Episode 249: Training Firefighters for Effective Technology Use with Robert Edson

Episode notes

Here’s some best practices to make the most of your technology:

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!

In this episode:

How to identify gaps and challenges in the fire service

What does effective technology adoption require?

How is Intterra driving change and creating solutions that address real-world problems?

Hear from Robert Edson - the previous Chief Revenue Officer for Intterra and owner of Acceleration Strategies .

Rob talks about Intterra’s efforts to provide a common operating picture by integrating disparate data systems in the fire service. Intterra is focused on improving the lives of first responders and offers a variety of technology solutions, including reporting and analytics tools, to enhance operational efficiency.

One of the key challenges in adopting technology within the fire service is the communication gap between firefighters and technology providers. Intterra emphasizes the importance of conducting thorough assessments to identify gaps and problems in the system. Rob also highlights the need for continuous training and hands-on practice with technology to ensure that firefighters can use it effectively in their day-to-day operations.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share!

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 to the FRI miniseries
2. 0:35 Robert Edson of Intterra joins at FRI
3. 1:08 The Intterra elevator pitch
4. 2:29 Misconceptions about a common operating picture
5. 6:02 Getting full value from the technology you buy
6. 10:08 Reps with tech, like hose handling
7. 12:11 Common ground: how a COP tells the story
8. 14:43 What are you going to do different on Monday?
9. 17:30 Time is the most valuable thing
10. 18:20 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What is Intterra and what problem does it solve for firefighters?

Robert Edson says Intterra started over 14 years ago bringing disparate data systems to firefighters, including Department of Defense level technology and airborne intel. Today it acts as the hub of fire tech mutual aid, putting all the technology and data firefighters use into one place so they can get what they need and move on to their job.

Hear it at 1:19

What does Robert Edson say is the biggest problem with how fire departments buy technology?

The fire service tends to buy technology when it is on fire, buying whiz bang stuff without thinking through what it means to stitch it all together. Departments buy tech for the sake of buying it instead of identifying a specific problem to solve.

Hear it at 2:52

Why do firefighters often reject new technology according to Robert Edson?

Firefighters will throw technology out the window if it does not make their job easier or more effective. Departments do not give firefighters reps on tech the way they do with ladders or venting, so they never build muscle memory. Without training and practice, firefighters cannot understand the value of the technology.

Hear it at 6:44

How should fire chiefs communicate with city council when asking for resources?

Robert Edson says chiefs need to speak the same language as their stakeholders. A common operating picture lets a chief show city council data like how many calls happened in their district and why resources are needed, in a way council members who are not firefighters can understand.

Hear it at 10:29

What does Robert Edson mean by what are you going to do different on Monday?

Your single most valuable resource is time. If you spend time at a conference or class, do something valuable with it. Go home, take an assessment, pick up the phone, ask vendors for help, and actually start making progress instead of filing away the information.

Hear it at 15:28

Transcript

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

Ep 249 transcript

Training Firefighters for Effective Technology Use with Robert Edson

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Robert Edson

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. I'm your host, Kevin Sofen. In this FRI miniseries, we're taking a closer look at how technology and smart solutions are shaping the future of the fire service. From the role of artificial intelligence and assessments to cutting edge tools like wildfire drones, each episode dives into how these advancements are improving firefighter safety, efficiency, and real-time decision-making. Stay tuned for some great conversations with the innovators pushing our fire service forward. Enjoy. Happy FRI everyone and fortunate to be sitting alongside the chief customer officer of Intterra, Robert Edson.

[0:42] Robert Edson: Hey Kevin, it's good to see you again.

[0:44] Kevin Sofen: You as well. I've actually never called you Robert.

[0:47] Robert Edson: Yeah, no, most people don't unless they're mad at me. So Robert, what are you doing?

[0:51] Kevin Sofen: Exactly. Yeah, well Robert, how is your time in Dallas at FRI been treating you?

[0:55] Robert Edson: Well it's always hot at FRI like usual so it's over 100 degrees in here, but it's good. It's been a good event so far, a good show, several speaking engagements, got to teach class, so it's been a good event so far for us.

[1:08] Kevin Sofen: So for those of us that are maybe been living under a rock and don't know Intterra, give me the elevator pitch on the 2024 version of who, what, when, where, why elevator pitch Intterra.

[1:19] Robert Edson: So Intterra has been in the fire service space for almost 14, well, a little over 14 years now. We got our start in the wildfire space as the first true common operating picture and bringing disparate data systems that the fire service usually didn't have access to, like Department of Defense-level technology, airborne intel and things like that to the firefighter on the ground. Over the years, of course, the company's morphed and grown into what it is today, which is really the center and the hub of the fire technology or fire tech mutual aid system. And Intterra really is the hub of that. And our goal as a company has always been and continues to be to improve the lives of first responders. We do that primarily through taking all of the disparate data and technology and things that we use in the fire service today and try to put them all in one place. Try to put them in a place that a firefighter can access on the ground, that a commander can access and actually get the things that they need when they need to get them and then move on to actually going out and doing their job. technology should be a decision support engine for them, not something they have to stare at every day. So, you know, we're here trying to clear the smoke and make everything in plain sight for our customers.

[2:29] Kevin Sofen: And so I've heard the word COP thrown around quite a bit and actually at TSI last year, we had a session on why are we still talking about COPs? But it's obviously something that's part of and woven into the incident command and overall public safety framework. But what are, in your opinion, of maybe some misconceptions of COPs and maybe some of the just overall, and the challenges of adoptions of a COP?

[2:52] Robert Edson: Well, one of the things that we talked about at TSI was why are we still trying to use a COP? What is a COP? Well, the reality is that in the fire service, we have not done a good job at telling our own story. And the way that we go about telling our own story and trying to talk to the people in the spaces, our stakeholders, really makes it difficult. And so if we don't start looking at ourselves differently, changing the lens that we look at our communities we serve, the technologies and things we're trying to buy and understanding what we're trying to accomplish, we're making our job harder for ourselves every day. So a common operating picture really applies in a lot of different methodologies. If you look at it from an operational perspective, it's being able to take CAD data and AVL information, airborne and data, drone data, and put it into a single place so that a commander, a battalion chief can actually look at it, get what they need, go often do their job, but that same concept can and should be applied to everything we do in the fire service. If we're trying to evaluate firefighter health and safety, there are data sets that exist in numerous different systems from records management to staffing, to our healthcare systems that could be put into a common operating picture, right? And you and I are utilization trying to do analysis and fire data, same thing. There are data sets that exist in multiple places. The problem is in the fire service, we've been duct taping together technology for a very long time. And the worst part about it has always been that the fire service tends to buy stuff when it's on fire. We tend to buy technology, not for a specific need, but because it's whiz bang or we're trying to do something with it without thought process of what it means to stitch it all together. So years and years ago, Intterra stepped into the space of a true common operating picture when trying to integrate multiple disparate computer dispatch systems into a single view for regional solutions, or statewide integrations of data sets to be able to give them a true common operating picture when you roll strike teams somewhere, or whatever the case may be for a large scale event or whatever. One of the things that we came to realize, though, is that a lot of our customers don't just need us to do that from a technology perspective. A lot of our customers really need us to do that from a partner perspective. To be able to be that trusted resource, to have them be able to come to us and go, you know what, I have a problem with X. And Intterra software may or may not solve it directly, but we know someone who can. And being able to send them to one of our partners or just an agency or company in the business that we know can fix that problem for them. And just helping agencies get where they need to go, improving the lives of first responders. We hope it's with Intterra our software, but sometimes it's not, and that's okay. So we want to drive them to, through our new assessment, we are launching the opportunity for agencies to come and take an assessment, understand where their gaps are from the different types of tools that they do or don't have and their different issues, and be able to understand that Intterra is going to help you, whether it's with our software or with other applications, and push you in the direction you need to go to improve the lives of the first responder.

[6:02] Kevin Sofen: And you mentioned throughout that, your statements right there, I mean, buying a piece of tech in some regards actually can be easy, but implementing and extracting value out of a new tool, not just kind of a knee-jerk reaction, buying it and just getting it to check a box, but really implementing it, extracting it, you know, you talk about assessment of really understanding the true problem and kind of really seeing how a technology layer can come in to make your life better. It's kind of a piece of the puzzle. What do you think are maybe some of the misconceptions or kind of how would you communicate to a fire service member about, A, the assessment side of really diving into your problems, and B, how to really fully extract value of any technology that you acquire?

[6:44] Robert Edson: Well, there's a few things that go into tech. When it starts with the assessment, one of the biggest things that the industry, we talked about this at TSI, right? Industry has been driving the fire service for a very long time when it comes to technology especially, right? That's not the way this is supposed to work. The fire service should be driving industry to solve the problems that the fire service has, because the growing mission and the constantly changing mission of the fire service, it just keeps getting more and more complex. So in the industry, we have allowed, really, industry to drive the fire service instead of the other way around. The idea behind the assessment is for Intterra to, as a leader in this space, our mission is to improve the lives of first responders. So we're going to ask you questions, help you understand where you may have gaps, whether it's pre-incident, during an incident, post-incident analysis and reporting, and identify those gaps for you and your organizations. So looking at the vendors that you currently have, looking at the types of tools you do or do not have deployed today, and to be able to help you look for those gaps so you actually start identifying what the problem is. You should never, ever, buying tech is not necessarily hard, although we're in the fire service, we're not as good at it as we probably should be, but you should never be buying technology for the sake of buying technology. You need to have a problem to solve. And then you need to go to trusted resources in this space, your peers, trusted vendors, and go, how do we solve this problem? Not what solution do you have to sell me? How do you help us solve this problem? Firefighters are a very predictable bunch, okay? We are very simple to understand. If it does not make my job easier or more effective, I am probably gonna throw it out the window with a rig on the way to the next call. Adopting technology at the line really has to come from leader's intent from the top. We don't do a good job communicating to our stakeholders in the fire service. We also don't do a good job communicating with ourselves. We talked about it at the Fire Dogs pre-conference earlier this week. We struggle to help our line firefighters and our chiefs oftentimes understand the value of data in the fire service, right? Why do we do that? Because fire data analyst doesn't speak the same language as a firefighter. And we are trying to communicate to a firefighter in a way that they don't understand. They're not used to being communicated. We're not meeting them where they are. So it's impossible for them to understand the value of the technology when the things that they're trying to do at the line, because we're not speaking their language. We're also not helping them adopt tech at the line. So you've got to think about if you're gonna buy technology and you intend on deploying a reporting and analytics solution or a pre-planning solution, and you expect your line firefighters to use this thing, well, why do we teach our line firefighters to throw ladders? To give them reps, right? Why do we teach them a particular set of processes to go vent a building? Because it's muscle memory, right? We're giving them reps. When was the last time we gave a firefighter reps on tech? We don't. So we've got to understand, A, what's the problem we're actually trying to solve? How do we solve it with technology? And then how do we get that? technology into the hands of the people who have to use it and give them reps so they understand how it works and it doesn't End up being shelfware like so many of the technologies that we buy today

[10:08] Kevin Sofen: Yeah I remember the late Bobby Houghton had told me a line about you don't rise to the occasion you fall to your lowest level of training absolutely the importance of getting set some reps and how this technology is really technology integration adoption is no different than hose handling? No different than donning and doffing your PPE?

[10:29] Robert Edson: It's not. And we don't give our firefighters reps with tech. We just throw it at them oftentimes. I mean, it's one of the reasons, if you look at a lot of the problems we've got with the NFIRS database that NERIS is gonna solve for us. One of the reasons, if you look at residential structure fires, that the very first thing that's on the pick list is generally what's in the database for a residential structure fire. Firefighters are, again, very predictable bunch. We will find a way to fix a problem, period. If you hand a problem to a firefighter, it will get fixed. Maybe an extra hole in the drywall here and there occasionally when you get done, but it will get done every single time. If we don't teach them the things that we want and how to give them reps on this stuff, how could we possibly expect them to do it well? We have to meet our audiences where we are, just like dealing with our city council and our stakeholders when we're talking about reporting and analytics and doing those types of things. We as a fire service don't do a good job telling our story. And just like we were trying to work through being a common operating picture from an operational perspective, making sure you have access to the data you need on the fire ground to do your job, the chief needs to understand the common operating picture and the concept from a reporting and analytics standpoint so they can go with good data to stakeholders and meet those stakeholders where they are. They need to be able to go to city council and go in your district, we responded to this many types of calls in your area on this particular day, these are the things that we need, this is why we need them, and communicate with those stakeholders in the way that they're gonna understand. A lot of our stakeholders and city council people are not firefighters either. So we're trying to communicate with our audiences and we're not meeting them where they are. The idea of a common operating picture.

[12:11] Kevin Sofen: I want you to expand on that. You talked about translating and I love the idea of speaking, taking data and turning it into a way that can allow you to speak to different types of stakeholders. But double click into that a bit more in terms of how a COP can serve as an intermediary that helps take data inputs, convert it to data outputs to be able to tell a story.

[12:30] Robert Edson: So what's the first word in COP, right?

[12:33] Kevin Sofen: It's common.

[12:34] Robert Edson: It's common ground, right? So if you think about it from an operational perspective, if I am an incident commander and I am looking at a wildfire, there are data sets that I need that are coming off of the retardant drop aircraft. I need air intel from the ISR aircraft. I need helicopter. I need dip site data. There's a lot of different things that I need to be able to have a true common picture. And I can access that information and data, but can the other individuals during briefing access the same information? Can you give that to the firefighters in the field so that it's a common ground? We're all speaking the same language from soup to nuts. Are we? Well, with a common operating picture, we can. Same conversation though, when a fire chief goes into, Metro fire chief goes in to city council, you know, 35, 40 years ago, we were able to, you know, kind of rub our head and rub our belly and I've got 35 years of experience as a, as a fire chief. We need new apparatus or I need new station here. Okay. There was a trust factor there. Today, the idea of the fire service, we are truly the last bastion of trust in government. That makes it incumbent upon us to use the idea of a common operating picture to communicate effectively with all of our audiences and stakeholders, including our communities, right? our community engagement. If we're going to sit down with a city council and ask them for tools, ask them for funding, ask them for staffing, ask them for apparatus, ask them for the things that we need to serve the community, we need to be speaking the same language. And the common operating picture of the data necessary to answer those questions translated through the common operating picture in a way that not only can the fire chief understand it, but the city council can look at that same data, that same view, that same heat map, that same idea of where a station needs to go and look at the same information in the same way. If you can't do that, if you're just trying to throw, you know, solutions at the wall to see what sticks, you're never going to have that true common ground, that common operating picture. And what we're really trying to do through this assessment is help fire departments scratch the surface of where are our gaps? Where are we actually struggling to do these things? How can we clear the smoke and put what we need in plain sight?

[14:43] Kevin Sofen: Well said, Rob. And there's a lot more we could continue to dive into, but something I kind of wanted to close us out with here is two things. One, you said a quote in the past that continues to live rent-free in my head, but I used it today in my presentation at the end was, what are you going to do different on Monday? And it's so easy for us to go to a conference, listen to this podcast, and then just go back to what you're normally doing. This is a reminder for anyone listening to take any kind of action and apply the knowledge learned from this or previous shows, but I'm curious to maybe an updated hot take from you about your quote on what are you gonna do different on Monday? What do you mean by that? And then do you have any other Rob Edson quotes that you could leave us with here today?

[15:28] Robert Edson: Well, I think the thing for people to take away from more than anything else is, if you're gonna go to a conference and learn something, if you're gonna go to a class and learn something, if you're gonna go to training and go do something, You know what, utilize it. Your single most valuable resource as a human being on this planet is the time that you have. If you're going to take that time and go to a conference or go to a class or go sit through a vendor presentation, do something with that, make it valuable. You are committing the time that you can't get back. You don't ever get that time back. If you're gonna commit that time, you should be doing something valuable with it. So think about it, if you're gonna go to a conference and gain all these great ideas and talk to these vendors who have solutions to problems, go home and do something. Go home and take 30 seconds, log into entera.io, take a quick assessment and look for gaps in your fire department. Pick up the phone and ask us. Understand these things and start to take the time because really the only way we're ever gonna initiate change in the fire service is if we actually get up and start making progress. Firefighters, I mean, you could give us any kind of a problem and we will find a solution to it all day long and twice on Sundays, but we have to start somewhere. And if you don't actually get kicked out the door and start, then you end up with the old adage, right? What do firefighters say? Changing things, staying the same. Well, let's do it. Let's get out there and ask ourselves a question. I just spent a week at FireRescue International with 5,000 of my closest friends, I talked to 47 different vendors. I've got a stack in the cute bag with a bag of coffee that I got at home of flyers of things that we saw that were whiz bang out here. What are you gonna do with that? Are you just going to put that in the circular file? Are you just going to go stick it in a file folder and maybe talk to the vendor next week? Or are you actually going to go look for a hole, a gap somewhere, and then go dig through that pile on Monday and go, you know what, that looks like that might be a solution. I don't know if it is, but I'm going to spend valuable time and I'm going to get off my duff and go do something about it.

[17:30] Kevin Sofen: Rob, thanks for the ongoing insight and context and couldn't agree more to your quote on what you're gonna do on Monday and how you can use it and to your point too on time truly being the most valuable thing that we can't get back and you're going to a class and even I thought about today in my class it's like you guys are here for a reason like you chose to spend your time to be here so embrace it because you know in a hundred years from now strangers will be living in our home and you know owning all the things that we work so hard to achieved so we gotta embrace the time while we have it.

[18:02] Robert Edson: Absolutely.

[18:02] Kevin Sofen: So Rob really enjoy and grateful for everything that you do for the fire service and public safety and IAFC and the tech council and everything so thanks again and keep up the great work.

[18:12] Robert Edson: Thank you Kevin it's a privilege to serve and it's a it's a privilege to work in the fire service so I appreciate it.

[18:17] Kevin Sofen: Thanks Rob. Thanks. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Smart Firefighting Podcast. I truly would love to know what you think. Send me a note, post something on Twitter, and if you were so inclined, give us a review on one of the podcast channels that you listen to. Have a great day, and hope to hear from you soon.