Cross agency issues sometimes arose within the “Marginal Mile”; so FCV and CFA liaison officers were often appointed in the event of large or complex bushfires.
[3] During 1984, Kevin Monk from the FCV’s Fire Protection Branch travelled on a Churchill Fellowship to California to study the United States National Incident Management System (NIMS).
Later Chief Fire Officers, Barry Johnston (1987-90), Rod Incoll (1990-96) and Gary Morgan (1996-2005) maintained the momentum for changes to command-and-control arrangements at large bushfires in Victoria.
AIIMS was jointly adopted by the CFA and CFL in 1991 with the intent of bringing emergency services together under one control system with common terminology; a Multi-Agency Incident Management Agreement was signed by the Chief Officers of the CFA and CFL on 14 November 1997 to give more detail on joint firefighting arrangements,[4] although it took many years to make the full transition to other agencies and interstate.
[4] The operation, training and slow uptake of AIIMS were some of the key issues at the Coronial Inquest into the deaths of five CFA firefighters at Linton in December 1998.
Delegation of the functions results in an Incident Management Team of up to five people and enables span of control to be maintained.
The Public Information Unit was added the AIIMS 3rd edition (2011) as a result of recommendations from the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires Royal Commission.
Up to five reporting groups or individuals is considered to be desirable, as this maintains a supervisor’s ability to effectively task, monitor and evaluate performance.
For example, a single-story house does not require an Incident Control Centre (i.e. control room) with six people managing the incident; however, the 2010–2011 Queensland floods required all functional areas to be filled by a separate individual as other people filling the other roles which come under each functional area (e.g. welfare, catering etc.)
As demonstrated by Black Saturday bushfires or the 2010-2011 Queensland floods, improvements needed to be made around who is responsible for intelligence, inter-service communication etc.
Unity of Command refers to the need for each individual to only have one leader and there is a clear hierarchy to ensure consistent management of an emergency.