What the role covers
Incident command at working fires and major incidents, shift staffing, discipline, and accountability for several companies and their officers.
Typical exercises
- Command simulation: you arrive to an incident already in progress, take a transfer of command, evaluate the plan and expand the organization.
- Administrative in-basket: staffing shortfalls, overtime, an injury report, a complaint about a captain.
- Counseling a captain, often about safety or crew culture.
- Community or council presentation.
Preparation
- Run simulations where you arrive second or third and must judge whether the current plan is working. Practice the transfer-of-command conversation.
- Build fluency with ICS position courses and incident action planning; NIMS position-specific classes are in the directory.
- Prepare examples of how you have handled officer performance problems.
Reading to gather
- Department command SOGs
- NIMS ICS doctrine
- Labor contract staffing provisions
This guide is general information written by ServiceJacket, not advice from any agency or testing company. Your official announcement, civil service rules and labor contract control.
Keep going
Fire11 min read
Fire Lieutenant / Company Officer
The company officer test checks whether you can run a crew safely on the fireground and handle the people side back at the station.
Fire9 min read
Fire Captain
In many departments captain is the station or program manager. The test leans harder on administration, budgets and multi-company tactics.
All disciplines12 min read
Any rank
Police, fire, EMS, dispatch and corrections promotions use the same building blocks. Learn how assessors score, and practice the way they score.