There is already a structured Operational Support training course that covers all the 12 basic operational support modules. The next available course is scheduled for May 2022. We also encourage the Officers in Charge or future OIC’s of Operational Support units to attend the Volunteer Executive Officer course.
We are currently considering the benefits of developing a more advance Operational Support course. Also, as we eventually move to a more flexible and modular training model, there will be a number of training modules available for Operational Support members to complete. At this stage there is no formal training programme for Operational Support.
The 21/22 Prioritisation decisions deferred the Volunteer Engagement Model. When will this become a strategic change priority that supports culture (as the Shaw review noted)?
The purpose of this project is to implement the intended direct volunteer relationship, through the design and implementation of a single replacement volunteer personnel engagement framework. This will amend or replace Urban Agreements of Service and Model Rules, and the Rural Fire Force Agreements and Constitutions.
A large amount of work has been progressed. Further work will happen after the overarching direction for Fire and Emergency’s relationship with volunteer brigades is considered by the Board.
In the meantime, it is important that all brigades continue to apply to the range of existing agreements and constitutions and transitional processes. Further updates will be placed on the Portal in the Volunteer Hub.
Looking into the future, volunteers are turning out to events/calls that last a number of hours or days. Is there any thought being given to paying these firefighters for these calls as we cannot expect employers to keep paying them, and in most cases they do not, so these fire fighters are going without wages.
We have established a project focused on reviewing the organisation’s policies and process for incident payments. This project will include long duration payments for volunteers. We are in the early stages of this project and expect to submit an indicative business case for this work to the Investment Panel in early 2022.
When a volunteer firefighter retires after 40 plus years they only get a gratuity pay out of a max 25 years. We as volunteers don’t ask for much, but someone that gives that much time to the brigade and their community should get a gratuity pay out to reflect their time of service.
Gratuity isn’t described in the current legislation, but those eligible for gratuity before the change in legislation will have their eligibility reserved There will be a discussion paper going to the Board on how gratuity will be managed under the new legislative framework and we’ll keep our volunteers updated on its progress.
Can we get a link for the recruit thing Brendan just discussed?? Is that new?
The Volunteer Life Cycle Research: Understanding the Volunteer Journey, was a three-year research project, starting in late 2018 and finishing in 2021. It aimed to explore the early experiences of volunteers and understand their decision to stay or leave the organisation. It focused on newly recruited volunteers (joining between December 2018 and December 2019), current volunteers (who joined between January 2015 and September 2018), and recently departed volunteers (who left between October 2019 and July 2020). We expect to publish the report, alongside similar research into career recruits, next year. In the meantime, a summary of the interim findings is available on the Portal(external link).
Will Brigades that were in Level 3 and had their Medical Co-Responder Refresher postponed due to COVID have their expiry dates pushed out so all the Brigade members don’t go Red Light and after 3 Months at Red Light they will have to do the 2 Day course again.
Normally we have two years between our co-responder refresher training. This is in line with Work Safe advice on maintaining first aid qualifications, but also aligns with our reporting requirements for St John on NZQA unit standards. Further to that two year gap between refreshers, we also have an extra three months grace period where people in exceptional circumstances can attend a refresher course and remain current. This provides some flexibility for people who cannot attend a course within the two-year timeframe for reasons such as illness or injury, or bereavement.
With the recent resurgence of COVID-19, an extra three months has been applied to this timeframe now, meaning that if people meet certain criteria, such as being current in their training prior to a cancellation due to COVID-19, or being booked on courses that have been affected by COVID-19, then they now have a total of two years and six months to attend a recertification. This does not apply to people whose currency may have lapsed already prior to any COVID-19 cancellation and is being managed on a course-by-course or case-by-case basis. We are working closely with our staff at NTC and St John to ensure that anyone that is affected through no fault of their own (such as a course cancellation due to COVID restrictions) is not unfairly impacted.
Why has the Standards of conduct policy workgroups stopped since April? Will this start again as this is important work for all members.
Work for the Standards of Conduct policy is still ongoing. We’re committed to completing this, but it’s important we do this well. To do that, we need to consult widely, which takes time. We are planning to go back to everyone we previously consulted in early 2022 for further feedback on the policy. In the meantime, if you’d like to get in touch with the team working on the policy, please email PositiveWorkplace@fireandemergency.nz
I still lack confidence in the BCO as a complaint that I laid appeared to be ignored and the person the complaint was against was appointed a Group Manager despite a large amount of evidence presented. It still appears that people are being protected by mates.
We’re sorry to hear this. Due to confidentiality, we don’t know the specifics of your situation, however, we would like to reassure you that the BCO takes all complaints very seriously and provides an impartial and transparent process that treats all parties fairly. The BCO would be happy to discuss your situation, in confidence, if you’d like to get in touch with them on 0800 470 951. If a volunteer is not satisfied with how the BCO has sought to resolve their complaint, our “Policy to address bullying, harassment and victimisation” sets out a number of further options available to them.
Can we get an updated fleet cascade plan? It is out of date from September....
An update is expected to be published before Christmas.
Will Fire and Emergency attend to the need for a national standard Operational Support Appliance? The Mitsi Canter "Ultralight" that was introduced in the late '90s as a '9' Light-Rescue vehicle has become standard for many OSU in NZ but these are now >20 years old. What happens as they die?
Our target life expectancy for most appliances is 25 years. We plan to develop a small range of “off-the-shelf” designs so that we have designs and contracts in place to replace the Ultralights once they reach their end of life.
Is it a Fire and Emergency policy to swap out type 3 trucks on Volly stations with TYPE 1's?
There is no policy to do this, however, it’s always appropriate to review appliance allocations if the risk profile in the area has changed significantly.
Hi, we have a 2-wheel drive tanker, how do we go about having it upgraded to 4 wheel drive tanker?
Questions regarding operational capability requirements should be discussed with your Group Manager in the first instance.
Is it correct that all firefighters are going to be getting helmet torches or something similar?
Approval has been granted for the issue of an appropriately specified (standardised) FIC (torch) as a one-time personal issue to Fire and Emergency operational personnel.
The FIC will be sourced and delivered in accordance with Fire and Emergency’s existing ‘introduction into service’ practices (a national rollout). We anticipate that rollout to occur progressively towards the end of this financial year and potentially early in the 2022/2023 financial year. The rollout timeframe takes into account formal procurement process requirements and the global supply and distribution challenges we are experiencing, caused in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, in sourcing an appropriate torch.
Why is it that the AMS project did not provide equipment for the rollout of the system. We received the hard drive/pc but no Screen either normal or touch and as a brigade we had to purchase our own touch screen?
The AMS project had neither scope nor budget for Station Displays. Everything that is displayed on a Station Display is viewable from the mobile device.
The project managed to get its hands on some second-hand computers that had come out of volunteer stations. Stations receiving AMS were given the choice of:
- No Station Display.
- A PC, with the choice to acquire own display (of their choice – small, large, touch screen etc). This was often in the form of an old TV someone had at home.
- A laptop, negating the need to purchase a display.
The project then went ahead and developed the web display that over 600 stations now enjoy on station.
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