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Permalink Reply by Allen Wahlstrom on January 3, 2008 at 7:35pm

Proceedures are FIRM rules'

Guidelines are mostly up for interpretation.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on January 3, 2008 at 9:50pm

Within the last couple of years we extensively revised and expanded our SOPs, only to have our "lawyer" tell us they are "crap". As Allen said "Procedure" means you have to do it, while "guidelines" (which the learned colleague prefers) are more flexible and really less liable to be taken apart in court. I personally like "PROCEDURE" because it doesn't leave an out; but then again I've never been taken to court. I don't see how you can "suggest" that someone wear PPE, for instance.

Call them what you will, our subjects include:

Response safety
Vehicle safety
Use of SCBA
Vehicle Fires
Use of PPE
Personal Flotation devices
Junior and Restricted Active firefighters
Incident Command
Mayday Procedure
Accountability
Carbon Monoxide Alarms
Gas Leaks
Confined Space Operations
Medevac Operations
Drug-Free Workplace
Sexual Harassment

We hand out copies to all members. On the last page there's a signature page that is signed and returned to the Chief as a record of each member reading/acknowledging the SOPs.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on January 5, 2008 at 12:24pm

Joe,

I appreciate the reply. I am arguing uphill with the elders on my VFD about what should be strict adherence and what should be follow this... but you have room to adlib as needed for the situation.

Like you said PPE should be policy...procedure. But I think incident command requires great flexibility.

That said, could you go through the various subject you provided and give me opinion on SOP vs SOG?

Thanks for all the help,

Mike

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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on January 5, 2008 at 4:18pm

Mike, I can only give you my opinion on this, but here it is.

Response safety, Vehicle safety, Use of SCBA, Mayday Procedure, Accountability, Confined Space Operations, Use of PPE, Personal Flotation devices - how can you have "suggested" "guidelines" for any of these topics? If all firefighters everywhere adhered strictly to the rules governing these areas, the number of LODDs would drop way down.

Incident Command - someone has to be in charge, and our SOP only states that the first officer on scene take command until relieved by a superior officer.

Drug-Free Workplace, Sexual Harassment - These are mandated by the government and are common sense to most people anyways. Most, but not all, thus the SOPs.

Vehicle Fires, Carbon Monoxide Alarms, Gas Leaks, Medevac Operations, Junior and Restricted Active firefighters - I agree that these could be guidelines or preferred operating methods, as opposed to hard procedures.

I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever been sued, or even to court; so I can't say I appreciate the legal difference between procedures and guidelines. In my mind, safety is paramount; safety procedures have to be in place to foster safety, and procedures have to be followed and enforced to ensure safety. Guidelines allow wiggle room:

"Hey Fred, where's your bunker gear?"
"Oh, I left it at home, Chief. I'll be okay, nothing ever happens to me."
"All right Fred, just take out those windows and be careful not to get hurt."

We should call them LAWS, not procedures or guidelines.

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Permalink Reply by Engineco913 on January 5, 2008 at 9:53pm

This is a great method, that my department has as well. They are eliminating the word procedure because of lawsuits. If someone doesn't follow the procedure to a 100%, they are liable for lawsuit, their command staff, training officer(s). Its a mess. If you use the word guideline, theres an out clause not so much for the firefighters, but for the people who are a thorn in our sides

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Permalink Reply by ILDisasterEMT on January 6, 2008 at 5:17am

Under ICS, SOG (Standard Operating Guidelines) are general rules which can be flexible and adapted to the given situation, though to a certain extent, the same could be said for ICS itself.

SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) on other hand tend to be more carved in stone and formally set down in an IAP (Incident Action Plan). There is alot less deviation from SOP.

For example, an SOG for your Fire Department for a MCI might be that we try to contact ever single Fire Fighter on the department. Well yes, but your racing against the clock so if you know so and so is probably out of town or is not able to respond because he blew out his knee playing rugby, you can skip him on the call out list (or assume that his pager is off and he wont hear the tones anyway). Another SOG might be that once you have established the size and nature of the incident, you begin to decide whether you need assisting or co-operating agencies and if so what agency do you generally call first, do you base your call for mutual aide on their apparatus inventory, etc. See what I mean? Its a little more flexible.

An SOP, on the other hand, would be: its a Friday night. We have 12 firefighters, EMTs, etc in the house. The tone drops and your dispatcher tells you that you have a mass casualty incident involving an overturned train possibly containing anhydrous ammonia. Your SOP for your agency might be that the first call you make is ALWAYS to the chief to check his ETA and whether he is coming to the station or will arrive on scene and then you ALWAYS (for this type of incident) call your nearest department with tactical level HazMat operators.

I hope this makes sense.

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Permalink Reply by ILDisasterEMT on January 6, 2008 at 5:34am

This is also happening in my area where the word "procedure" is being replaced with "policy." One thing that I have on my side is that I am on the medical reponse team for the Illinois Department of Public Health and we work like a M*A*S*H* unit so what we do comes directly from their EMS (IDPH) protocols and from our medical director who is always with us on MCI deployments. I gotta say its nice to be able to walk up to your medical director on a scene and say "Hey Doc, should I do this?" Takes out a lot of the guess work and you spend a lot less time sitting in court.

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Permalink Reply by Mike on January 6, 2008 at 8:19pm

Apparently I was not specific enough in what I was looking for... although I seem to have alot of agreement on SOP and SOG terminology.

I am looking for my colleagues' opinion on different subject to be SOP/Gs. I would also like opinion on whether the subject (ie... Incident Command) should be classed a Procedure or Guide.

Not to say that the other input was not useful. I am in full agreement that everything should be guideline until you get that "give them an inch" fire fighter. Firing people in the volunteer service is alot harder than you would think.

Thanks to all and hope everyone had a safe weekend

Mike

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Permalink Reply by Art "ChiefReason" Goodrich on January 7, 2008 at 12:52pm

EVERYTHING is a "guideline. (SOG) You have to include some flexibility, latitude and ambiguity in their wording.
Why? Because if you make them so strict and structured, then if they are followed to the letter and the end result isn't appropriate, a jury will shred you to pieces. It will also take any hope of developing good officers away, if they are not allowed some flex in their decision-making. There has to be a Plan B if Plan A goes the Murphy Way.
You need to write them so that at every level in your fire department, leadership is not stifled by them.
TCSS.
Art

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Permalink Reply by mike wright on January 7, 2008 at 10:11pm

In our department we have a sog for the most incidents we run on. This may change with every department. This may be something for you to look at in your department. We took the top calls and made sogs on them and some of the other ones also. If this is more what you are looking for then good if not sorry.

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