NSW RFS Lake George Crew Leader Mentor Group

The Lake George Zone's Crew Leader Mentor Group is a group of aspiring and new Crew Leaders who work with each other and some more experienced volunteers to develop the skills and knowledge necessary to become a Crew Leader Supervision and manage a Level 1 incident in the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.

“The Lake George Crew Leader mentor Group was established in July 2013 to assist aspiring CLS candidates make the transition from CLW & CLV into the highly capable incident managers we expect them to be. The learning curve for crew leaders has become steep as the level of rigour, training and knowledge expected of a crew leader to effectively manage a modern fire ground also increases. This group provides a collaborative forum for discussion and learning that has proven to be highly effective when compared to the traditional classroom instruction model.

By having members regularly come together and discuss a single topic in-depth the effective instruction time increases significantly and encourages critical discussion of techniques, ‘assumed’ knowledge and best practices allowing candidates to undertake formal assessment with a strong understanding of core concepts. When being assessed candidates are able to focus much more on the application of their knowledge and tackling the situation at hand, rather than the distraction of recalling poorly understood facts.=

The group has a secondary benefit of exposing members and local officers (Brigade, Group etc) to one another in a more personal way than many may have experienced. This helps build a relationship and mutual understanding between those who will likely be working closely together to manage incidents.”