Mission Staff School

[isuhawkeye]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

i have been tasked with putting together a Mission Staff School.  I will have approximately 16 contact hours of instruction, and I need to get crews on track to function as senior Mission Planners, OPS Chief's, and IC's.  What tools, and tricks do you have to pass on to the new managers?

[IceNine]

Biggest thing is for everyone to know their role and stay within their scope.

Planning-designs the first operational period, and then moves on never changing the current ops period, only the next ones.

Op's- is in charge of the current op's period as designed by planning, they are not planners, and should not attempt to interpret information themselves.

The IC's is a manager of other managers, and should only be making direct in line decisions when asked to do so, or when upon inspection he feel's that the best course of action has not been chosen.

As long as people are not stepping on eachothers toes, and trying to micromanage the mission tends to be more productive

[ZigZag911]

First step is to require ICS 200 as a prerequisite.

That will assure that everyone is at least somewhat familiar with ICS system beyond what is mandated for GES

Secondly, I'd also have a 'pre-course' session on "how the other half lives".....orienting those who strictly fly  to ground team work, and vice versa.

[floridacyclist]

I would at least include a review of ICS100 / 200 / 700 since there is so little quality control of folks taking the online course. Many of them took it with no real idea in their heads of how to apply it.

[arajca]

Since your talking about the movers and shakers at an incident, I would require ICS-300. The section chiefs need to have a good understanding of how ICS works and ICS 300 is a scenario driven course - you actually do the planning, logistics, ops for a SAR mission with multiple agencies involved (USDA version). FEMA provides other scenarios you can use, but the priciple is the same - learn by doing in a safe environment. ICS 300 is typically a three day course.

To me, it sounds like you're planning a Senior MBSS - senior meaing the high ups in the base staff. Time management skills are crucial, as is proper utilization of resources. Emphasis the big picture - keep the folks out of the weeds. Base staff shouldn't be micromanaging the field personnel. That was the biggest challange we had at the Inland SAR School. Most of us are (or want to be) on the front lines. Changing that mindset is difficult. Whoever is leading the school will need to keep an eye on this habit and cut it off at the knees.

[Al Sayre]

^^ What he said.  In addition, don't do it as a "CAP members only" class.  They need to go and attend the class with the State and County and Local EMA managers etc. (Wear blues or BDU's)  This has several advantages. 

1.)  It gets the word out about CAP, every time I have attended, they have all wanted to know what our capabilities are and how to get access to them.

2.)  It puts a face to the organization, and lets the CAP people meet and work withy the folks who they wiill be working with in a real event.

3.)  It also lets the CAP people learn what the EMA folks do and can do for us in an emergency.

4.)  It's a great networking opportunity, take plenty of business cards and some recruiting brochures.  We've got some of the County EMA managers as members now, so we get an early heads up when things happen  -  before the NOC ofr AFRCC usually.

[Eclipse]

Forget the structured FEMA curriculum - why "reinstruct" something better taught elsewhere.
If anything require these be completed prior to your school.

What you need to do is dissect the last few "good" and "bad" exercises with people you respect
who have informed opinions, and then discuss the >why< things didn't work, and the >how< to
fix it.

I agree the "first hours" need to be addressed in detail, that is generally where most missions die.

Don't expect to bring new members in and make them base staff in two days - your success will
depend on being selective on attendees.

[isuhawkeye]

Thanks guys, 

One of the problems Identified in a wing strategic planning meeting is the fact that we have such a small number of IC's.  The goal of this course will be to fulfill the basic requirements to begin training in these specialties.  I have spent much of my recent career encouraging members to attend external training, espe4cailly the senior ICS courses. 

Since NHQ has required such a limited skill set for senior staff members I think I will teach the skills that are necessary to complete the required skills. 

Thoughts???

[ZigZag911]

Yes, walk before you can run!

In other words, work diligently at training really good AOBDs and GBDs, (if you have some of them with experience to begin with, your starting off well) and build from there...and realize that you can't 'fast track' a well-trained IC....it is going to take two to three years doing it properly, allowing trainees to garner at least minimal experience in the intermediate positions....don't view this as lost time, all the experience gained in the process contributes to the overall development and performance of the IC.

Make sure that your IC candidates have at least two years (I'd say 10-12 missions or exercises) field experience, either ground or air, before starting mission management training.

[isuhawkeye]

Thanks for all of the input,  Now how about tricks of the trade.  I want to instill these students wiht all of the little files, and add ons that I can find.  What do you have. 

[Al Sayre]

Take a look here: http://mswgemergencyservices.googlepages.com/toolsandinstructions

I've complied a bunch of pretty useful links for us...  Also, the NDWG website has a lot of useful stuff as well as http://cap-es.net/

[SJFedor]

I have a copy of this past year's NESA curriculum for all the schools, GSAR, MAS, and ICSS. You may or may not be interested in the ICSS materials. If you are, let me know, I'll get you a copy.

[isuhawkeye]

I would love to see it.  thanks

[DogCollar]

Forget the structured FEMA curriculum - why "reinstruct" something better taught elsewhere.

Unless I miss your point, it is essential to receive the FEMA training.  NIMS is going to be the "law" that rules multi-agency incidents, FEMA provides the "official" training, and if CAP wants to be a part of the incident response it will need to have people trained in the NIMS structure.  There is no other option.

[IceNine]

Let me go ahead and go out on a limb here and try to explain good old eclipse.

What he is saying is that if people want to be involved at a higher level in the ES program they do need to have these courses.  But why spend a limited amount of pre-set time intended to train people the way WE do things. 

We would be better off coordinating with an agency that is already teaching these courses (local ema, police, fire, etc) and then focusing on CAP specific tasking and procedure for the CAP training of the course.

Much too often we spend time getting people trained up in prerequisites and far too little time working on the advanced tasking.

Plus it is not too much to ask for people to come prepared for a higher level of instruction, especially if the training is being coordinated for them

[Short Field]

What tools, and tricks do you have to pass on to the new managers?

Cover the basics of each position and show them how to do thing - espeically with the IMU.  Then set up a scenario that provides them with lots and lots of tasks.  Don't try to overload them or trick them (well, maybe once or twice), just provide lots of realistic taskings and events to keep them cranking out things.   Repetition is really needed to become comfortable with something.  Also plan in pauses to go over how they are doing and identify areas they need to work on - then start up again to let them work on it.    You might want to start-up, operate, then shut down mission base several times - just so they know how to do it.

No one is ever going to perform just like you would have performed.  However, their decision process needs to be valid - Everyone can have an opinions but we have to share the facts.

The mechanics for each positon at mission base should be firmly understood by all.  That means the software programs, information flow, and most importantly, how and when to fill out the forms. 



 

[isuhawkeye]

Thank you for the input. 

As you know I am a huge NIMS supporter, and am continually disappointed in CAP's lack of forethought in this arena.  Since all of the Iowa OTS graduates take ICS 100, and 200 in the academy they all exceed the CAP requirements.  Having said that the majority of the students for the class will have already undergone ICS 300, and 400.  Most of the instructors for the course are FEMA ICS 300, and 400 instructors. 

Having covered all of that material I think our ICS background is covered. 

Thoughts??

[isuhawkeye]

Bump,

Ok gan were a month out form the course.  Ive set a fairly agresasive set of pre requisites.

1. OPSEC
2. SET
3.  CAP test 116
4. CAP test 117 Parts 1,2,3
5. Flight release officer training
6. ICS 100
7. ICS 200
     ICS 300, ICS 400 strongly encouraged
8. IS-700
9. IS-800
10. Pre course reading assignment
     "Missing Aircraft Search Methologies"
11. Currently holds an ES qualification which allows for imediate advancement into staff roles

I am still looking for input.  So far the course looks like it will cover the following

1. Mission Activation
     Federal Missions
     State Missions
2. The State of Iowa Duty officer System, and how CAP interacts with them
3. The Legal Aspects of SAR
     Utelising the ESRI text book
4. Air force oversight and cridentialing (check lists they use durring evals)
5. NTAP
6. Missing Person subject profiles
7. POD/POA
8. MAps, and map tools
9. WIMRS
10 THE Paper trail (Mission folders,a nd mission paperwork

The course will also have about 6 table top exercises.

As I stated earlier I only have a few contact hours with these students,and I want them to get the most bang for the buck. 

What do you think??

[RiverAux]

To some extent you're covering the same ground as the SAR Management Course, but thats ok since not everyone has a chance to go to them.

You may have been planning to include this in some of your topics already, but
1.  Dealing with "volunteer" pilots & requesting FAA airspace closures
2.  Working with city and county law enforcement, SAR, and other groups.
3.  Information tracking during missions.  I'm not just talking about aircrew/gt releases, but things like processing aerial photographs (quality control checks) and documenting contacts with other agencies, receipt and processing of clues received from the public during the search, etc. 
4.  You might need a special session on the ICS forms if you're doing it right.  These things still haven't caught on in my Wing for the most part and not many people know how to use them, especially the Incident Action Plan.
5.  Requesting CAP resources from other states & the new CAP C4 (CAP National Emergency Operations Plan)


I would very strongly encourage you to post the tabletop scenarios, or at least have them available upon request.  Might want to steal them from you for some of our own work. 

[isuhawkeye]

Thanks for the input river. 

Given the people involved, and the needs of the wing here is what we have come up with.

Saturday
0800-0815 Welcome, and Introductions
0815-0850 Mission Activations
0900-0950 Legal Aspects of SAR
      ESRI text book Chapter 2 (P5-16)
1000-1050 Mission Paperwork
1100-1200 Table Top Exercise #1
1200-1300 Lunch
1300-1350 Air Force Oversight and credentialing
1400-1450 Iowa Duty Officer
1500-1550 NTAP
1600-1700 Missing Person Profiles
      ESRI text book Chapter 12 (p123-180)


Sunday
0800-0850 POD/POA
      CAP presentation
      ESRI text book Chapter 13
0900-0950 Table Top Exercise #2
1000-1020 SQTR
1030-1300 Table Top Exercise #3