 G'day everyone. I'm Gavin Thompson. I'm the Assistant Chief Officer for North West Region. Today I'm here to talk to you about the Chief Officer's Challenge number five, Volunteer Officer Pre-Requisites. We've undertaken a degree of analysis of the brigade roles, including Blue Tenants and Captains. What we've found and in multiple discussions I've had with both current leaders and former leaders, it's the people side of the business they want to develop and get better at. Well it's not just looking at prerequisites. We've tried to build a framework that forms the stepping stones from senior firefighter through to brigade captain and then ultimately the retention program after someone has served for a lengthy time as captain. We've had a look at the great work that's already been undertaken around the state, such as the captain's peer mentoring program that I'm sure a number of you are aware of. I've also gone back in time and looked at some programs that existed in Region 13 or now District 13 as it was back then, looking at the crew leader courses right through to senior brigade officer course and we've grabbed the best parts of all those courses to put into our framework. There are two parts to our proposed framework. There's the prerequisite component as well as the professional development. We're proposing the new rank of senior firefighter, which will then be the prerequisite to become an officer up to the position of Second Lieutenant. So those brigades that might have a sixth, fifth or fourth lieutenant right through to Second, these would be the prerequisites. Whilst the framework does vary a little depending on the role you hold, ultimately we want to give the base skills and then continue to build upon that with the professional development piece that coincides with the prerequisites. I guess now the piece you're all waiting for is what are the prerequisites? So what we've established is four years of service in an operational capacity as well as suppress fire both in the urban and bushfire setting, be a driver of the appliances relevant to your brigade, be a crew leader and obviously we're talking about class four and five brigades with this piece and that is also a structure firefighter. We think that's a basis to lend launch as we then look at further skills depending on the role. So four-year service, those topics that I've just outlined will become the criteria to be a senior firefighter and then provide the element or the basis to then be elected into or ability to stand for election for lieutenant positions up to that of Second. As well as those prerequisites I've just outlined and progression through the ranks we've identified that leadership and team management, delegation, conflict management, the ability to have difficult conversations are also those pieces of the puzzle that's missing currently that we think are important to go forward and build upon those existing skills once you're in the role of a lieutenant within the brigade. The professional development piece that we've encompassed and not limited to the following is obviously the captain's peer mentoring program which is critical to the successful captain's role as we've seen across numerous districts around the state, delegation, we're looking at running brigade meetings and how you facilitate sessions. We see these as all critical components for that professional development and successful brigade leadership going forward. In discussions with DCO Patterson we believe that there's multifaceted ways of delivering our training. We're committed to the learning hub and developing self-paced learning as well as the traditional face-to-face learning that has been in CFA for a very long time. Reviewing the cheese video that he did recently in some of the comments that were posted on Facebook there was a key question that came up a couple of times and that was about RPL and RCC. We're committed to that process and of course where prior learning has existed and undertaken that will be recognised as part of the framework going forward. So we don't want people to go over and over things again. We just want to ensure that our brigade officers have the requisite skills to go forward and ensure our brigades are successful. There is more to come in this space so stay tuned and thank you for your time.