Back to school

Feb 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Dave Plank

New program aims to develop, certify communications team leaders

Emergency communications professionals soon will have another tool in their boxes, as the Department of Homeland Security's Type III Communications Unit Leader training that was formalized two years ago becomes widely available to incident commanders across the country this spring.

The COML training likely is a relief to many first responders, who, while grateful for gear purchased with the influx of homeland security funds over the past several years, may have felt that — in at least some cases — the cart was being put before the horse.

“The goal now is to get local people trained,” said Chris Baker, fire captain with the Roseville (Calif.) Fire Department and one of the architects of the new course. “This is critical because a lot of [DHS grant] money has been spent on equipment, and much of it has been overseen by local IT staff and other non-operational people.”

Baker said the course amounts to codifying many of the procedures that wildland firefighters have been using for years to manage their incidents, including a strong emphasis on preparation and the interdependence of neighboring agencies when it comes to leveraging the power inherent in new communications technologies.

“In the end communications is all about people and all about planning,” Baker said. “You could have no equipment and actually succeed if you have the right amount of people and the right amount of planning. You could have all the equipment in the world, all the gateways and caches, but if you don't have someone who knows how to operationally bring it all together in an incident, then you're done.”

In 2007, the DHS Office for Interoperability and Compatibility funded the initial development of the COML course in response to the need for standardized communication unit training. In February 2008, public-safety practitioners from around the country met in Seattle to discuss the course, along with officials from the DHS Incident Management Systems Integration Division and the Office of Emergency Communications. The group made several recommendations that modified course pre-qualifications, curricula, materials and policies. Additionally, a position-specific task book for COML was developed to serve as an assessment guide. Course-takers may include activities within the previous three years to meet the task book requirements of practical, hands-on experiences or skills.

An important training aspect that was identified early on was the need for a basic introduction that would help would-be COMLs get up to speed before they settled in for the rest of the course. It was feared that candidates who met the operational-experience prerequisites might shy away from the training if they felt they lacked a sufficient technical understanding of communications systems needed to get started, or that only “radio geeks,” long on technical expertise but short on hard-won emergency operational experience, would populate class ranks.