Rotating the Training Officer

[nate99z]

We have the same Health & Safety Director and the same Safety Specialist for each regional office who do most of the in-house training. Howerver, we try to reach out, every other year or so depending on $$$, and bring in instructors from other areas including out of state folks to freshen things up. It has also helped us to stay on top of technologies, tactics, or trends that are going on or are being developed in other states and regions.

[benford1]

The idea of rotating training officers can cause a little bit of a problem in the department, just like changing a Chief every year can be a problem. There needs to be some kind of continuity in the training division of the department. I was the training officer of a combination department of 30 members for 6 years. In January, another Captain took over the reigns. Luckily, he has the same mentality toward the training as I did. In fact, I probably couldn't have hand-picked a replacement any better.

Point is, if at all possible, keep the same training officer as long as possible if they are doing the job right. If they decide they don't want to do it any more, let them be a part of selecting a replacement.

[FabJody]

Hello Crazycap
This is in regards to your post on rotating training officers not a bad idea but be careful that you don't get two conflicting methods of doing one thing. What I mean by that is you have one training officer telling the firefighters that they need to a task one way and the other training officer telling them not to do it that way. Doing monthly tests is not a bad idea I do that for my department and I have found that some have lost the basic firefighting methods. we train twice a month what i do is have a test let's say in july for the material that was covered in June.

[CRAZYCAP]

Wanted feedback from the forum on the following. Our department is without a permanent Training Officer. (3 stations, approx. 40 folks, all paid). Our former Training Officer said he got burned out and wanted to return to the line. A brand new Captain replaced him, and rumor has it he will only be there short term, and all captains will rotate through that slot. Since this guy has been in there, we have been taking monthly tests, some fill in the blank, to ensure that we are conducting the assigned training each month. Thoughts please!