Incident Ground Organisation

Scope

This Operational Guideline covers how an incident may be organised.

Fundamental Protocols underpin the actions of all NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) members and must be adhered to at all times. They outline the Principles of being an RFS member and provide guidance on conduct to support the safety and wellbeing of members.

Guiding Principles

• As a general rule, the principles of the span of control should be considered during an incident. No person should directly control more than approximately 8 units, or groups of units. If there are more, then some or all of the control or supervision should be delegated.
• The Incident Controller (IC), or any officer with a delegated control or supervisory function, may organise the units or groups of units working directly under them in the way that they believe will best achieve control of the incident.
• To enable such delegated control or supervision, units may be organised into ‘single resources’, ‘strike teams’ (if all units are of the same type), or ‘task forces’ (if made up of units which are not alike). There is to be an overall commander and a common system of communications within each task force/strike team.
• To enable effective management of the incident, the IC or Operations Officer (OO) may divide it into sectors, each with a Sector Leader in charge. If needed, sectors may be grouped into divisions, each with a Division Commander (Div Com) in charge.
• Where possible sectors or divisions should be named after geographic features, compass points, or be given a code letter or number. At structure fires, sectors surrounding a building are given letters, A, B, C, etc., starting from the side facing the main entrance in a clockwise direction, as viewed from above. Sectors for floors correspond to the floor number (e.g., Basement, Ground, 1, 2, 3, etc.).
• Persons or teams which have a function that extends across several sectors or divisions may report directly to another senior officer but need to keep any affected sector/division officers in charge informed of their activities.
• While incident functions do not necessarily correspond to any rank, the following is a typical delegation:
  • At Level 1 incidents it would normally be expected that a Brigade level officer would be the IC.
  • At Level 2 incidents an appropriately qualified and experienced officer (or a District Officer if control is removed from the field) might typically be the IC.
  • At Level 3 incidents the IC is typically the District Manager (DM) or similar.

Special Considerations

• At complex incidents, it would typically be expected that Brigade Officers (or equivalent) would be in command of units, teams, and simple sectors; and an appropriately qualified and experienced officer would provide local knowledge to an Incident Management Team (IMT) or would be in command of complex sectors and/or divisions.

Related Information

• IMP 3.05 Operations Officer
• IMP 3.07 Planning Officer
• IMP 3.08 Logistics Officer
• RFS OPG - Command and Control
• RFS OPG - ICS - The Incident Controller Function
• RFS OPG - Incident Management - General
• RFS OPG - Radio Communications - General
• RFS OPG - Structural Fires