In-person forum attendance 
20-22 May 2025

$460.00*

Includes:

• Three-day program
• Participation in Q&A with speakers
• Printed delegate program
• Day catering
• Networking function at the conclusion of day one

In-person forum attendance + 3 workshops
20-22 May 2025

$710.00*

Includes:

• Three-day program
• Selection of 1 workshop per day
• Participation in Q&A with speakers
• Printed delegate program
• Day catering
• Networking function at the conclusion of day one

Virtual forum attendance 
20-22 May 2025

$295.00*

Includes:

• Three-day program, via Zoom
• Participation in Q&A with speakers
• Digital delegate program

In-person workshops 
20-22 May 2025

$125.00* per workshop

Includes:

• Choice of 3 workshops

• 1 workshop will be run per day, check dates below for when a workshop will be running

Tuesday 20 May

Workshop 1 (In person only)
OILL Workshop

Lessons Management Program Committee

Morning Knowledge Café session 1 (In person only)
Lessons Implementation. Getting from identified to learned.

Available to in person delegates who are not attending workshop 1.

Welcome and Opening
- Mihi Whakatau
- Housekeeping
- Opening remarks

MC: Des Hosie (Fire and Emergency New Zealand)

Keynote

Lessons from Leading on the UK Resilience Lessons Digest

Lianna Roast (Head of Thought Leadership, United Kingdom Resilience Academy)

11.30am

11.00am 

9.30am 

Introducing the Lessons Management Framework

Melanie Guthrie (Hato Hone St John)

12.30pm

12.00pm 

10.30am

Exercising Resilience: TfNSW's Lessons Management in Motion

Sanna Verhoef and Chris Jacobson (Transport for NSW)

1.00pm

12.30pm 

11.00am 

Focusing on our people: lessons management culture and capability building

Sandra Alesiani and Loretta Wingfield (Triple Zero Victoria)

2.00pm

1.30pm 

12.00pm

How changing the focus of the After Action Review process is reaping benefits for international deployment management
Emma Conway (AFAC)

2.30pm

2.00pm 

12.30pm 

Te Ara Ahi: Embedding a continuous improvement approach at Fire and Emergency New Zealand

Darryl Papesch and Cullum Peni-Wesche (Fire and Emergency New Zealand)

3.00pm

2.30pm

1.00pm

Wednesday 21 May

Workshop 2 (In person only)
Leadership Challenges: Influencing Decision-Makers for Continuous Improvement in Emergency Management

National Emergency Management Agency, NZ

Morning Knowledge Café session 2 (In person only)
Lessons Management – How do you get started?

Available to in person delegates who are not attending workshop 2.

Morning tea

Return to workshop

Workshop concludes

Lunch for all in person delegates - registrations reopen

Lessons Award - Presentation

Winning project: Application of AIDR Lessons Management Approach to the DFES Cultural Fire Program

Presented by Peter Galvin (Department of Fire and Emergency Services, WA)

11.15am

10.45am

9.15am 

Lessons Management Myths and Legends

Mark Cuthbert

12.15pm

11.45am 

10.15am

What’s required to move from insights to lessons? Exploring the elements of organisational change

Dr Christine Owen, Dr Tracy Hatton, Jon Mitchell and David Parsons (RRANZ)

12.45pm

12.15pm 

10.45am 

Demonstrating Continuous Improvement Using Real Time Learning

Lee Dalgleish (Emergency Management Victoria)

1.15pm

12.45pm 

11.15am 

Lessons From 2022 and 2023 NSW Flooding – Improving Service Delivery and Community Preparedness

Heather Stuart ESM (NSW State Emergency Service)

2.15pm

1.45pm 

12.15pm 

Organisational learning and operational responses in policing: understanding how review processes lead to genuine change.

Superintendent Mark Langhorn (Victoria Police)

2.45pm

2.15pm 

12.45pm 

Flood Lessons Adoption

James Thompson (Canterbury CDEM Group)

3.15pm

2.45pm 

1.15pm 

End of Day 2

3.45pm

3.15pm 

1.45pm

Thursday 22 May

Workshop 3
‘Don’t tell us what we need’: an interactive workshop on how to engage communities to identify lessons from disasters

Dr Zoe D'arcy and Dr Adriana Keating (Monash University)

Morning Knowledge Café session 3 (In person only)
Lessons capability development.

Available to in person delegates who are not attending workshop 3.

Morning tea

Return to workshop

Workshop concludes

Lunch for all in person delegates - registrations reopen

The Journey from Uncertainty to Opportunity: Lessons Management and Positive Risk

Alistair Dawson APM (Office of the Inspector-General of Emergency Management, Queensland)

11.05am

10.35am 

9.05am 

How Victoria’s Inspector-General for Emergency Management is applying a strategic lens to tailor its assurance and continuous improvement methods

Dr Lauren Banting (Office of the Inspector-General for Emergency Management, Victoria)

11.35am

11.05am

9.35am

Beyond After-Action Reviews: The application of Lessons Management methodology to agency-wide operational improvement success.

Andy McQuie (NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service)

12.15pm

11.45am 

10.15am 

Shaping Lessons Learned with Artificial Intelligence

Inspector Bruce Budge (Queensland Fire Department)

12.45pm

12.15pm

10.45am 

Leadership Challenges: Influencing Decision-Makers for Continuous Improvement in Emergency Management

Stefan Weir (National Emergency Management Agency, New Zealand)

1.45pm

1.15pm 

11.45am 

Building and Leading a culture from learning lessons – a real world case study

Daniel Austin (NSW State Emergency Service)

2.15pm

1.45pm

12.15pm 

Closing remarks

2.45pm

2.15pm 

12.45pm 

Event concludes

3.15pm

2.45pm 

1.15pm 

OILL - Observations, Insights, Lessons Identified, Lessons Learned Workshop

Facilitated by: 

Lessons Management Program Committee

Workshop overview:

Are you collecting observations and lessons from multiple events? How do you manage those in a consistent way? How do you make sense of those from one event or across multiple events? How do we share lessons in a consistent format? The Observations, Insights, Lessons Identified, Lessons Learned (OILL) model is a consistent way to think about your lessons process, help you make sense of the data you have and enable us to analyse and share lessons across agencies.

The Observations, Insights, Lessons Identified, Lessons Learned (OILL) Workshop will provide participants with the tools and processes for processing information to support a lessons management process. The workshop will introduce participants to the collection and analysis steps of the lessons cycle.

Audience: 

This workshop is suited to attendees just starting as Lessons Management Practitioners.

Participants will gain:

• An understanding of what the OILL process is and each of the terms within that process
• Practicing in applying the methodology

Morning Knowledge Café session: Lessons Implementation. Getting from identified to learned.

Facilitated by: 

Lessons Management Program Committee

Session overview:

Delegates not wishing to attend the morning workshop are invited to join other like-minded delegates in the main plenary room for facilitated Knowledge Café discussions on lessons management topics.

Come and benefit from discussions with other Lessons Managers on how they are moving from lessons identified to lesson learned.

Audience: 

This session is suited to all lessons management delegates attending in person.
Registration is not needed.

Leadership Challenges: Influencing Decision-Makers for Continuous Improvement in Emergency Management Workshop

Facilitated by: 

National Emergency Management Agency, NZ

Workshop overview:

What needs to happen at every level for decisions on lessons identified to break through the storm of strategic, political and risk-related forces impacting our decision-makers? The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA NZ) has taken roles and responsibilities in lessons management at every layer to heart.

This workshop will take participants through the following components of influencing decision makers:

• Understanding of the factors affecting decision-makers ("the noise")
• Creating impactful products that preserve the integrity of the analysis
• Mastering the narrative and key messages

The workshop employs an experiential learning approach, combining both theoretical and practical elements. Attendees will engage in a variety of activities and delve into relevant case studies.

Audience: 

This workshop is suited to attendees with a moderate understanding of Lessons Management principles.

Participants will gain:

Participants will leave the workshop with more strategies for effectively influencing decision-makers and a fresh perspective on how to approach lessons management leadership.

Morning Knowledge Café session: Lessons Management – How do you get started?

Facilitated by: 

Lessons Management Program Committee

Session overview:

Delegates not wishing to attend the morning workshop are invited to join other like-minded delegates in the main plenary room for facilitated Knowledge Café discussions on lessons management topics.

Come and benefit from discussions with other Lessons Managers. If you are new to lessons or starting out establishing lessons management in a new organisation, how do you get started? What do you need to think about and develop? Where can you find what you need? How do you scale up?

Audience: 

This session is suited to all lessons management delegates attending in person.
Registration is not needed.

‘Don’t tell us what we need’: an interactive workshop on how to engage communities to identify lessons from disasters Workshop

Facilitated by: 

Dr Zoe D'arcy and Dr Adriana Keating, Monash University

Workshop overview:

This workshop will provide an immersive hands-on learning experience, to learn how to effectively engage communities to identify lessons from disaster events and support them to take on their shared responsibilities for prevention and preparedness.

Community members and stakeholders, and the interactions they have with each other and agencies, are often invisible in lessons management because they lack a more formal integration into the emergency management system. Yet we know that both community action and learning after disasters are cornerstones of resilience. That’s why researchers from the award-winning Fire to Flourish program (Monash University) have developed a community-based after-action review methodology.

We will share our approach, which is available and accessible to anyone wanting to genuinely and effectively engage with disaster-affected communities to collaboratively identify and learn lessons. The approach centres community voices and experiences, while facilitating collaboration between communities and agencies. It enables a ‘no blame’, systemic exploration of what worked well before, during and after a disaster (in terms of community safety not suppression operations). We will show how this approach can be a springboard for improved relationships, collaboration and resilience.

This process has recently been applied in Tenterfield, NSW, after major bushfires in 2023. Through it, the community has come together to identify lessons from the event and implement practical measures to reduce risk and prepare for the next event. They demonstrated how community decision-making is crucial to improving how their town experiences disasters.

Audience: 

This workshop is suited to attendees with an experienced understanding of Lessons Management principles.

Participants will gain:

Attendees will experience a fun, interactive workshop as they take part in a mock community event. Through this immersive learning experience, we will share insights about the critical aspects of community-based after action reviews - such as building trust, navigating defensiveness and being trauma-informed - in a practical and accessible way. Participants will leave feeling confident that they too can engage community in lessons management.

Morning Knowledge Café session: Lessons capability development.

Facilitated by: 

Lessons Management Program Committee

Session overview:

Delegates not wishing to attend the morning workshop are invited to join other like-minded delegates in the main plenary room for facilitated Knowledge Café discussions on lessons management topics.

Come and benefit from discussions with other Lessons Managers on developing lessons management capability. What capabilities do you need. How do develop those capabilities? Where can you find material and assistance?

Audience: 

This session is suited to all lessons management delegates attending in person.
Registration is not needed.

TRYP by Wyndham

15 Tory Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand
(7 min walk to Wharewaka)
Use code 9991271015 under the "More Options" tab, then click "Update" for a 20% discount off the best available rate.

InterContinental Wellington

2 Grey Street, Wellington Central, Wellington 6011, New Zealand
(8 min walk to Wharewaka)
LMF25 discounted rate for King Rooms via the link above.

Mercure Wellington Abel Tasman

169 Willis Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand
(9-minute walk to Wharewaka Function Centre)
Use promotional code ‘AFAC’ to secure 20% off our best available rate per day.

QT Wellington

90 Cable Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand
(5 min walk to Wharewaka)

To access your special rates please visit  www.qthotelsandresorts.com

1. Select “BOOK” in the top left hand corner,
2. Select your hotel, enter your dates and number of people
3. Click on “I HAVE A CODE’
4. In the “CORPORATE ID” field enter your corporate ID: LMF25
5. Click “CHECK ROOMS”
6. Your special rates will appear on the rates screen

West Plaza Hotel

110 Wakefield Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand
(5 min walk to Wharewaka)

U Residence Hotel Wellington

Level 4/181 Wakefield Street, Te Aro, Wellington 6011, New Zealand
(4 min walk to Wharewaka)