This recommendation is almost complete.  The work left is to finalize the structure/delivery of the technical rescue skills, settle on the annual rotation of the hazmat competencies and finalize the bundle of general firefighting competencies with their assigned rotation/evaluation with the new training officer.  

In response to the recommendations the following layers may have already in place, have been added, and/or further refined

• Firefighting: There are 38 general NFPA based core competencies available for the training division and/or company officers to assign. The next progression is to customize each to be department specific. The new training officer is currently working towards this goal. In addition, annually members must demonstrate proficiency with arriving to and commanding the initial deployment on the fire ground for 5 different building types - residential, commercial, apartments, strip malls, and big box (2 years on the job and above). Member competency and training evaluation/needs are also assessed 1 to 2 times per year through scenario based annual live fire training burns.
• New Firefighters: New employees either attend a full training academy and/or complete a listing of probationary requirements to complete depending on their experience/qualifications when hired. There are assigned competencies to demonstrated over a defined period of time within their first year. Once out of initial recruit training these are assigned out and validated by the companies/company officer on a monthly basis to total at least 6 months once on shift. These competencies help to further introduce the new member to the job functions and equipment within the department
• Driver Operators: Each driver operator release process has a set of demonstrated competencies that must be checked off on during the release process and then evaluated through a final test at the end. These are in place for driver ambulance operators, driver pump operators, driver tower operator, and the tractor drawn release process (both operator and tiller)

• Operations - The operations level providers have a minimum of 8 hours of refresher content that they must do each year. Within these refreshers are competencies they must demonstrate competency as a group in various levels of decon, as well as other select skills chosen during the refresher cycle
• Technicians - The technician level providers have a minimum of 24 hours of refresher content that they must do each year. This refresher content is broken down into 7 functional areas where there are competencies to be practiced and demonstrated on an annual basis

Technical Rescue (inclusive of Operations Level and Technicians Level):

• Operations Level - Presently there are not stand alone operations level technical rescue proficiencies that are separated out from general firefighting skills. At the present time these skills are bundled in with the general firefighting training and competencies - simple rope rescue and knot skills, simple vehicle extrication, support roles at technical rescue incidents, etc.
• Technicians Level - The is presently a Captain assigned with a workgroup to lay the foundation for technician level skills and competencies utilizing the equipment the department has to deploy. There had been some work done in this arena by the previous training officer, but there is still work to be done to have these in place. There is an annual credential build out for this layer identifying kind and type of subject matter and numbers of hours suggested annually for training. The workgroup now needs to plug the built competencies into this annual CE matrix.