CFA: Fire Risk Management and Knowledge Sharing Strategies Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of fire risk management within the Country Fire Authority (CFA), focusing on improving training and communication among its 56,000 volunteers across 1,250 brigades in Victoria. The report identifies key issues such as knowledge sharing barriers due to cultural diversity, lack of horizontal and vertical communication, weak change management, data privacy restrictions, and technological skill gaps. To address these challenges, the report proposes three solutions: establishing an organization-wide communication system, implementing a change management system, and providing KMS training to all staff members. The implementation strategy involves phased training programs, departmental meetings, and mentoring to encourage adoption. The report includes a detailed cost analysis, value statements, and a rationale for the suggested tools, aiming to enhance the CFA's operational efficiency and value creation for its clients.

Running head: FIRE RISK MANAGEMENT
FIRE RISK MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................1
Overview of the situation:...............................................................................................................1
Aim:.............................................................................................................................................1
Identification of the issues (Step 1).................................................................................................2
Suggested tools (step 2) (Reccomendations):..................................................................................2
Tool 1 or solution 1: Organisation wide communication system:...............................................2
Tool 2 or solution 2: Formation of a organisation wide change management system:...............3
Tool 3 or solution 3: KMS training of all staff members:...........................................................3
Implementation of the suggested tools (step 4):..............................................................................4
Value statement:..........................................................................................................................5
Rationale of suggesting the tools:................................................................................................6
Approximate costing:...................................................................................................................6
Notes on budget (assumptions):...................................................................................................7
Findings from costing:.................................................................................................................7
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................7
References:......................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction:
Overview of the situation:
Communication plays the pivotal role in business organizations and national level
training programs. The paper would concentrate on an Australian national level training
programme called Country fire authority or CFA. CFA is a community based fire management
services in Victoria which operates under the supervision of the government. The main aim of
the body is to provide protection to people and property from fire (Cfa.vic.gov.au. 2019). Thus, it
is evident that the body plays a very crucial role in ensuring safety and security of the
Australians in the event of a fire. It can be pointed out that in order to extinguish fires and rescue
inhabitants trapped in fire the firemen require to maintain strong communication. The case study
provided about CFA on the contrast to the requirement to maintain continuous communication
among themselves, the members of the body did not maintain proper communication among
themselves. In fact, the lack of communication between the personnel of CFA was responsible
for as many as five problem or issues.
Aim:
The aim of the paper would be suggesting tools which would enable CFA to deal with the
five problems or issues. The paper would first discuss the issues in brief and then go on to
suggest three solutions. The solutions would involve all the districts and not only the
headquarters in Victoria. The solutions would stand on four pillars namely, knowledge sharing,
communication, change and technology management. The solutions would also enable better
utilisation of the existing knowledge management system and the database management system
of CFA, all aimed to enhance its efficiency. The suggested tools would be formation of an
organisation wide communication system, formation of an organisation wide change

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management system and KMS training of the staff. The communication system and the
training would also enhance diversity management among the staff.
Identification of the issues (Step 1)
The first problem was that volunteers of CFA did not share knowledge about fire fighting
among themselves. The 56000 volunteers CFA employed belonged to different cultures and
came from all over Australia and thus did share knowledge among themselves owing to the
cultural differences amongst themselves. In fact, the digital knowledge management platform
which CFA used namely, SharePoint did not operate properly. The second problem which CFA
suffered from was lack of communication between the staff both horizontally and vertically. The
third problem actually stemmed from the second problem. The third problem was that the lack
of communication culminated into weak change management in CFA. The fourth problem was
that the privacy policy in CFA was so strict that the staff were not able to use historical data
which in turn made secondary research required to deal with challenging situations difficult. The
fifth problem which CFA volunteers faced in fact escalated all the aforementioned issues, the
volunteers lack proper technological knowledge and the senior members aged over 46 years were
hostile to social media.
Suggested tools (step 2) (Reccomendations):
The following are the three suggested tools which would enable CFA deal with the
aforementioned issues both at the headquarters level and district level:
Tool 1 or solution 1: Organisation wide communication system:
The organisation wide communication system would aim at building up a strong
communication between the 56000 volunteers of CFA. As mentioned in the case study that the

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first problem CFA faced knowledge sharing problem. This was because the volunteers belonged
to different cultural groups and thus did not communicate with each other. This inhibited flow of
the acquired knowledge in between the volunteers and pieces of important information
eventually lost their values. The second issue mentioned in the case study was poor
communication between the personnel working at the headquarters levels. The tool of
communication system would enable CFA to counteract these two issues right at the grass root
level. The communication system would enable establishment of communication channels which
would enable employee communicate important information using different media right from
emails to teleconferencing to face to face meeting. The use of diversity management and cultural
management training would enhance the cultural intelligence among the volunteers. This would
enable CFA to establish a stronger communication channel between the volunteers by
transcending cultural differences.
Tool 2 or solution 2: Formation of a organisation wide change management system:
The headquarters of CFA both at the central and district level should form an
organisation wide change management system. The system would only implemented successful
implemented post successful implementation of solution 1. The change management system
would enable CFA deal with the third problem by aligning the employees with the organisational
change.
Tool 3 or solution 3: KMS training of all staff members:
The knowledge management system training or KMS training of all the staff members
and volunteers would strengthen the first two solutions. The KMS training would train the staff
maintaining KMS to manage the KMS in ways so as to enable the employees allow access to the
knowledge bases required for decision making. The KMS training would also include training of

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the senior employees operate internet and smart phones. All the employees and volunteers would
be able to access the data base by putting in their respective official email ids provided by the
body exclusively. Any breach in this respect would not be tolerated.
Implementation of the suggested tools (step 4):
The employees and employees of CFA should be encouraged to use to suggested tools
by holding meetings with them. It can be suggested that the apex management of CFA and the
district management bodies should launch a project to implement the three suggested tools. The
employees should be motivated to participate in the adoption of the tools. They should be made
to understand the essence of the tools in ensuring that CFA gains higher levels of effectiveness
and value creation for its clients. The apex managers should hold meetings with the departmental
heads and the departmental heads should hold meetings with their subordinates. The staff
members or volunteers expressing fear and insecurity about the outcome of implication of the
tools should be mentored separately. The employees and the volunteers should be informed
about the three tools and the positive outcomes of their effective implementation.
The project should be of continual nature divided into phases with each phase aim to
gain higher level of implementation of the solutions. The employees would be provided
compulsory training through each phase starting with phase 1. The content of the training would
be of preliminary levels in phase with increasing complexity with each successive steps. The
employees undergoing training would be monitored for 6 months before they undergo the
success phases of training. Employees showing inability to implement the tools post training may
retrained at the previous levels.

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Implementation of 3 tools
at CFA
The apex managers
should hold meetings
with the departmental
heads
Departmental heads
should hold meetings
with their
subordinates
Dealing with staff
fears/insecurities
Organisation wide
communication system
Basic
communication
training
Basic diversity
management
training
Group activities
involving all
participants
Basic
computer/electronic
communication
training
Role play/story
telling
Verbal
communication
training
Formation of a organisation
wide change management
system
Basic Change
management
training
Education about
importance of change
management and its
bdenfits
Group activities
involving all
participants
Basic computer
training
Role play/story
telling
KMS training of all staff
members
Basic KMS training
Basic database
management
training
Group activities
involving all
participants
Basic computer
training
Mock online
communication
Monitoring of
trainees
Reporting to apex
and district
management
Figure 1. Effective implementation of three solution
(Source: Author)
Value statement:
The aim of the solutions would be enhancing the performance of the employees so as to
help them in serving the clients of CFA better as to add value to the latter.

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Rationale of suggesting the tools:
The rationale behind suggesting the aforementioned tools is that each solution would
enable CFA to deal with one or more issues mentioned above. Tool 1 or organisation wide
communication system would enable the organisation counteract problems 1 and 2. Tool 2 or
organisation wide change management would enable the counteracting problem 3. The third
solution of KMS training of all staff would enable in management of issues 4 and 5.
Approximate costing:
Buget for phase 1 of implementation of three solution
Partculars Units Per unit
costs(A$) Total(A$)
Usages of budget: 1193880000
Organisation wide communication
system 397960000
Venue(months)(Note 2) 2 100000 200000
Trainers' salary (Note 1)(nos of
heads) 1120 100000 112000000
Telephone, internet 1 10000 10000
Refreshments for trainers and
trainees 57150 5000 285750000
Formation of a organisation wide
change management system 397960000
Venue(months)(Note 2) 2 100000 200000
Trainers' salary (Note 1)(nos of
heads) 1120 100000 112000000
Telephone, internet 1 10000 10000
Refreshments for trainers and
trainees 57150 5000 285750000
KMS training of all staff members 397960000
Venue(months)(Note 2) 2 100000 200000
Trainers' salary (Note 1)(nos of
heads) 1120 100000 112000000
Telephone, internet 1 10000 10000
Refreshments for trainers and
trainees 57150 5000 285750000

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Notes on budget (assumptions):
1. The total number of volunteers is 56000 (as mentioned in the case study). It would be assumed
that each training batch would consist of 50 trainees which means that total number of training
batches would be 56000/50=1120 batches. Thus, the numbers of trainers required to train the
batches would be 1120 trainers.
2. It would be assumed that there would be training for 5 days a week (except Saturday and
Sunday) which would mean that there would be 20 days of training in a month. Therefore the
time required to complete training of each solution would be 1120/20=56 days or approximately
2 months.
3. Number of trainee and trainer for refreshments =1120+56000=57120
Findings from costing:
The costing above shows that in order to implement the three tools, the costing would be
AS$ 1193880000.
Conclusion:
It can finally be concluded from the discussion that management of CFA should launch
projects to deal with the issues highlighted. It has also be pointed out that the apex management
body of CFA and the district management should hold meetings to create awareness among
employees to embrace the three tools discussed. The finance department should also prepare a
budget as show and present the same before the board to allocate funds.

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References:
Cfa.vic.gov.au. 2019. Cfa.vic.gov.au. [online] Available at:
https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/about/who-we-are [Accessed 19 May 2019].
Lydersen, J.M., Collins, B.M., Brooks, M.L., Matchett, J.R., Shive, K.L., Povak, N.A., Kane,
V.R. and Smith, D.F., 2017. Evidence of fuels management and fire weather influencing fire
severity in an extreme fire event. Ecological applications, 27(7), pp.2013-2030.
Palaiologou, P., Ager, A.A., Nielsen-Pincus, M., Evers, C.R. and Kalabokidis, K., 2018. Using
transboundary wildfire exposure assessments to improve fire management programs: a case
study in Greece. International Journal of Wildland Fire, 27(8), pp.501-513.
Thompson, M.P., y Silva, F.R., Calkin, D.E. and Hand, M.S., 2017. A review of challenges to
determining and demonstrating efficiency of large fire management. International Journal of
Wildland Fire, 26(7), pp.562-573.
Watts, J.M. and Hall, J.R., 2016. Introduction to fire risk analysis. In SFPE Handbook of Fire
Protection Engineering(pp. 2817-2826). Springer, New York, NY.