Winner and finalists
About the Lessons Management Award
AFAC, along with member agencies, has recognised the continued need to develop lessons management capability across the fire and emergency services in Australia. The AFAC Knowledge, Innovation and Research Utilisation Network develops and advocates approaches that support the development and sharing of good practice in knowledge management, lessons management, innovation and cultural practices that support our business at all levels.
Award Winner
Application of AIDR Lessons Management Approach to the DFES Cultural Fire Program
Cultural Fire Program, Bushfire Centre of Excellence, Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)
The DFES Cultural Fire Program is based within the Karla Katitjin Bushfire Centre of Excellence on Bindjareb Boodja in Western Australia. Over the past three years, our team has had the privilege of being invited onto Country by Elders to support cultural burns. These burns often signified a 'return to Country,' where, due to the multigenerational impacts of colonisation and resulting injustices, Elders and Traditional Custodians had been unable to conduct cultural burning on their ancestral lands for many decades.
In an Australian-first, the CFP has applied a formal Lessons Management (LM) approach to identify key factors influencing the success of cross-cultural collaborations on cultural burning in Western Australia. Over two years, 547 observations were collected, leading to the development of 91 insights and 23 lessons.
Applying LM principles to cultural burning required adaptations to the AIDR best practice methodology, particularly in:
- Coding of observations: The unique nature of cultural burning observations necessitated a tailored coding framework, as existing national themes were insufficient.
- Structure of lessons: Sharing the knowledge base underpinning the lessons, rather than developing actions, is crucial to enable meaningful improvements in practice.
- Validation of lessons: Findings needed to respect the intellectual property of First Nations Australians and be presented in a culturally safe and respectful manner.
While collaboration between government agencies and First Nations people in Australia is growing, there remain many barriers - our identified lessons offer valuable guidance for individuals and agencies seeking to foster culturally safe, respectful, and equitable approaches to cross-cultural collaboration.
Finalists
SASES Lessons Management Framework and Lessons Management Board
South Australian State Emergency Service (SASES)
The South Australian State Emergency Service (SASES) is proud to share its innovative development and implementation of the Lessons Management Framework and Lessons Management Board (using the WebEOC platform). This initiative demonstrates outstanding leadership and foresight, strengthening the agency’s ability to capture, analyse, and apply lessons identified from emergency events, ultimately enhancing the operational effectiveness and preparedness.
The SASES approach to embedding lessons management through the establishment of the Framework and LM Board is proving highly successful. The implementation of this approach, particularly in high-impact events such as the "Foxtrot-22" River Murray Flood, the "Golf-23" Severe Weather Event, and “Foxtrot-24” Severe Weather demonstrates the agency’s commitment to continuous improvement. It also highlights the significant value of a governance structure and systematic process, integrated with technology, in fostering collaboration and a learning culture across the organisation.
What sets this initiative apart is not just its internal benefits but its potential impact on the wider sector. The SASES LM Board has attracted considerable interest from other agencies, offering a scalable and adaptable solution that can help other organisations streamline and enhance their Lessons Management processes. SASES is committed to sharing the LM Board and the overarching LM Framework with other agencies, recognising that a collaborative and sector-wide approach will foster learning and continuous improvement across the emergency management community.
To view the full-sized image click here.
For more information contact:
Sarah Ridgway, Sarah.Ridgway@eso.sa.gov.au
Gold Coast Disaster and Emergency Management Lessons Program
City of Gold Coast
The City of Gold Coast has established a highly collaborative lessons management program over the past five years, where we have allocated 50% of an FTE role to the management of disaster and emergency management lessons across the City.
Whilst one of the best places to live in the world, the City of Gold Coast is exposed to many hazards from bushfire, flood, tsunami, storm, dam failure, heatwave and many more.
The City has been exposed to many of these, and has a rolling, and ongoing lessons management process which is underpinned by:
- Independent reviews on response and recovery activities by a consultant to ensure that the identification of lessons are free from bias.
- Testing of lessons implementation through simulation (exercises) and activations to ensure that we are treating the root cause of issues.
- Testing that lessons identified from previous or compounding events are not “undoing” other lessons in progress, or where they are, it is informed through evidence.
We have innovated in our lessons management system through the provision of a dashboard and regular reporting back to the Local Disaster Management Group. We have reached a maturity now where our lessons identified, directly inform the questions we want to ask and answer with our annual capability program in the delivery of training and exercising.
The executive support for the lessons management program is led from the top. In our most recent disaster event – the Christmas 2023 storms, the Executive Leadership Team widened the scope of the review to discover additional lessons as a mark of respect in both the process, and the continuous improvement across the City. The allocation of a bespoke budget line for lessons also further demonstrates the executive commitment.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand's Lessons Management Policy, Framework, and supporting initiatives
Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ)
Fire and Emergency New Zealand committed to implementing a Lessons Management Framework to enhance services and the health and safety of our firefighters. We are also working to enable a continuous improvement and lessons-focused culture across our organisation of over 14,500 paid staff and volunteers.
Our Lessons Management Policy defines our approach to lessons management, emphasises the benefits of developing and sharing insights, and enhances our ability to demonstrate where lessons are learned. Our Lessons Management Framework outlines our principles, methodology, and organisation-wide roles and responsibilities.
To embed a culture of continuous improvement, we recruited a network of Lessons Champions to act as key conduits to our frontline personnel. We created reference guides and tools for our personnel, which can be used in a range of environments —whether training on-station, responding to emergencies, or completing an After Action Review. This includes a database that houses our Lessons and After Action Reviews, a refreshed Feederlines Case Study series which highlights continuous improvement topics, and quick reference guides on the O.I.L.L. methodology and submitting good observations.
We also incorporated the Framework into our Operational Reviews of significant incidents to highlight learnings for our frontline personnel, and adopted a continuous improvement approach to measure the benefits of our learning and assessment programme for senior incident leaders.
These initiatives are underpinned by our organisational values of Auahatanga (striving to improve) and Whanaungatanga (we are better together), and guided by the Māori proverb gifted to us: Mā te mōhio, ka anga whakamua – through knowledge, we improve.
Western Australia Lessons Management Community of Practitioners
Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES)
Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) Lessons Management (LM) Branch has been instrumental in the establishment of the Western Australian LM Community of Practitioners. The DFES LM initiative introduces a collaborative approach to problem identification and solution creation. By engaging various areas within the agency and external stakeholders, DFES ensures a comprehensive and unified approach to LM.
This innovation lies in its ability to integrate diverse information sources and foster collaboration across different sectors, enhancing the overall effectiveness of LM. DFES utilises the same systems in some circumstances to create a common picture and are in touch regularly to ensure all areas have the requisite information to make informed decisions. This is not only true within DFES, but there is also collaboration with other agencies, local governments and volunteer groups. This not only creates an environment to identify likeminded people across the sector, but also to share information that ultimately will benefit the community of Western Australia.
The WA LM Community Of Practitioners had our first meeting in November 2024 and look forward to many more opportunities to collaborate on lessons. The discussion held within the first meeting was that the group would like to meet at least half yearly, with the next meeting scheduled for after the southern high threat period in April/May 2025. While this is an informal group at the moment, attendees are considering whether a terms of reference will be required to ensure full capability of sharing information.
In creating this collaborative environment, it has provided a setting whereby DFES has engaged with other agencies to assist with their policies and procedures and to identify best practice for LM, so that when agencies are working together, we are all singing from the same song book. So far, this group has created a sharing environment of the establishment of best practice, within different organisations at varying levels of maturity when it comes to LM. DFES LM has visited many agencies and assisted with lessons learned within DFES for the policy and procedures to enable them to make informed decisions and not make similar mistakes if at all possible.
Community-centred Tenterfield Post-Bushfire Learning Review
Fire to Flourish, Monash University
The community-centred Tenterfield post-bushfire learning review demonstrates that community members and organisations can be genuinely integrated into emergency management lessons management processes after disastrous events such as bushfires or floods.
In October and November 2023 the northern NSW town of Tenterfield and its surrounding regions were impacted by significant bushfires.
Almost immediately afterwards, researchers from Monash University's Fire to Flourish program were invited by local residents to conduct a post-event learning review. This provided an opportunity to explore how to effectively engage communities to identify lessons from disaster events and support them to take on their shared responsibilities for prevention and preparedness. This was further helped by Fire to Flourish allocating $200,000 in grant funding to fund community projects, to contribute toward meeting the community-identified priorities that came from this learning review.
Our approach to this learning review was to undertake a “no blame” process that centred community voices, experiences, skills and knowledge, so that Tenterfield residents had the opportunity to lead in identifying and learning lessons to ultimately strengthen their own disaster resilience.
Tenterfield community members helped develop the review’s scope, and also the priority areas for action. Researchers gathered and shared the Tenterfield community’s lived experiences, perspectives and priorities regarding community bushfire resilience. Tenterfield residents generated insights from community voices about what happened before, during and after the October bushfires - with reference to previous disasters as well, and what should happen next. This has been a strengths-based learning opportunity to build on existing community capabilities.
For further information about this project, or about implementing this methodology, contact: adriana.keating@monash.edu or zoe.darcy@monash.edu.au
