State Duty Operations Officer

Scope

The State Duty Operations Officer (SDOO) is responsible for maintaining a statewide oversight of incident activity, providing advice and support to Districts; and providing advice and briefings to the State Operations Controller (SOC), Deputy Commissioners, and Commissioner.

Fundamental Protocols underpin the actions of all 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.

Accountabilities

• Overseeing response and incident management across the state.
• Maintaining situational awareness of current and forecast weather conditions, bush fire fuel state, and operational capacity across the State.
• Coordinating requirements associated with elevated incident alert levels including the issue of an Emergency Alert (EA) when required.
• Reviewing and providing advice as necessary for logistics requests to ensure they align with agency procedures.
• Providing advice or written briefings as necessary on notifiable incidents, significant injuries, fatalities, service vehicle accidents, overruns, significant structural loss, stock loss and issues.
• Filtering incident information and forwarding to the senior operations text group, including:
  • Information related to the real or potential threat to life and/or property, the effect on the community, any response issues, other agencies in attendance, the incident alert and any potential issues which may impact the RFS;
  • Incident activity, advice, briefings or updates between 06:30 and 22:00 hours;
  • overnight incident/s information, advice, briefings or updates by 06:30 hours daily; and
  • real time advice (regardless of the time) for:
    • any death or significant injury of a RFS member while undertaking duties or that of a RFS member or family member involved in an incident which is attended by their local Brigade;
    • the death or life threatening injury of a member of the public due to fire during firefighting operations, and;
    • any accident involving an RFS vehicle of a serious nature.
• Notifying the Deputy Commissioners or other officers of any incident outside of the times noted if necessary to do so.
• Providing recommendations on the Operational Readiness Levels regarding the four-day forecasts and incident activity, the activation of the Rapid Aerial Response Team (RART) stand-bys, the declaration or revocation of Total Fire Bans (TOBAN), operational issues, and deployments.
• Providing advice to Director State Operations (DSO) regarding actual or potential issues relating to responses or incident management. If an issue is identified that requires immediate follow up, the SDOO should undertake this otherwise Manager Operational Response (MOR) is to be advised on the next business day of issues for follow up.
• Ensuring that TOBAN and S44 Instruments are processed in accordance with Operational Procedures and Guidelines (OPGs).
• Ensuring that state level weather or specialist information and advice is correctly disseminated in accordance with OPGs.
• Liaising with all State Operations functions regarding operations, safety issues, and maintaining situational awareness.
• Determine feasibility, prioritise, and coordinate aviation resources including Pre-Determined Dispatch (PDD) and line scanning with State Duty Aviation Officer (SDAO).
• Activating and briefing the rostered SOC, as soon as a S44 Declaration is imminent, or as directed by the Deputy Commissioners or DSO.
• Upon activating the SOC within the OpsCen, the roles and responsibilities of the SDOO will be modified in accordance with the SOC roster and Operational Readiness level.

Special Considerations

• Many of the SDOO duties are supported and monitored by the Operational Communications Centre (OCC) Supervisor.
• The SDOO will ensure the DSO and MOR are kept informed of all operational activity and or issues.
• The SDOO will determine what further notifications may be necessary regarding operational activity.
• The DSO will ensure a suitable roster is in place and provide support to SDOOs.
• The Commissioner has allocated these duties to the SDOO pursuant to section 12(2) of the Rural Fires Act 1997.

Related Information

• Rural Fires Act 1997
• Policy 4.1.1 - Financial Delegations