An Investigation of Operational Decision Making in Situ: Incident Command in the U.K. Fire and Rescue Service

The aim of this study was to better understand the nature of decision making at operational incidents in order to inform operational guidance and training.

Normative models of decision making have been adopted in the guidance and training for emergency services. In these models, it is assumed that decision makers assess the current situation, formulate plans, and then execute the plans. However, our understanding of how decision making unfolds at operational incidents remains limited.

Incident commanders, attending 33 incidents across six U.K. Fire and Rescue Services, were fitted with helmet-mounted cameras, and the resulting video footage was later independently coded and used to prompt participants to provide a running commentary concerning their decisions.

The analysis revealed that assessment of the operational situation was most often followed by plan execution rather than plan formulation, and there was little evidence of prospection about the potential consequences of actions. This pattern of results was consistent across different types of incident, characterized by level of risk and time pressure, but was affected by the operational experience of the participants.

Decision making did not follow the sequence of phases assumed by normative models and conveyed in current operational guidance but instead was influenced by both reflective and reflexive processes.

These results have clear implications for understanding operational decision making as it occurs in situ and suggest a need for future guidance and training to acknowledge the role of reflexive processes.