Direct fire fighting or prevention activities
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Managing, training and developing people |
| Jobs that do it | 5 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates (4.A.4.b.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 5 occupations that perform it.
- Help direct rescue or firefighting operations in the event of a fire or an explosion.
- Assign firefighters to jobs at strategic locations to facilitate rescue of persons and maximize application of extinguishing agents.
- Supervise staff, training them, planning their work, and evaluating their performance.
- Direct crews working on firelines during forest fires.
- Plan or implement special safety or preventive programs, such as fire or accident prevention.
- Serve as a working leader of an engine, hand, helicopter, or prescribed fire crew of three or more firefighters.
- Develop and coordinate fire prevention programs, such as false alarm billing, fire inspection reporting, and hazardous materials management.
- Administer regulations regarding sanitation, fire prevention, violation corrections, and related forest regulations.
- Monitor fire suppression expenditures to ensure that they are necessary and reasonable.
- Direct maintenance and repair of firefighting equipment, or requisition new equipment.
- Direct firefighters in station maintenance duties, and participate in these duties.
- Recommend personnel actions related to disciplinary procedures, performance, leaves of absence, and grievances.
- Supervise and participate in the inspection of properties to ensure that they are in compliance with applicable fire codes, ordinances, laws, regulations, and standards.
- Plan, direct, and supervise prescribed burn projects.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Enterprise platforms
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
5 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Direct security or safety activities or operations”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Direct emergency management activities | 7 |
| Coordinate enforcement of laws or regulations | 5 |
| Direct security operations | 3 |
| Manage organizational security activities | 2 |
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.