Download PDF: Issue 83 - New Zealand Fire Service

New TAPS programmes
for volunteers
Volunteers around the
country will get new,
easier-to-follow training
material next year.
The National Training team started
the project almost two years ago by
talking with volunteers and trainers
to find out what they needed and wanted
from their training programmes. They then
sat down with writers and NZFS subject
matter experts to develop the new TAPS
(Training and Progression System)
material. This includes study guides,
training and consolidation logs, trainer
manuals and support material and brigade
training guides.
The new modules are a high octane
concentration of the firefighting and
incident-response essentials. The practical
courses have also been changed to match
the new material.
Project co-ordinator Andrea Avelar
said “Volunteers don’t have a lot of time
to spend on studying, so we had to come
up with training material to cover what
they need to know, not what might be
nice to know.”
4 / Fire+Rescue / September 2012
The new modules for Qualified Firefighter,
Senior Firefighter and Station Officer are
similar to the volunteer recruit training
modules that were introduced in 2010.
“We’ve had very positive feedback from
recruits, who find the format and contents
much easier to learn from than the dense
modules of the past,” said Andrea.
National Advisor Operations John
Sutherland helped decide on some of the
content of the new volunteer TAPS material.
“The old training manuals have pages and
pages of writing. They might take half a
dozen pages to teach something that we
have slimmed down into a couple of
photographs, a few bullet points and a
paragraph or so of writing,” he said.
The final touches are now being put to the
new training material. They will start being
made available to volunteers early next
year. Details on how the transition to the
new programmes will be made will be
released in a few months.
Study guide illustrations for the Conducting
Drills Module, featuring members of the
Titahi Bay Brigade.