Question: How did you first become aware of the FM Fire Service Learning Network?

Willette: When I was with the NFPA, I had the opportunity to visit the FM Research Campus and it was truly impressive. Then I met Mike Spaziani, Assistant Vice President and Manager of Fire Service Programs at FM, when I came to NAFTD. Mike introduced me to the FM Fire Service Learning Network and outlined its approach to online training for the fire service. The way instructors and training officers can use the Network’s modules is very flexible. You can assign them as pre-requisites for a class or for refresher training or integrate them into the classroom presentation or small group work. Mike and I keep in touch about what is available. He also solicits the NAFTD’s input on topic areas to address and how to structure the content so it is useful in the fire academy classes environment, not just the fire station environment.

Question: How did you first become aware of the FM Fire Service Learning Network?

Willette: When I was with the NFPA, I had the opportunity to visit the FM Research Campus and it was truly impressive. Then I met Mike Spaziani, Assistant Vice President and Manager of Fire Service Programs at FM, when I came to NAFTD. Mike introduced me to the FM Fire Service Learning Network and outlined its approach to online training for the fire service. The way instructors and training officers can use the Network’s modules is very flexible. You can assign them as pre-requisites for a class or for refresher training or integrate them into the classroom presentation or small group work. Mike and I keep in touch about what is available. He also solicits the NAFTD’s input on topic areas to address and how to structure the content so it is useful in the fire academy classes environment, not just the fire station environment.

Question: What do you like about the training on the FM Fire Service Learning Network?

Willette: The accessibility is number one. Anyone can log on right now and take the training. It’s a well-designed site with intuitive major categories of training to zero in on that give you the basic knowledge in responding to sprinkler-protected properties. Then from the broader topic education, like for example how sprinkler systems work or why buildings with sprinklers can still burn or what the critical elements of pre-planning are, you can do a deeper dive, like getting into the Greensboro case study or engine company operations at sprinkler-protected properties. It’s a complete journey from basics to advanced concepts to understanding these systems and how the fire department can support them and how to minimize the loss.

The second thing that sets the FM Fire Service Learning Network apart is that it highlights response training for large warehouses, complicated facilities, and complexes. Many states and departments don’t have the resources to train on those types of facilities and don’t have instructors with the knowledge to teach about things like top-loading automatic storage and retrieval systems. Training academies don’t have that expertise or experience when it comes to large, complicated, and advanced facilities. But you can get that from the FM Fire Service Learning Network. You won’t find that any place else.

Question: As the head of the NAFTD, what do you see as the value of the FM Fire Service Learning Network to training directors?

Willette: Pre-COVID, fire academies were “students in seats” in-person classes with little online training. COVID forced every NAFTD member to engage with remote learning. People saw that remote learning could work, became accustomed to it, and adapted. The FM Fire Service Learning Network was available when COVID hit to help the academies meet their training goals. If they had to teach a sprinklers class to recruits or fire officers, the state academies didn’t have resources to put that online credibly. FM did. NAFTD members saw that opportunity. Now, post-COVID, online training is here to stay, and training directors work it into their overall plan for how to teach their students. Academies have invested in hybrid learning. We now know that the less time you spend in the classroom, the more time you can spend hands-on drilling in the field and learning about properties in your jurisdiction. The FM Fire Service Learning Network is an important part of the hybrid training mix for two reasons.

One, students can learn the basics of sprinklers and pre-planning from the Network by earning the Fighting Fire in Sprinklered Buildings Certificate and the Pre-Incident Planning for the Fire Service Certificate so they come to the class with that knowledge and are ready to move on to advanced topics and drills tied directly to their local department’s needs or jurisdiction’s properties. When you train with the FM Fire Service Learning Network first, you don’t spend precious in-person time on the basics. You spend it on the specifics.

Two, most fire academies do not have a 1,000,000 sq. ft. facility available to show their students in real life or record a training video there and put it online. The FM Fire Service Learning Network fills that need. Its modules feature the types of buildings and systems you don’t normally see at an academy. A fire academy or a class can cover these types of high risk and high hazard occupancies with automatic sprinkler systems in a way that they couldn’t without the Network. FM does a great service by showing this unique class of protected properties. It helps prepare you for a career event.

Now add in that today’s recruits are learners who are comfortable with learning through a device at their own pace wherever they are. They are inquisitive and will go look things up. They want to learn, and they see the Internet as a place where knowledge is open and available to them. They are not just receptive but eager to use something like the FM Fire Service Network because of the ease of access and the online format. What FM has done is line up with the needs of the state training academies for hybrid and what today’s learner is looking for.

Question: Who do you think the FM Fire Service Learning Network benefits?

Willette: Everyone. The FM Fire Service Learning Network levels the training playing field for all firefighters by giving them equal access to the same high quality training and information on automatic sprinkler systems and pre-planning. A fire doesn’t care if you are volunteer or career. Fire will find the gap in your knowledge and skills. The Network gives you the opportunity to train to the same level no matter what type of department you have. You only have to look at the proposed OSHA changes to understand how critical access to FM’s type of training is. Those OSHA changes, particularly the core group of six standards to be trained to, will have a huge impact on volunteer departments if they go through — hazard identification, risk analysis, preplanning will all be affected. The FM Fire Service Learning Network helps you approach those preparation, training, and planning mandates in these larger buildings.

Question: As a past chief, what is the value of the FM Fire Service Learning Network to chiefs and executive officers?

Willette: Besides filling the training gaps we’ve talked about, Group Registration is one of the great features of the Network. A lot of independent online training is designed to report results to the individual learner, and of course the FM Fire Service Learning Network has that, but their Group Registration gives the chief or training officer a way to easily pre-register everyone in the department or shift or class to make it easy for them to take modules. Group Registration is a huge benefit that lowers the barrier to entry. One challenge a chief has is getting their personnel to register for training. People forget or have problems or put it off. Group Registration removes those issues. You upload a spreadsheet, and everyone gets an email and it’s one click to complete the registration.

A second valuable feature for chiefs is that the modules on the FM Fire Service Learning Network cover different levels of knowledge appropriate for different roles in the department. FM recognizes that the line firefighter and the fire officer and the executive officer have different needs and are responsible for different parts of the response to sprinkler-protected properties. The modules have something for each of those different roles.

If you’re a firefighter you can learn why pre-planning is important and how you can participate in that process. As a fire officer you can learn how to pre-plan for a sprinkler-protected property and get advanced techniques for complex properties. And as a chief or Executive Officer, you get the policy and administration level like through what Greensboro FD shared in their case study with their GOVAP program. And then everyone on the shift or crew can come together and, for example, discuss the Greensboro case study — how do the lessons from that incident apply to us, what buildings do we have, where are the gaps in our preplanning process, how do we address them. Stimulating that conversation is really productive for a department.

Question: How can the FM Fire Service Learning Network help individual firefighters at the personal level?

One of the challenges for the fire service is that our occupational workspace is every structure in the community. We could be called at any time to operate in any building in our jurisdiction or mutual aid areas. Everyone has a “normal call” in their jurisdiction. But what about the call that’s outside the norm? The new warehouse outside town. The converted mill on the river. The industrial complex. The FM Fire Service Learning Network looks at the non-normal calls and helps prepare you for them.

It changes the dynamic of what the individual firefighter needs to think about for their safety when they operate. Firefighters must take personal responsibility for thinking about everywhere they may go to work. What happens when I go to work somewhere I don’t usually see? What does that mean? Do I have the skills and knowledge to work there successfully and safely? In short, am I ready for that type of response? You can invest a couple of hours in training on the FM Fire Service Learning Network to better understand these places you aren’t prepared for. That’s a personal responsibility. The training is available to you. Individual firefighters can take the initiative, even if their department hasn’t, to use the FM Fire Service Learning Network. You can become the advocate if it works for you. Tell others. Encourage them to take the training too. You are making everyone safer.

About Ken Willette

Ken Willette, a 35-year veteran of the fire service, and serves as Executive Director of the North American Fire Training Directors, providing support to the member organizations that train more than 1.1 million volunteer and career emergency responders in the United States and Canada.

Willette spent more than three decades in emergency services, working as a Department of Defense aircraft rescue firefighter, volunteer firefighter, municipal firefighter, and shift commander before rising to the rank of fire chief in two Massachusetts towns. He then spent eight years leading teams that supported first responder standards development and fire service solutions at the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). While at NFPA he participated in the development of the Responder Safety Training for Electric Vehicles and served on several advisory panels focused on energy storage systems (ESS).

Since 2021, he has been a key contributor to a Department of Energy Grant Project awarded to the National Fire Protection Association developing updated emergency response to electric vehicle incidents curriculum and a game allowing firefighters to practice their skills in addressing an electric vehicle fire inside a garage.

Willette is a former president of the Fire Chiefs Association of Massachusetts and a graduate of the National Fire Academy Executive Fire Officers Program and received a BS in Fire Protection from SUNY Stony Brook.