Episode 200: Bridging Tradition & Innovation: Chief David Povlitz on the Fire Service Evolution

Episode notes

Technology should just enhance, not replace, firefighters. Here's how:

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

Thanks for joining us for our 4 part TSI Mini Series! The Technology Summit International (TSI) , held in Texas from December 5-7, 2023, focused on the practical implementation of technology in fire services. Its aim was to bring together the brightest minds in the fire service to explore technologies that made a real difference in firefighter safety and decision making.

It wasn't just about new tools; it was about effectively integrating them into the everyday realities of firefighting. The summit delved into the root cause of fire service challenges while exploring new ideas and pushing the boundaries of what was possible in firefighting.

In this episode:

How can fire departments balance the preservation of traditional firefighting methods with the adoption of new technologies?

What ethical considerations should be taken into account when implementing advanced technologies in emergency services?

In what ways can international collaboration contribute to the advancement of technology in fire services, and how can smaller departments keep pace with these changes?

Find out from David Povlitz - the Fire Chief at Arlington County Fire Department and chair-elect of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Homeland Security Committee Advisory Council.

Chief Povlitz’s background covers a range of areas, including budget development, information technology integration, emergency communications, training, and emergency management support. He also is an experienced incident commander, planning section chief, and operations section chief for large-scale incidents and complex events. He has more than 20 years of involvement with special operations including hazardous materials, collapsed building and rope rescue, as well as technical, marine, and dive rescue incidents.

So click play now to find out what he has to share! And stay tuned for the rest of our TSI Mini Series!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro
2. 1:10 Live at Technology Summit International with Chief David Povlitz
3. 1:31 Why fire chiefs gather at TSI
4. 2:40 Technology is just another tool
5. 3:52 Just because we can doesn't mean we should
6. 4:25 Keeping responders safe and serving the community
7. 5:43 Acceleration under tight budgets
8. 7:06 Getting systems to work together
9. 10:11 Data controls, protection and architecture
10. 12:55 From concept to implementation
11. 15:26 Learning from international colleagues
12. 17:24 Digital equity and convergence
13. 20:07 Leaders who check their egos at the door
14. 21:44 Altitude versus on the ground
15. 24:07 Involving the public in community risk reduction
16. 25:23 Common operating practice, AI and the Shark Tank
17. 25:54 Final thoughts
18. 26:29 Outro

Questions answered in this episode

What is Chief Povlitz's view on technology in the fire service?

Chief David Povlitz says technology should be seen as a tool that enhances firefighter capabilities rather than replacing them. It never substitutes for good people, training, resources, and protocols, but it can be a multiplier and a huge enhancement, just like forcible entry or hydraulic tools.

Hear it at 2:40

Why does the fire service need a common operating picture?

Chief Povlitz explains that fire departments often operate with law enforcement during active violence incidents and need to share historical data and real time operational intelligence to keep everyone safe. This requires coordination at local, regional, and potentially national levels, with proper agreements and data controls to protect information like patient health data.

Hear it at 7:39

What is digital equity in the fire service?

Chief Povlitz defines digital equity as the capability to use data and information for intelligence and decision making that needs to be universal. Emergency is an emergency whether in a high rise or wilderness, and having the ability to quickly gain situational awareness and create an operational plan should be available to all departments, not just those with large budgets.

Hear it at 17:24

What does Chief Povlitz mean by convergence in fire service technology?

He describes convergence as bringing together data from environmental sensors, digital twins, and intelligent analysis to tie everything together in the right fit for each environment. The goal is to make sure the technology is useful, has utility, and everyone understands how to use it, not just advanced adopters.

Hear it at 17:24

How does Chief Povlitz describe community risk reduction?

He says it is trying to build a community using data, technology, and tools so it is as safe and secure as possible. It is an iterative process that can involve new construction smart growth or redesigning existing communities using decades of collected data, with fire departments as key stakeholders in planning.

Hear it at 24:22

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 200 transcript

Bridging Tradition & Innovation: Chief David Povlitz on the Fire Service Evolution

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, David Povlitz

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome to the Smart Firefighting podcast, where we cover firefighter technology trends and change management. In this conversation, Chief David Povlitz, the Fire Chief at Arlington County Fire Department, discusses the role of technology in the fire service, analyzing the challenges and benefits that it brings. Chief Povlitz emphasizes that technology should be seen as a tool that enhances the capabilities of firefighters rather than replacing them. This conversation was awesome in so many ways as we covered topics such as common operating picture, data sharing, interoperability, and a need for collaboration and knowledge sharing in the International Fire Service. Chief Povlitz also highlights the importance of digital equity and the convergence in the Fire Service technology, as well as the proactive approach of community risk reduction. I sense we will need to bring Chief back for another episode to cover the ABCs and 101 concepts of everything related to the Fire Service and technology. Enjoy the show. We are sitting here in Irving, Texas, alongside Chief David Povlitz, the Fire Chief of Arlington, Virginia. Chief David, how you doing?

[1:10] David Povlitz: Very good. There's lots of notable Arlingtons in the United States of America. They're all fantastic.

[1:14] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. I know like the Simpsons shows Springfield as a city because there's like Springfields everywhere. Is that the same with Arlington's?

[1:22] David Povlitz: I think there's a handful, but probably not as much as Springfield for sure.

[1:25] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. What brings you to Arlington, Texas?

[1:31] David Povlitz: So this is the International Association of Fire Chiefs Technology Symposium International. It's an excellent gathering of fire chiefs and firefighters and EMS practitioners who want to employ and learn about new technologies and try to improve and see what technology as a tool can do to help all of our emergency and preventive services. It's grown year after year, it's very excited, some excellent buzz really brought lots and lots of people here this year and we're just from the starting sessions and all the way through, it's a very engaging seminars and menus and speakers and people. It's brilliant people doing some fantastic work and this is a great forum for them to share.

[2:11] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I couldn't agree more and a lot like about 100 different things that we could dive into but one thing term you just said there that caught my attention is the whole idea of tech as a tool and that the fire service has a library tradition, a lot of amazing traditions that we want to keep and foster and continue to embrace, but there are maybe certain aspects of where tech can be a tool to help the fire service do X task better or do Y function more efficiently. Could you expand on that? Kind of tech as a tool on how to integrate to the fire service?

[2:40] David Povlitz: Absolutely, just like a forcible entry tool or hydraulic tool or any of the tools that we use with emergency medical services, it's just that it's a tool. It never substitutes for good people, good training, good resource and good protocols, good procedures. but it can certainly be a multiplier and it can certainly be a huge enhancement. Some of these tools, we always have to have fallbacks of whether we have either electric powered or gas powered hydraulic tool sets, we always have manual tool sets available. Same thing with technology. We're able to reach into areas that we couldn't even imagine or think of five or 10 years ago, now it's here. So we have to learn the right applications to use them. We have to make sure everybody understands can safely use these technologies. We also have to look at the equitable use of it. Just because we can doesn't mean we should, and that's where we have to have lots of conversations with some of our community members to understand what we're doing with information and data, and some of that is theirs and maybe about them. That's where we have to make sure we have good community engagement and we follow good data privacy, data protection, and all the ethical standards for the use of those in our new and advancing tools.

[3:52] Kevin Sofen: I also like that phrase you said, just because we can doesn't mean we should. But I'd also like to maybe take the contrarian point of view, but maybe there's some aspects where actually, because we can, we should, in the sense that there are some of those minds that this is the way we've always done it, so we must stay this way. And of course, there's all those ethical components you just mentioned. But where, and I'm staring at a glass door behind this, where can we take a brick and throw it to the glass house in the proper manner with a focus on helping first responders do their job better while also making the community safer.

[4:25] David Povlitz: So our focus on technology is number one, to make sure responders are safe and safe and able to do the job to serve the community. And in the name of saving a life or in the name of reducing harm or property damage, we can rationalize that's for sure. But we have to make sure those applications are clearly understood and have the right guard rails. If we have in the pursuit of trying to make sure we do the best for all, if our applications or our data leak or they're not secure or they can be weaponized, then we can have a much worse outcome. We can definitely have harm from some of these very advanced tools and that would reduce the confidence from the community. Ultimately, we need the community to agree to purchase these things for their service. We don't want to ruin that trust or go sideways with that relationship and that's our duty And that's what we're sworn to do. We have to make sure we protect physically and also digitally at all times.

[5:21] Kevin Sofen: So it's November, 2023. We're here at TSI and there's a lot to look forward to. Some really cool sessions around AI, wildfire, tech, community risk reduction, the new program NARAS coming online. And you're speaking a few sessions. What are you excited about here at this show? And like I said, November, 2023, what's top of mind for you today?

[5:43] David Povlitz: Probably a few more, maybe a concept or two, and that's acceleration. We are all operating under tight fiscal conditions. We have to be stewards of the tax dollars that are afforded and trusted to us. And we have a growing need for emergency services and prevention services, and that takes people. Sometimes we have to put our resources, people or capital stations, apparatus, equipment into those emergency services. And sometimes our administrative side takes a backseat. We need these tools, we need these technologies to be that multiplier where we take three or four or five people to do some of these really intense analysis. Now some of these applications combined with the right data relational databases can do it in a matter of seconds. So putting the hard work on the front side to get the systems working effectively will just save time. It will really be a more efficient use of resources and we can find the insights and we can operationalize this information, data intelligence to having really good positive outcomes in terms of patient care, in terms of reducing the risk in our communities, in terms of accelerating our response to any given either community engagement or true emergency if it's a cardiac arrest or trying to profile or trying to find in the community where we should be doing our engagement to reduce fire risk and fire safety.

[7:06] Kevin Sofen: You mentioned the whole concept of getting systems to work effectively and this is something that I struggle with a lot when I hear all these this whole idea of common operating picture there's a session going on why are we still talking about common operating picture but if you could paint a picture on for those that maybe that aren't in the fire service or haven't really thought about like why are there so many systems and how and how does that make it a challenge for inter departments and then multiple departments to be able to work and share information from data to communications real time.

[7:39] David Povlitz: It's very challenging and it's challenging on many levels. First on the local level which is probably still a little bit of its infancy but progressing pretty fast. So we need that common operating procedure in each one of our departments, fire, rescue or EMS. Now we are often operating with law enforcement and there's from the horrific incidents of active violence we are operating with them very forward, very tactically. We need to share our data. We need to share some of our historical data but also definitely are on scene. It's happening here and now operational data and information intelligence to make sure we're all safe. That takes a lot to coordinate because there's a lot of either law enforcement requirements or our patient protected health care information. There's just a lot there to work through. It's workable but it just takes a lot to make sure we have the right agreements, the right data, and the right controls and protection for all of that information, then we need to scale that up a little bit. We'll invest a lot of time working within either our municipality or jurisdictions, our area, but then we have regions or we have to extend that to maybe greater geographic areas because we all rely on some form of either mutual or automatic aid or calling in other agencies. So to reduce the time to try to figure out what's going on, what everyone is doing, what everyone needs to do. Having that data flow ahead of time and having the right architecture and the right accessibility through very protected networks is very important and very intensive or very resource intensive. Again leaps and bounds are getting much better on that in terms of now national networks now we have to make sure we have the right information flowing to those partners either on the state regional or maybe someday national level. So there's lot of good conceptual conversations and also in the academic region to have universal public safety, data warehouse, data lake, or just data repository and with some of the work the United States Fire Administration is doing that will be excellent in terms of historical incidents that we can use some of these tools to try to make sure we protect our community. The next level I believe is operationalizing that, getting that information, the data coming from our own responders from environmental sensors from digital twins and using that very effectively while the incidents are occurring. It's a little bit of a wrap around. But I think all of it's converging here. It's just going to require good foundations so that we can scale it up in either regional, state, or national environments.

[10:11] Kevin Sofen: A few things I want to unpack a bit more there, from the data controls and protection to needing the right architecture and concept implementation. I want to start with the right architecture. And it seems like I don't want to simplify it, but in a sense, I see there's a lot of companies out there or have some sort of widget that are creating data. And then there are a lot of companies that are displaying data. And this may be from an incident command standpoint. And maybe that's a good lens to kind of look at here, where there's different means of creating it and different ways of displaying it. But then there's the challenge where it's we need the right data at the right time, but then there's also all these multiple systems. I struggle with thinking right now about how there's such a lack of sort of a data architecture or data best practices for both the creators and displayers and industry to sort of work towards. I mean, what are the, are there best data standards or is the, I know there's NFPA 950 and 951, but like, is that kind of not hitting the mark for what we need from a data interoperability and supporting manufacturers to best support industry?

[11:18] David Povlitz: I think the, it's gonna be very locally dependent. It's gonna be context, everything's context. So having the right data set with those right standards and having all the applications in and around that space, as long as we have accessibility to that data, then we're gonna be able to stitch in the right application on the front side or display side. But having that data in a accessible and transferable medium or repository, that's probably key. There's, I think new application developers have done an outstanding outreach to public safety, fire rescue and EMS and law enforcement. They're asking what you need, how can we develop, what can we do for you? And some of the preliminary, you can definitely see in some of their either prototypes or preliminary applications, there was a very concerted effort to do that. And that's good for that perspective. It's trying to find what's gonna be a good fit through the nation and also internationally as they expand and grow and develop. that's where there's hopefully there'll be able to be some customizations but still trying to anchor everything off of that common data picture we're gonna be able to map we're gonna be able to translate a lot but that still brings another subsystem of a system trying to connect with another system it's maybe if we can reduce some of the complexity that will make some of our information technology managers and departments feel a little better because we keep saying we need this we need that we need that connect this connect that and then oh by the way, try to go to the next door and also to the next department and the next jurisdiction.

[12:55] Kevin Sofen: And part of this goes back to the phrase you said earlier, there's the whole idea of concept to implementation. And whether it's academia, doing stuff on the whiteboard, to entrepreneurs and companies really spending time at the firehouse and not only just sitting around the table and having kitchen table talk, but going on the firetruck and living a day in the life of a firefighter. this concept implementation dynamic to me seems to be one of the biggest challenges from this kind of, this timeline that you mentioned about wanting to bring technology into the fire service as a piece of the puzzle faster. What would be your message or how could we, what are your thoughts on how we can improve this concept implementation to more quickly support the fire service to do what the fire service needs to do?

[13:41] David Povlitz: That's a good question. I would say, well, Gathering's exactly doing what we are doing here at the IAFC TSI and multiple points throughout the year and throughout the nation is excellent. And maybe extending a little bit more into the international realms or arenas, they are doing some amazing stuff, which we sometimes accidentally bump into what Europe is doing or what Asia is doing. Overall, I mean, we're protecting the world. So I'm sure there's lots that can be shared either across the oceans and everything in the world is getting smaller, connected by digital space anyway, I'd say just putting more and more people together and maybe even at a faster pace, because we've seen, I'm gonna say, some great leaps and bounds over the last year since we did TSI in 2022. It's gonna be probably even more amazing in 2024. So it's growing fast. But then I'm worried that we may be running away from some of the users that need it. And again, it's a little bit of the large budgets, large municipalities, a large organization, could certainly do a lot of adoption and implement a lot of things. But we have a huge amount of the United States of America or any country that matter, would have maybe smaller departments or maybe that have a little bit fewer resources and every single dollar they spend has to have a lot of utility and function in return. So that's a little bit of the disparity. We want to see if we can, not that anyone really needs to slow down on the adoption and integration side, let's bring everybody up so we'll have a better flow of technology and data so we can start protecting larger and larger areas at a much higher level.

[15:26] Kevin Sofen: You mentioned the international component that we were talking with, Bart van Leeuwen. I still feel like I probably butcher his name, I always say it wrong, but I think I got it right there, Bart, if you're listening. But he mentioned, I mean, It's technology to some international. And just the idea, too, you mentioned it's the fire service. We share a lot of commonalities in maybe different languages. And the streets and the trucks we drive may look different. But a lot of the problems are the same. To Bart's question that he was asking earlier about sort of the need to collaborate more and sharing best practices and then figuring out how the international fire service can work together better, what's your thoughts and perspectives on that?

[16:06] David Povlitz: fortunate that he and many of his esteemed colleagues are visiting and joining us this week and we should be very apt to do the same. I think trying to or spending a little bit of time and doing that cross-cultural or across geographic exchange would pay out huge dividends. We've done that and the International Association of Fire Chiefs have very focused programs that would do that and bring other firefighters from other countries and to a host agency. That's been very successful over the years. Probably a little easier to do it And we certainly demonstrated that during the two or three years of the pandemic, but we should be doing in presence and also sharing our digital ecosystems and some of our capabilities so we can spur that innovation and see what we can both share and also what we can implement. Some of the things they're doing seems like light years ahead, but some of the common things we're doing, and we always take it for granted here, may be novel and new to them. You really don't know until you just come in, take a look and start talking about it.

[17:03] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, have a conversation. So two words, you've kind of touched on them earlier, but when I was first talking to you earlier today, you said two words, two phrases that got my attention. One was digital equity, and the other was convergence. I would love a sort of a 101 definition in David Povlitz's terms. What are those two terms, and why should they be on people's radars?

[17:24] David Povlitz: Digital equity, or the capability to use one's data and information for intelligence and able to make decisions on that needs to be universal. And while there's a lot of great experimentation, there's some great development, once something becomes sound good process or good practice, we needed to make it available to all, whether it's in anywhere between the coast or a lot of the other more rural, suburban, or wilderness environments, emergency is an emergency, whether it's in the 31st store of a high rise or if it's also in the wild mountain ranges, having the ability to get there quickly, gain situational awareness, assess the situation, and then have an operational plan can be greatly enhanced by technologies that are backboneed by good communications and excellent networks. So putting that into all environments, whether it's marine environments, whether it's a high angle rugged terrain environment, or whether it's a municipality or more of an urban environment, environments may be slightly different, but I think the practices and the approaches are the same. it's slightly different context of information flowing, but at least having that capability. So there's, you grab your device, you able to interface within that application. And if you get that good return to make that decision, that's paramount, that's very important. And I'm hoping that'll smooth out over the years as this conference or symposium and also a lot of the other efforts that many people are doing in the nation. On convergence, kind of a similar, but it's probably more focused on the application or the technology. It's coming in from environmental sensors. It's coming in from digital twins and just characterizing our environments. It's coming in from looking at our data and putting intelligent agents on it to really understand it so much better than we could either as a collective or individual person. All that is within hands grasp and trying to tie it together so it's the right fit and it's the right, theme's not the right word, But if it's a good application for each one of our environments, that's what we need to make sure we bring and collect everything for that mission. Just because it's out there and just because it looks neat and it's going to light up some of our digital LCD displays, we just have to make sure it's useful, has utility, and all of us understand how to use it. And that's sometimes a tall order. We always have the advanced adopters and then we have a lot of just everybody who's just trying to make sense to do the best job they can. just bring everybody up to the same point as fast as we can.

[20:00] Kevin Sofen: Chief David Povlitz, it's like dictionary 101 on these key terms just to like kind of get everyone at least thinking on the same level here.

[20:07] David Povlitz: Well it's fascinating and I've watched many I'm just now connecting more and more throughout the nation and that's fascinating it's really just some great leaders that want to bring some of the best ideas forward and really make good applications and what impresses me everyone kind of checks the egos at the door they really say hey come on take a look at what I'm doing what are you doing and hey, maybe that fits over there and maybe we can do what you're doing and it's just this great flow of information centered around this technology. That's what's very encouraging and that's what I think paints a really good picture moving forward.

[20:40] Kevin Sofen: Well that's what the IFC is here for and a lot of these key partners from the Smart Firefighting community and I think the whole goal is to not live in these silos but continue to find those shared best practices and keep the ball moving both in person and virtually and checking your ego at the door and this problem is too big for any one individual, one company, one institution to solve and it requires collaboration. So I feel like we could talk about 100 other more things. But there was one other thing that I did want to mention. You said the term gain situational awareness, not just situational awareness. I know there's been a lot of, I've talked with other fire chiefs and other departments that I've talked about where certain manufacturers will come up and be like, oh, this product gives you situational awareness. And Dr. Richard Gassaway, he talks a lot about the whole Sam Matters initiative of you don't just, a product doesn't just give you situational awareness. Nothing just gives you situational awareness. You need to gain it, you need to develop it. From your perspective, for those that are kind of trying to understand developing and understanding situational awareness, what is, paint a sort of a 40,000 foot view and a in the dirt perspective around that.

[21:44] David Povlitz: Well, that's a great analogy, high to low. It's altitude versus what you're actually on the ground doing. I think the ideal state is we have a massive amount of situational awareness. it's what's actually sometimes happening inside of us. If we gain our physiological and our medical state while we're being in incidents that require heavy exertion, that's great situational awareness for yourself, your crew, and also incident commanders. But at the same time, if you're looking at 30, 40, 50 people deployed, that's overwhelming. All of this needs to be accessible, but presented in the right way so someone gains insight and can make a decision on it. So having that scalable and having that over the right level has the right things at their digital fingertips is always gonna be the challenge. I'm hoping we can just keep characterizing, keep learning, keep figuring out what's around us and what's happening so we can improve everyone's safety. If I think one of the best applications and missions of just expanding technologies to make sure we don't have any more line of duty deaths attributed to the lack of situational awareness, command communications control, All of that's kind of a package where we can reduce the risks that we can keep doing and providing careers and careers and careers worth of good public safety and emergency services. So I think if we're all, again, having able to gain more, we should never stop acquiring the right information. There's a lot of other questions on persistence, how long do we keep it, and some of the uses for it. But at least trying to make sure we gain everything we need to be as safe as possible. And then also, start shifting the conversation because we are gaining a lot of this information to help us help the public, help those who are in emergencies. We should start making this information available to them. If they're able to self-rescue, if they're able to help each other, if they're able to egress or, you know, either from a wilderness situation or some kind of a structure that's under threat, that just helps our mission and really can just have a better outcome. So providing this, even though we're trying to collect, Even though we're trying to deploy and abide through all these great and fantastic applications and technologies, we should at least make sure we've circled this back around and allow the public to use the same information for their own safety and for their own benefit.

[24:07] Kevin Sofen: And just to keep riffing off that, allowing the public to get involved in helping us help the public, the whole conversation around community risk reduction and being proactive. Again, give me your one-on-one definition of community risk reduction and being proactive. What does that mean to you?

[24:22] David Povlitz: Trying to build their community using the data, the technology, and the tools so it's as safe, as secure as possible. It's an iterative process. Sometimes it could be going from new construction, as a lot of our areas are developing, smart growth, or it could be redesigning an existing community using all of the data we've collected for decades. So just making sure we have it accessible, making sure it's good, it's unbiased, and it can be used for design. It could be used for planning. And we are one of many partners involved in that. There's lots of community planning processes within the jurisdiction. When each jurisdiction is required by code and law, and we are definitely one of the key stakeholders in that to make sure communities are safe in terms of fire prevention and good community design.

[25:13] Kevin Sofen: Which if I feel like this is not the, this will not be the last podcast that we have. and I can tell you that I'm really excited for your session. So what are the sessions that you're involved with in here at TSI?

[25:23] David Povlitz: Common operating practice, we're still evaluating where we were and where we can go, and also some applications of artificial intelligence and some of the concerns and some of the guidance we should be thinking about as that emerges more and more each day.

[25:36] Kevin Sofen: And serving as a judge for the Shark Tank.

[25:39] David Povlitz: Shark Tank, I'm looking forward to that also.

[25:40] Kevin Sofen: Yes, we got five startups, so really looking forward to that, but I just appreciate your time and your context, And I guess if I could give you sort of one last thing, if you were going to leave us with any thought, question, quote, mic drop of sorts, what would that be here today?

[25:54] David Povlitz: I'm going to thank you. I'm going to kind of turn it back to you and many like you who see the value of technology and are facilitating and helping us come together and have a better use of it. That's what we need. You are using technology to improve technology, to build relationships. It's kind of this neat play off many points and many nodes. You're very deft at it. And I'm seeing lots of other people that are doing the same throughout the nation, throughout academics and also throughout some of the innovative corporate partners and sponsors that we're seeing here this week. I want to thank you. It's you're really kind of bringing things together. So it's a magnet.

[26:29] Kevin Sofen: Hey, well, it's a, it's an honor and a privilege and just grateful for the opportunity. So thanks for your time and look forward to this week. And everything does ahead. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Firefighting Podcast today. If you enjoyed what you heard and got any value, please drop us a rating, leave us a comment or reach out to us on social media. Have a great day and together we can advance the future of smart firefighting.