The local business news paper wrote a article about the training services I provide to fire departments. What made it a challenge on my end was how to describe what I do so the general population can understand it. I have always found it difficult to describe to Chiefs and Training Officers exactly what makes my trainings different from others, here is a view from a different angle.

April 29, 2011 –

BOULDER — Throughout his 20 years in structural and wildland firefighting, Quinn MacLeod learned that a lot of hazards that endanger the safety of firefighters don’t come solely from the fires.

Instead, they are a result of poor communication and decision-making.

“The fire service teaches a lot about strategy and tactics but not so much about things like asking why we make particular decisions and how could we make better ones the next time,” MacLeod said. “It’s not touched on heavily until someone reaches the level of fire captain or lieutenant.”

Firefighter Quinn MacLeod’s Integrated Fire Solutions delivers training programs that focus on increasing firefighter safety. To date, he’s trained about 1,000 firefighters to reduce the number of life-threatening situations through structured decision-making and communication models. (Photo Jonathan Castner)

To fill that gap, in 2007 he opened Integrated Fire Solutions through which he delivers training programs that focus on increasing firefighter safety. The goal is to minimize human errors in emergency environments.

MacLeod’s classes focus on how to make good decisions and communicate vital information to co-firefighters when the heat is on, and the clock is ticking.

Out of the1.3 million firefighters, there are about 70,000 reported injuries every year, he explained. “And some of those are career-ending injuries.”

To date, he’s trained about 1,000 firefighters how to reduce the number of life-threatening situations through structured decision-making and communication models.

When addressing decision-making, MacLeod teaches workshop participants how to break down the process and adapt it to emergency situations.

He starts with discussing a simplified decision-making process: gather information, recognize need for decision, select course of action, make decision and evaluate results.

“At that point, the environment has changed so we’ve got new information and start the process all over again.”

In emergency situations, five barriers impact that process and can lead to human error, according to MacLeod. He categorizes them as stress, distractions, experience, physical barriers and social influences.

Preplanning to minimize the pitfalls of these barriers is the goal of his training.

MacLeod compares the stress barrier of poor planning to the experience of an unseasoned traveler.

“People who don’t travel a lot don’t necessarily know that arriving at the airport two hours early with a boarding pass in hand will reduce their stress.

“It’s those unplanned-for stressful experiences that cause people to walk off without their laptop or go to the wrong gate.”

For firefighters, something as simple as knowing how to lay out their gear in the back of a fire truck that’s racing to an emergency can reduce stress that could later impede their decision-making.

“I can’t remember anyone linking things like that together in the first ten years of my career,” MacLeod says. “Doing all these kinds of things help you operate better in an emergency situation.”

A social influence barrier that affects an emergency worker’s decision-making, is group think, according to MacLeod. “Bad group think is when the decision maker always makes decisions without getting input. What happens is that since the other people aren’t asked for input and therefore being engaged in the process, they stop taking in the environment, collecting information and passing it along.”

In training sessions, MacLeod teaches company officers to constantly seek input to keep everyone engaged and gathering information.

He teaches what he calls structured briefing — a formatted technique that could take 30 seconds to two minutes for meaningful, succinct communication.

“If people get into the habit of using the format, they’re more likely to exchange more information that increases their safety in a short amount of time.

“We didn’t look at things like that in my career and then wondered why things weren’t going so well,” he said. “We had all the information we needed but we were not properly sharing it.”

MacLeod integrated standard operating procedures from various high-risk disciplines to develop his program.

“Wildland firefighting agencies, for example, are regimented in briefing and in structure,” he said. “In structural fire disciplines, it’s not normally a formal process.”

Integrated Fire Solutions workshop rates average $1,250 a day and are taught in community colleges, through individual fire departments and at conferences. The classes bring in between $30,000 and $40,000 annually, according to MacLeod, who continues to do fire response work to road-check his material.

 By Elizabeth Gold, Boulder County Business Report