Episode 259: The Importance of Training and Sense-Making in Firefighting Decision-Making with Dr. Greg Penney

Episode notes

What is sense-making, and how can it transform firefighters’ decision-making?

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:

The importance of training and sense-making for effective decision-making in the fire service

Research on moral injury and its impact on the mental well-being of firefighters

The Institute of Fire Engineers ' role in bridging the gap between fire engineers and firefighters

Hear from Dr. Greg Penney who is part of Natural Hazards Research Australia’s Education and Training Committee.

Dr. Penney shares his journey into the world of wildfire engineering, inspired by his personal experience during a life-threatening fire. He discusses the critical role of training and sense-making in helping firefighters make sound decisions under pressure, emphasizing the need to interpret complex information quickly.

Dr. Penney also dives into his research on moral injury in the fire service, exploring how these challenges impact the mental well-being of responders. He highlights the efforts of the Institute of Fire Engineers (IFE) in fostering collaboration and education between fire engineers and firefighters. The conversation wraps up with Dr. Penney's reflections on the pride and satisfaction he feels in giving back to the next generation of firefighters.

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

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro from the IFE booth at AFAC 2024
2. 0:52 Dr. Greg Penney joins
3. 1:17 The Firefighters vs. Cops rugby game
4. 2:15 Training day at the Orchard Hills academy
5. 3:38 How Greg got into wildfire engineering
6. 6:05 The simulation model used in training
7. 7:58 Why decision-making under pressure is hard
8. 10:28 What sense-making means
9. 11:30 The research group behind the work
10. 12:43 Dr. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton and Heat of the Moment
11. 14:11 Moral injury and the new article
12. 15:04 Good and bad decisions
13. 16:19 Teaching people how to make decisions
14. 17:02 The IFE: the nexus of fire engineering and firefighting
15. 18:36 Frank Lee's talk on firefighter safety
16. 19:23 What's next for the IFE
17. 20:36 Final words: be a firefighter
18. 21:15 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

What led Dr. Greg Penney to pursue research in wildfire engineering?

Dr. Greg Penney says he was a crew leader during the Yarloop fires when conditions suddenly turned dangerous. His crew got immersed in flame multiple times and he thought they wouldn't survive. After they made it out, he decided they could do better and needed to understand the enemy more, which led him to pursue a Masters and then PhD in fire engineering.

Hear it at 4:09

What is the purpose of the immersive simulation technology at the training academy?

The simulation technology allows firefighters to train in realistic wildfire and urban interface scenarios without lighting up 100 hectares of real fire. Dr. Greg Penney says it immerses rookies in environments much better than PowerPoint or textbooks, and with AI generation the scenarios are realistic enough to check decision-making in a safe environment.

Hear it at 6:43

What is sense-making in firefighting decision-making?

Dr. Greg Penney describes sense-making as how people put the pieces of the puzzle together to form a picture. Good sense-making allows you to look beyond the obvious for other reasons behind an event, such as considering multiple causes when someone goes into shock, and it applies from grassroots firefighter level all the way up to incident command.

Hear it at 10:28

What makes a good decision versus a bad decision according to Dr. Penney's research?

Dr. Greg Penney says what makes a good decision will be different for every person, and good decisions exist on a scale rather than being black or white. A good decision is not simply the opposite of a bad decision. The study found that people judge decisions differently and highlighted that a key problem is that emergency services are not teaching people how to make decisions.

Hear it at 15:09

What is moral injury in the fire service?

Dr. Greg Penney is conducting a big study on moral injury in Australian fire and emergency services that looks at organizational and leadership factors. He says people can get really damaged not necessarily by the traumatic jobs they attend, but by leadership decisions or communication.

Hear it at 14:11

Transcript

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

Ep 259 transcript

The Importance of Training and Sense-Making in Firefighting Decision-Making with Dr. Greg Penney

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, Dr. Greg Penney

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 a mini Smart Firefighting podcast series, recorded live at the Institute of Fire Engineers booth during the 2024 AFAC Show Down Under in Sydney, Australia. Throughout these conversations, we dive into critical issues like fire safety, emerging technologies, diversity in the fire service, and innovative solutions for emergency response. fascinating insights from leaders around the world on how we can build a safer and more resilient future. Dr. Greg Penney, the Assistant Commissioner at the Fire and Rescue New South Wales, shares his journey into wildfire engineering and discusses the critical role of training and sense making and making decisions. He dives into moral injury in the fire service and reflects on the pride of giving back to the future generations of firefighters. Sitting alongside Dr. Greg Penney. What's up, Greg?

[0:55] Dr. Greg Penney: Hey, Kevin. I'm good. How are you?

[0:58] Kevin Sofen: I'm doing well. How is your day two of AFAC treating you?

[1:01] Dr. Greg Penney: It's always pretty hectic, but it's good to catch up with people and do the mingling, the hosting, the talking, doing stuff like this.

[1:08] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. It's good. Well, I got here Sunday and I've seen you every day, which is a great thing. I think there's usually good things happen when you're hanging out with Greg, but from Sunday, the Firefighters vs. Cops rugby game.

[1:20] Dr. Greg Penney: Yeah, that was a pretty special event.

[1:22] Kevin Sofen: Dude, that was amazing. And then the professionals played afterwards. The roosters played, they lost. But watching the firefighters and the police go head-to-head was truly something special. How was that for you?

[1:33] Dr. Greg Penney: Look, there's always a lot of passion in it, and that's fantastic. I used to play league myself, never at that level. But watching the passion in between the teams and how they come together and how they leave everything on the field, and even when they're busted and they're bleeding, They just want to strap themselves back up and get out there.

[1:48] Kevin Sofen: And you're saying when your mates broke their nose in a few places.

[1:51] Dr. Greg Penney: Yeah, one of the guys ended up with four fractures in the end, but he had it reset, put his head gear back on, went out and played an absolute blinder. So that was, yeah, Jay from Glebe Station.

[2:01] Kevin Sofen: Wow. I'm sure he would say he would do it all over again. I don't know, but I would imagine. And then Monday we were at the fighter department downtown. Dr. Laurie Moore was there doing a little tour and learning about the bag and tag program. Then yesterday we were out at the training academy.

[2:18] Dr. Greg Penney: Yeah, so the training academy out at Orchard Hills is a pretty cool one, it's the newest one in Australia, it's about five years old now and it's just awesome to be able to explain to fire engineers what firefighting is about and get them to do it practically and really get them to understand the implications when they just suggest that a performance solution is for firefighters to drag an extra length of hose, what that actually entails and also giving the firefighters an opportunity to discuss stuff with the fire engineers, it's a good day.

[2:47] Kevin Sofen: It was such a great environment to bring people together to talk about the challenges and opportunities and just the realities about the fire service and fire engineering in terms of why do you place a hydrant here? What does it mean to just add an extra link of hose? And you know, I think when you talk to the fire engineers after they put PPE on, after they put wet stuff on the red stuff, after they were, you know, handling one inch hose, like I think they definitely left with a different perspective on what it means to actually be a firefighter.

[3:17] Dr. Greg Penney: They sure did. And it just provides such a good environment anyway. And because they can see how passionate the firefighters are as well, how seriously they take their job and how good they are at their job, it sort of highlights that it's not just a case of firefighters lift heavy things. And don't ask too many questions when we run into burning buildings. It is actually a true profession that comes with it.

[3:38] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. And you seem to be maybe one of the busiest guys in New South Wales. I'm just impressed with you running around and having a bunch on your plate, but I know just with the DR doctor title in your role, you've been deep into different aspects of research and different aspects of public safety research. I know you've got two focuses. We'll focus on the first one first with wildfire engineering, bushfire response. Tell me about some of your past history with it and then some of the research and, you know, shed some light on that.

[4:09] Dr. Greg Penney: Sure. So it really came about during the Yarloop, where we were in fires in New South Wales. So at the time I was the station officer or crew leader, as it would be, and we got turned out to a particularly bad set of fires where it generated its own weather system. We did a crew changeover out in the field, a hot changeover, and very quickly things went really bad. So from what the outset looked like, really quite calm conditions, and we thought it was going to be a media blow up, turned into psychotic conditions, it turned dark really quickly, the flame intensity and the heights through the pine plantations were like nothing else. We got immersed in flame a couple of times and we thought there was no way we were coming out. That was really one of the first times that I thought not just I was going to die but also the crew that I was letting was going to die. Long story short we managed to make it out of that after a couple of really harrowing experiences and my firefighters were just unbelievable in terms of we didn't have water, the truck wasn't working properly, but they still risked their lives to ensure that people were out and safe and then recommitting again and again through that day and that evening. And at the end of the day I just thought we could do this better, like we can do this better and I've got to understand my enemy more and so that led me down a path of a Masters of Fire Engineering which is a very I guess different approach to what I thought I'd be first taking when I was a recruit and really looking at how bushfires are represented in our models, how we calculate stuff, how we look at fire fighter tenability, how we do our strategies, how we do our tactics, how we protect crews from in terms of water spray systems, all these type of things really looking at it to go, I really want to understand this more. Unfortunately that didn't lead me to the answers that I was looking for, it just opened up more questions, I've got a few answers. Did the PhD in that side and that sort of extended over into the bushfire or wildfire engineering at the Urban building code design performance by solutions, which is a huge gap internationally at the moment.

[6:05] Kevin Sofen: Well, I was impressed yesterday. It does feel like it was almost a week ago when we were at the training academy, it was just yesterday morning, but the simulations in that the simulation room, we're putting on the 3D glasses and sort of seeing these, this different bird's eye view, first person view, third person view of a wildfire going at different speeds and the idea of how to sort of train on an unpredictable experience and then from that so instead of like you know if you can see it you can you know if you if you train on it once you can do it better. There's maybe some quote that maybe you could say more eloquent than me but tell me about that simulation model and sort of what's the point of it.

[6:43] Dr. Greg Penney: Sure well anytime is a when we're training firefighters to say safe where you say now just imagine we've lost it which basically means that But if I tell you, imagine a fire in this room, you're thinking a different fire than how I'm thinking it. So in terms of, we're not looking at the same picture, we're not being immersed in it. So the training suffers, everything suffers. With large wildfires, it's very hard to do that in a training environment, because you can't just go out and light up 100 hectares and let it go, it's too dangerous, it gets out of control. So by working with the University of New South Wales and doing this immersive simulation technology and iFI project. What that's going to allow us to do is not just deal with wildfires, but wildfires at the urban interface. And over the coming years, progress that into building fires, hazardous materials, jobs, collapses, explosions, all that sort of things as well. But really immersing traditional, the rookies in that environment much better than a PowerPoint, much better than a textbook or anything like that. They can see it. And because of the AI generation, and because of the power of the simulations, it is realistic, they can pick out the key points, we can do it in a safe environment, and then as they progress, we can also check out their decision-making and how well they'd apply their strategies to it.

[7:58] Kevin Sofen: Well, so I'm glad you said the word decision-making because I know that's something that you spent a lot of time on and we were talking about it at dinner last night because it's the idea about how we go about decision-making and a lot of it actually stems to, well, how have we been trained, what have we experienced before and different types of classroom settings and then also real world settings. And I know there's a lot of science behind a proper training leads to better outcomes. But yeah, before we dive into all things decision-making, tell me about the importance of training to help ensure and create the best decision-making.

[8:34] Dr. Greg Penney: So look, this is a really key one because firefighters, cops, paramedics, any military, anyone who works in really dynamic environments is really gonna be faced with bad outcome scenarios and ones where there might not be a good outcome at all. So they've gotta be able to make sense of the information, interpret it really quickly, make or apply the correct decisions to all the process, whether it's intuitive or analytical or a blend, and then being able to execute it as well. And one of the things that I got really frustrated with in my career is seeing good people that were faced in really difficult situations make the best call that they possibly could, because they couldn't explain how they were making their decisions because we didn't teach them how to do that, then they would actually face criticism, especially when they went on stands in terms of crony investigations and things like that. I saw the damage that it did to really good people who did a really good job at the time that they were making the calls. So that was sort of another passion project that sort of took me down the lines of we need to teach people not just how to make decisions, but how to explain their decisions, especially in a very technical field, firefighting, very dangerous field. And if you're not a firefighter, you don't get firefighting. It's so hard. We go back to now just imagine you're in a life or death situation. Unless you've been there, you can't imagine it.

[9:54] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I mean when the fight-or-flight environment and you just think about the just innate human senses of just fight or flight of trying to stay alive, and how you go, your focus and everything you're looking at gets real narrow, real quick. And that's why training is so important, but also you talked about of not just, you know, how we make the decision, but why, and then being able to explain the rationale. But I want to get to the rationale part, but the why, and you mentioned the term sense-making. What is sense-making in your eyes, and how does it relate to the fire service decision-making.

[10:28] Dr. Greg Penney: Yeah, so sense-making is how we, I guess, put the pieces of the puzzle together to form a picture. And we'll each be looking at the picture a slightly different way, even with the same pieces in front of us. And what it allows us to do with good sense-making, it allows us to not just look at the obvious, but to look for other reasons behind an event occurring. So with the paramedics, you're not just looking at a single potential cause of something, you're looking at other diseases may cause the same impacts. If someone's going into shock, what could possibly cause it? Is it traumatic? Is it medical? So you'll start looking at the information, put together a piece of a puzzle, but then also looking at other bits. And what that allows you to do then is not just look at the current situation and understand it, but then also start to plan ahead and really do that, not just at a firefighter level, but also at a high level incident command as well. So this, I've applied this when I've been responsible for commanding cyclone response, which is a massive impact across Western Australia. These type of events, it goes right from the grassroots all the way up.

[11:31] Kevin Sofen: Well, I'd mentioned that before the pod, but there is a book by Chris in Masburg called Sensemaking. Need to get you one of them and get you a copy. I'd also love to lose relationship with them. I've worked with him on a few things, but I think he'd be very keen to dive into a bit more of the work that you're doing from a fire service perspective but I also remember last night we were talking to the other gentleman who has kind of longer hair maybe from

[11:54] Dr. Greg Penney: yeah so associate professor Dr Chris Beerman I work with him or say work all this stuff I do as a nerd like all the research stuff is nerd in my own time because I

[12:02] Kevin Sofen: for whatever reason podcasts for the nerds you're in good company

[12:05] Dr. Greg Penney: so Chris and I are part of a group through Natural Hazards Research Australia they put a call out for international teams to look at decision making across Australian emergency services and management and I was really fortunate enough to be part of the successful team with Chris and he's doing huge amounts of work with another guy called Dr Peter Hayes and so between the three of us and another guy Jim McLennan who's an absolute legend in the space and has been for 20-30 years in this space and also working with overseas with Phil Butler and Rhona Flynn as well from the UK. We're all working together but Chris in particular in Australia has been a huge influence in how we do things here.

[12:43] Kevin Sofen: Well then I know also last night we brought up the individual Dr. Sabrina Cohen, who wrote Heat of the Moment, which is all about firefighter decision-making. Is she tied in with some of your research? And I know she's making her way here, hopefully, if her flight's not cancelled.

[12:56] Dr. Greg Penney: That's it. So look, I've cited Sabrina countless times in terms of my research and followed her very closely. And a lot of the work we do parallels quite closely, and complements each other in a way that is just different enough to provide a slightly different perspective on the same topic and without disagreeing with each other as well. And in terms of, look I'm really excited to talk to Sabrina when she comes over here. She brings a huge wealth of knowledge and just so much that we'll be able to talk about and geek out on when she's actually here.

[13:30] Kevin Sofen: Yeah well that's exciting and yeah I mean I had the chance to meet with her at the World Fire Congress and I mean her story is absolutely remarkable in terms of what she's gone through and ultimately what she's doing now to impact the global fire service and diving into this whole decision-making and how we can continue to allow first responders to make the best decisions, whether it's, you know, before, during and after their shift and this ties into the overall fire service livelihood. So yeah, so I guess I'm kind of curious and now it's September 2024, what's next for you? I mean, it seems like not that you're always working and chasing the next thing, but I know you're very motivated and driven and working on a lot, like what's on the horizon for you and what are you focused on?

[14:11] Dr. Greg Penney: I guess on the research base and now the interest base. So just had an article published this morning on the results of a big study that we did on what makes good decisions and bad decisions, how people will actually interpret those. I don't want my stuff to sit on a shelf. So I want this to actually make a difference with people. So I've got some good stuff lined up with the Australian Institute of Police Management. There's Fire and Rescue New South Wales, which we're rolling out new decision processes and training across all ranks there, which is really cool over the coming months. Got a big study on moral injury on Australian Fire and Emergency Services, which is really looking at the organizational and leadership factors. It won't necessarily be the traumatic job that we go to, but people get really damaged by leadership decisions or communication, that sort of thing. So improving the safety, improving the profession of firefighting is really where I wanna take the stuff.

[15:04] Kevin Sofen: So the article you wrote today, Good and Bad Decisions, what is the difference between the good and the bad decision?

[15:09] Dr. Greg Penney: So there's a couple of really key points. So one of the things that came out of the study is that depending on how the decision is judged is a key thing. So we can look at, base it just on an outcome, is an outcome good or bad? We can look at the decision process itself. So was it a suitable process followed? Which is probably the one which I'm really keen on because in events where Thompson's trolley problem, things like that, where there's a split in the tracks. You can make a train go left or right, either take out one person or take out three people. There's no good outcome from that. So the outcomes are always going to be bad. But looking at the decision there, the other thing is that what makes a good decision will be different for every single person. And there'll be some elements that are aligned and some elements that are completely different to all. And in terms if we're talking about a good decision, that's not black or white. There's scales or sort of amounts of goodness if you want to take it. The other thing is a good decision is not a reflection, like the opposite of a bad decision. People judge it really differently. So what the study's really called out is we're not teaching people how to make decisions and that's a key problem that I want to fix.

[16:19] Kevin Sofen: How are you going to fix it?

[16:20] Dr. Greg Penney: Fortunately my position within Fire and Rescue NSW, so that's the Assistant Commissioner education and training. That's one of the areas where I've got a lot of influence which is fantastic. In terms of the international fields, one of the key things that I try and do is, with all my journal articles, making them open access. So firefighters that aren't affiliated with universities and don't have access to the journals will still be able to download this stuff. And in terms of doing talks, in terms of especially the institution of fire engineers, getting the word out and putting my time back into the firefighting emergency services community regardless of whether in Australia or in the US, and making those linkages so that we can educate the next generations. That's how it is, so.

[17:02] Kevin Sofen: Greg, that's good stuff. And then one of the last two things I want to cover is you are sort of wearing both sides of the hat from being a firefighter, a fire engineer, you know, received, you know, got a doctorate. So you're wearing a couple, but particularly with the fire engineer and firefighter hat, and kind of like what we talked about at the beginning of the podcast of yesterday allowing fire engineers to try put on PPE, put wet stuff on the red stuff. This led to us being here today at the Institute of the Fire Engineers booth where we're podcasting and I'm here and it's been so great learning about IFE. The IFE is this organization that I continue to be impressed with the members and it seemed to dinner last night, but in your eyes, you know, what is IFE and why is IFE an important institution within the scope of the fire service?

[17:50] Dr. Greg Penney: Yeah, well, the catchphrase is we're the nexus between fire engineering and firefighting. What that really means is that we try and provide that interface for the blended learning. It's about education. It's about that shared communication between both fire engineers and firefighters. And the benefit for us is whilst we're an industry body, we're not aligned, or we're not, we're doing it without that, I guess, the conflict of interest that come into it. And that sort of provides a really strong capability to tap into different industries to get that networking, to get that education going. And through the IFE road shows that we put on in Australia each year where we'll bring over international speakers and experts in both domains and actually get people sharing that information and firefighters, fire engineers working together, that's making it safer for everyone.

[18:36] Kevin Sofen: Yeah, I heard the tour day Frank Lee went over well.

[18:40] Dr. Greg Penney: It went really well, yeah.

[18:41] Kevin Sofen: What was he covering and what was that about?

[18:43] Dr. Greg Penney: So Frank's talk was all about firefighter safety and leadership. one thing that stands out in particular is his phrase was be the salt because slugs hate salt and on the fire service the moment he said that everyone just knows what a slug is they're the lazy person that doesn't want to get involved turns up to work just turns on tv doesn't drill doesn't prepare and when there's a really significant job happens they have to be carried slugs hate salt so being that salt being the one that is passionate that actually cares about the job that will go and do things, not to make it better for themselves, but for the next generation. That's what came out of Frank's talk. So that was really cool.

[19:23] Kevin Sofen: Damn. I was about to ask you for a mic drop moment, but that was it right there. Well, I'm glad to hear. And then I know having Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell here has been a really big push and just kind of really elevates the game of everyone. But any other, what other kind of road shows or kind of sort of community education do you see the near future for IFE?

[19:42] Dr. Greg Penney: With the IFE, there'll be the ability to tap into all the fire services and what's being done in the community space there. So, for example, with Fire and Rescue NSW, we're doing this amazing partnership with the University of New South Wales. And one of the professors there, Professor Dennis Del Favero and his team, already invested... over $35 million into this immersive simulation technology and working with them to, with these really high fidelity immersive environments so that we can show the community what the impacts are gonna be ahead of time. Because when we say, oh, look, it's gonna be a bad fire day, we're going back to now just imagine it's a bad fire day. So really immersing the community in these environments across different platforms, which is stuff which isn't just Australian based, but we're already starting to model stuff in the US, It's application in a whole range of, we're talking to the French about getting involved as well. That ability to have global impact on fire safety is just awesome.

[20:36] Kevin Sofen: Yeah. Well, so Greg, if you could, in sort of a final statement of if there's any sort of quote that you love to live by or any sort of words of wisdom, whether it's personal or fire service related, anything that you could leave us with here today.

[20:51] Dr. Greg Penney: Look, at the end of sort of 23, 24 years across being a paramedic and a firefighter. Being part of something bigger than you are, giving something back to the next generation will always make you proud, will always make you feel better about yourself. But at the end of the day, look, firefighting is the best job there is. I still love riding the trucks. If you ever get the opportunity, be a firefighter.

[21:15] Kevin Sofen: I'm excited to get on the rigs tomorrow with your fellow firefighters. And Greg, you're truly, you are epitome of what is a firefighter and you're living true to the statement you just said. You're doing it. So keep up the good work, and I look forward to continue to collaborate with you.

[21:29] Dr. Greg Penney: Geez.

[21:30] Kevin Sofen: Cheers. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode recorded alongside the Institute of Fire Engineers during the AFAC show. If you found value in the conversation or learned something new, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out, share your thoughts, and let's keep the discussion going on how we can shape the future of smart firefighting. Thank you.