On 21-25 October, MCS conducted Organizational Leadership for the Command & General Staff (OL) for a multi-agency audience of incident management team members in Victoria, Australia. The course was part of a test on behalf of the Victorian joint agency Incident Management Team Training Project (IMTTP). First offered by MCS in February 2011, the course is an alternate delivery for NWCG S-420: Command and General Staff and meets all requirements of NWCG L-480: Organizational Leadership.
The IMTTP was established after the 2009 Black Saturday Fires to improve preparation of Level 3 (U.S. Type 1) IMT staff members. The course included participants and evaluators from law enforcement, public health, search and rescue, and urban and wildland fire agencies.
Working as IMT staff members through multiple simulations, participants learned and applied intent-based planning within established Australasian Interservice Incident Management System (AIIMS) processes.
The evaluation team and the participants unanimously rated the program as a big success and committed to scheduling another course right after the fire season ends in six months. Victoria is the first Australian state to formally adopt the complete MCS curriculum of At the Point of the Spear, Incident Leadership, and now Organizational Leadership into its multi-agency leadership development framework.
MCS conducted this course with American cadre members and several Aussie counterparts from the Country Fire Authority (CFA). The course was held at the CFA Training College in Bangholme, in the southeast metro area of Melbourne.
