Fire service innovation
personnel to work in high risk situations. This is all undoubtedly exciting, but do we get the feeling that these are just examples of incremental innovation of the kind that enables FRSs to do the same things better, faster and cheaper? Does this tech rich future view presuppose that the world is going to look much as it does today, just with better technology? The big question is about the long term impact of the collisions of technology with other global forces on the way firefighting services are delivered. What are the new challenges going to be and how could we anticipate them? What could be the new opportunities for FRSs to leverage their assets and capabilities to achieve different societal goals? Let’s create a scenario: improvements
in materials science, structural engineering, and detection and response technology mean that fire can be ‘engineered to a safer minimum’ in new buildings. Overlay this with a world where new market entrants acquire and develop the same – and possibly better – capabilities and professional competencies as FRSs, and open them up to private clients who have the means to pay for them. On the one hand, you might have a world
where insurers want their preferred partners to intervene directly instead of FRSs, or where those who can pay for superior service choose that option. That means that other
service users – the most vulnerable – will rely more heavily on FRSs, which themselves would be thinned out by long term underinvestment and an inability or unwillingness to change. If it weren’t already the case, fire then becomes the symptom of a host of even more complex social problems.
Facing the future
So how can an FRS put itself in a superior position to prepare for the future? Firstly, let us be clear that it’s difficult to do this in any organisation that has a long history and has a very specific view about what it does. Also, it is hard for that organisation to experiment and innovate when it has a primary and very demanding mission to keep human beings safe. But we would suggest that FRSs can do three things: 1. Scan the horizon for signals of change and be open to them, no matter how extreme or unusual they may be. What’s coming down the track that you can’t – or prefer not to – acknowledge? What are the black swans, or even the black elephants, that we sort of recognise but prefer not to address? Scenario planning of the kind pioneered by Shell is a useful tool. Overlaying it with futures thinking – bringing multiple perspectives and
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www.frmjournal.com APRIL 2020
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