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Welcome to the FFCC Policy & SOG Page

Welcome to our series of resources for SOG and policy development.

Latest news related to fire department SOG’s and policies (click on title to go to story)

Standard Operating Procedures: The First Step to a Safer Fireground

Watertown Fire Department Adopts New Operating Procedure

Ottawa Fire Services Establishes Operational Guide for First Arriving Company Officers

No Religious Bias in Fire Department Email Rule

Model SOG templates

Modeled after the Fire Drill of the Week format, these feature a template for department’s to utilize in developing their own policies and SOG’s. With an emphasis on critical firefighter safety topics, we hope that these will be a valuable resource for our readers.

Each policy/SOG template includes:

Color coding using the red-yellow-green system
The Gordon Graham risk and frequency classification
Some include a link to a custom report related to firefighter safety developed by the National Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System
References and resources

Red-Yellow-Green color coding

One method of classifying department policies and SOG’s is the red-yellow-green color coding system. The color code can either be at the top of the document, the color of the paper (although red is a tough color to read from) or the color of the tabs in the policy manual. Examples of what would be in each category include:

Red – includes emergency operations, emergency vehicle operations, civilian evacuation, roadway safety, MAYDAY, SCBA, RIT and related topics. Essentially anything that during an emergency could get a firefighter or a civilian injured or killed.
Yellow – these are the tasks that we do a lot (high risk and high frequency) and the ones that are high risk and low frequency but give us time to think. Personnel policies including drug testing, sexual harassment, and report writing would be in this category.
Green (or white)– these are the tasks that create a low opportunity for any of the above areas of concerns or exposure. Examples include the uniform or grooming policy, shift scheduling, or daily station duties. Round figures, 80% of your fire departments policies will be on white paper.

Risk and Frequency classification

Anyone familiar with FFCC’s co-founder Gordon Graham will also be familiar with his risk and frequency classification system. Basically it organizes any task or in this case policy/SOG topic into one of 4 classifications:

High Risk/High Frequency
High Risk/Low Frequency
Low Risk/Low Frequency
Low Risk/High Frequency

A good introduction to this system can be found at: GREFS_NPCCR

National Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System

In conjunction with some of the policy/SOG templates related to firefighter safety, is a link to a custom near-miss report on that topic. This great additional resource is being developed by the great folks at the National Firefighter Near Miss Reporting System.