Fire and Aviation Leadership

FIRE AND AVIATION LEADERSHIP

November 6, 2006

Mike Motice delivered the opening remarks.

Ken Snell, new Director for Fire and Aviation for Region 6 –

Priorities for next two years:

Safety Program – Peer Review of Incidents for good and bad, both Regionally and Nationally, spring event to bring awareness to safety, seatbelts, radios,
Workforce Diversity Management – workforce management, “training program” or just “classes,”
Cost Management – Have we reduced costs – can we show it?
Inter-agency / cooperator / state partnerships and communication
Integration with veg / natural resources programs – focused with fuels and veg.

Bill Waterbury from the National Office will head a review on what is policy and what is guidance using Red Book, Manuals, Handbooks, etc.

Committee Reports: Chris Hoff – Equipment

White Paper on file. Cost savings for standardizing engines, including personnel time.. Approximately $2.4 million will be spent on engines this year. Non-engine decisions will be decided locally depending on what is needed. Light bar research will be done by Carla for the spring meeting. An engine will weigh less than 90% of the GVW fully loaded. Letter will be coming from the Regional Forester stating due date for weighing of the engines. The paper says February 1, 2007, but it may be changed. The manufacturer has been notified of the weight restrictions. The life of some slip-ons has been extended.Outreach will be out for three new apprentices for engine inspectors. If you have any names, please forward to the Regional Office. Gary Morehead had been the representative for the Aviation and Fire Management Tech Center Steering Committee. There is a need for a new representative. Applications should go to Jim Furlong by 12-15-2006.

Gary Morehead will be the new chair for the Equipment Committee and Steve Morefield will be the vice chair.

Wallowa-Whitman has held their order for two years, and now the new engine will be approximately $20,000 more per engine.

RAWS / NFDRS – Jim Furlong (National Fire Danger Rating System) White paper on file.

Proposal –

Jim Furlong will be the SORO Program Lead
Deb Roy is recognized as the NFDRS technical expert with Brian Goff as backup;
Field technical questions
Review and approve pocket cards
Develop cadre for NFDRS training
Lead NFDRS portion of preparedness reviews

Brad Hughes (OWF) will be the technical expert related to RAWS station:
Continue to conduct RAWS maintenance on OWF, MSF, and DEF;
Maintain RAWS or provide assistance to other Forests as requested;
BLM Districts will continue to use National Office technicians for RAWS Maintenance;
Forests identify other employees with RAWS expertise that may be interested in helping Brad

Terry Marsha (NWCC) will be the technical expert for WIMS with Brad Hughes as backup

2007 funding level:
Deb Roy – $10,000
Brian Goff – $5,000
Brad Hughes – $40,000
Continue to fund Jim Brain’s travel under volunteer agreement to provide NFDRS training.
Region to complete a whitepaper recognizing the above and also including expectations on NFDRS items such as:
Expectations on RAWS maintenance;
Expectation on weather data entry;
Unit NFDRS Operating Plan requirements;
NFDRS preparedness review checklist.

Forest should cover Brad’s salary; he will be available for other forests. Or, this should cover all the forests.

Before we fund replacements one on one, the Region needs a plan.

Decisions: Use Deb as expert with funding of $10,000, with Brian ($5,000) as backup.

Use Brad Hughes in some sort of role as technical expert. Not decided where funding will come from, program of work. Could fund with $10,000 and then forest contract to use him to do work on their forest. Still needs to be total oversight of the RAWS program.

Jim will prepare white paper to use Brad’s expertise for RAWS program. What is regional in scope, take over Doug Bright’s work. He would be available to the unit on a “contract” basis.

Overview of Contract Resources – Roy Montgomery

Issues to be addressed by Blue Ribbon Task Group

Monitoring contractor training and instructors
Guidelines / procedures for ensuring accuracy and consistency in evaluating contractor bid proposals
Training module on midlevel fireline supervisor’s responsibilities in managing contract resources
Contract administration package for NW crew, engine, tender agreements for AA briefing package
Educate other geographic areas’ IMTs on use / management of NW contract resources
Proper completion of performance evaluations for contract resources
Options for ensuring consideration of use of contractor crew and engine strike teams

Engine and Tender Agreement – Terry Brown

Are the 50 Regional Engine and National Type 2 IA contract being utilized for contract work? Response: Would use engines if the process was streamlined

Additional earmarks going out to the units, but there is a need for more contract administration. Terry needs names of COR for the contracts. If he gets feedback that the numbers are not adequate, he will make some adjustments. They also need some names of people who will do proposal reviews. There will need to be validation for the money being provided.

There will be another contract for records review and equipment inspection, because the current contracts expire in 2007. There will be a one year agreement in 2007 with two option years. They are standardizing the national agreement and contract clauses, similar to the OF-294.

Radios– Carl Gossard Whitepaper on file. Forests / Districts need to verify if the map is accurate, are there area showing coverage based on hand held radio coverage where there is not coverage? Or is the map showing no coverage for hand held radios and there is, let Carl know. If a repeater is providing coverage for a different dispatch center, he needs to know also. Is there overlapping coverage to allow for sharing workload on the repeaters.

When you go into a canyon, you can lose handheld coverage – do we need coverage there? Dale said that if there are dead areas in canyons, he needs to know. Too much overlap on repeaters – Mike Morcom will provide feedback to Carl. If there is a need for equipment relief the information can be feed to Tui on the BLM side, and it is unknown where the information should go on the Forest Service side. This map should cover all resource areas, including Law Enforcement.

Pre-positioning of aerial delivered resources – report by Jeff Pendleton.