NVQ Level 5 Diploma dissertation by Brian Jeffrey. Completed in Kabul

whilst serving with the NATO/ISAF mission during 2010 & 2011.

401: Develop and implement effective communication systems for health and safety information

Before my arrival in Kabul Afghanistan International Airport (KAIA) Fire Department (FD) matters of

health and safety were the domain of the Fire Training Officer (FTO). Upon my initial arrival the FTO

had been a very social and gregarious person whose personality had helped to facilitate certain

positivity within the FD. However, he had had a limited exposure to HSE matters. He unfortunately

also had no experience in HSE training or working with direct HSE accountability or responsibilities,

this coupled with no formal training qualification in HSE meant that there was room for

improvement in the general approach and attitude towards HSE matters and a fantastic opportunity

to teach HSE to a new, and what turned out to be willing, audience in our Afghani personnel not to

mention the opportunity to raise the general competency and skills in matters of HSE for everyone

within KAIA FD.

My first port of call was the Fire Chief, Andy Dixon, whose buy-in would be essential in ensuring

that everyone was aware that health and safety was now a priority in the FD and that a

comprehensive safety management system would be created over the next 12 months. Luckily Andy

is a NEBOSH qualified ex-RAF Officer, so he was very keen for me to get the programme under way

as quickly as possible and I was to keep him informed of my progressive during the next 12 months

and seek his advice on any matter that concerned me. After I had completed and introduced the HSE

Promotion scheme and Policy documents in order to comply with HSP/613 I decided to introduce a

series of monthly meetings within KAIA FD. The meetings I looked to set up would need to be carried

out with the support of the Fire Chief; to this end I emailed him my proposals for the improved

recording, timing and frequency of meetings that we should hold within the FD. In this email I

outlined the benefits to the FD that better structured, planned and recorded meetings would bring

in terms of HSE activity within the FD. I also made him aware that this kind of documented meeting

would focus everyone’s minds on HSE and allow a recording trail to be started that would allow for

an audit trail to be created that would show an organized and structured approach to HSE was now

active, and being promoted, within the FD. A NATO audit team from Brunsun in Germany are due to

arrive in late March 2011 to carry out an audit of the FD provision on compliance as per NATO

Stannag’s (Standard NATO Agreements) relating to the provision of fire-fighting resources at a NATO

Category 9 Airfield like Kabul. A part of the audit teams remit is to ensure that HSE is a priority and

being actively promoted and advanced as per NATO SOP 336. I informed the Fire Chief that my

proposals would not only advance HSE in the FD but also allow auditable records to be created that

would show that we are working to promote HSE in KAIA FD, prior to my arrival there had been

audits but these had not been able to comment on HSE as there was no auditable data to see except

20 risk assessments that were not being properly recorded, reviewed or indeed being carried out by

a competent person, i.e. A person with a recognized HSE qualification. The Fire Chief was aware of

this issue and was pleased that I was driving HSE forward and a core part of my plan that I had

communicated to him was that all the documentation and promotional and training items I am

creating would have the added benefit of creating an in-depth audit trail for our NATO auditors to

examine and comment upon.

After I had achieved the approval of the Fire Chief to implement HSE meetings I spoke with the

Deputy Chief and the Shift Leaders and it was agreed that 2 meetings would take place, the first

would be the regular ICC monthly meeting as unfortunately at that time these meetings were pretty

ad hoc and not being carried out on the frequent basis required.

The 2 meetings I decide to hold were a monthly ICC HSE meeting and a monthly Shift HSE meeting.

The ICC meeting would commence with an email from myself, the HSE Officer, notifying all ICC’s of

the upcoming meeting, its date/time/place and allow all ICC’s to contact me with items they wished

to see included in the agenda for the meeting. As HSE Officer these meetings give me an opportunity

to speak to the command element of all 3 shifts at once and ensure that any important HSE

information, new legislation, training or documentation for instance can be communicated to

everyone in a group manner which facilitates communication on all HSE matters ensuring an

understanding is achieved. We have ICC’s from many nations in the FD and some are more aware,

and have been given more exposure to, HSE in the past, some nations have very little experience on

HSE and these meetings provide a great opportunity to communicate with personnel at very

differing levels of HSE awareness. A very important factor in the meetings is it gives an opportunity

to communicate information about incidents that have happened since the last meeting and allows a

flow of information about the reactive and pro-active measures that are being rolled out in KAIA FD.

The reporting process for incidents and injuries was poor upon my arrival and the concept of Unsafe

Act / Condition / Near Miss had not yet arrived in KAIA FD, therefore, I looked to use the ICC

meetings as a conduit for the introduction of new HSE concepts into the FD, first, through the

meetings at a management level, then after through Shift meetings at a shop floor level and then

through the subsequent HSE Training programme allow everyone to start to really understand HSE

and empower our Afghani personnel in particular about the importance of HSE in their daily lives. A

copy of the agenda for the meeting would then be placed on the HSE Notice board and allow all

ICC’s to see what was due to be discussed and also allow the Fire Chief, and other management

personnel, prior notice of what was going to be discussed in the meeting to allow them to have any

information required at hand to facilitate an expeditious movement of the proceedings. I also stated

that the meeting would start promptly, notwithstanding operational matters out with our control,

and last for 1 hour. I wanted a timescale to be included to focus minds on the agenda items and to

ensure that only matters of importance would be discussed, and that decision or agreements, would

have to be made in a prompt and efficient manner.

Upon the completion of the meeting I would draft a copy of the minutes from the meeting and

send it to the Fire Chief, or Deputy if the Chief was on leave, for approval prior to sending an email

copy to all ICC’s. It was agreed that in the minutes copy I would produce for the HSE notice board

only matters relating to HSE for the FD as a whole would be included for our Afghani personnel to

read, any matters which would be either Classified, or Restricted due to operational security would

not be placed on the HSE Notice board as we have a great number of visitors and contractors using

the FD. Any matters that were agreed should be communicated to our Afghani colleagues could be

done so during the daily Shift meeting in a verbal manner. I also agreed with the Fire Chief that I, as

HSE Officer, would facilitate a monthly meeting with a Shift to allow any HSE matters to be

communicated directly to our Afghani personnel. We have 3 Shifts, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie Shift

and I have made it a duty of the HSE Officer to facilitate these meetings in what will amount to a tri-

monthly HSE meeting for each Shift. These meetings allow a flow of information to along the chain

of command and I always speak to the Fire Chief prior to these meetings to ensure any information

he wishes communicated to our Afghani personnel is done so. The monthly HSE Shift meeting also

allows the HSE Officer to keep FD personnel up to date with any new HSE legislation, training or

documentation and allows the HSE Officer to field questions on HSE in a group manner allowing a

good understanding of HSE to be achieved at all levels of the Shift. Some of our Afghani personnel

have a poor grasp of English so communication is very verbal in these meetings and I use the Afghani

Shift Leaders to communicate information, and field questions, in Dari, the local language. This helps

to ensure effective communication of HSE matters and allows personnel to achieve a good

understanding of the overall HSE picture in KAIA FD. Sometimes these meetings can cover delicate

matters such as security as when 4 Afghani personnel’s contract of employment were terminated

due to security concerns so discretion on the part of the HSE Officer is crucial and the prior meeting,

and post meeting brief for the Fire Chief are crucial.

Minutes from the monthly Shift HSE meeting are drafted by the HSE Officer and approved by the

Fire Chief via email before being placed on the HSE Notice board, again, with any delicate matters

removed due frequent visitations by both contractors and visitors to KAIA FD. In order to ensure that

I have the most up to date information available I sought and obtained a NATO/ISAF Secret

computer account this allows me access to theatre wide information and ensures that I am up to

date with the current security threat state that KAIA is operating under, I then ensure that I update

the ‘Current Threat State’ on the HSE Noticeboard. This section is also read by contractors and

visitors, as per the HSE brief for contractors and visitors in Fire Dispatch, and ties in with the actions

all personnel in the confines of KAIA FD need to take in the event of an attack. The account also

allows me access to all NATO/ISAF SOP’s and allows a download of any NATO HSE documentation

such as SOP 336 on Health and Safety and allows a paper copy to be kept in the documentation area

in the training Room for all personnel to read. On the HSE Notice board I also created a ‘Toolbox

Talk’ (TBT) section and a Hazard Awareness section and I also posted a signed and dated, by the Fire

Chief, all Shift Leaders and the HSE Officer, Statement of Intent. These sections are updated regularly

by the HSE Officer to ensure that a positive HSE promotion initiative is constantly available, and

changing to ensure interest is maintained, and is also to try to inform all FD personnel of some of the

very varying hazards we are exposed to in the FD, these sections allow effective communication of

both HSE performance and promotion activities and form an integral part of the HSE Plan to increase

HSE awareness and compliance in a very challenging arena that is Afghanistan.

Our Icelandic Deputy Fire Chief has operational control of the FD on a daily basis and has a very

limited exposure to HSE. I communicate with him on a daily basis and have been successful in

achieving some change in his approach to HSE. KAIA FD was in the process of setting up a new

contract with a clothing supplier, after I had a talk with him during which I made him aware that

there are agreed Worldwide standards for Fire Service clothing that would be applicable to ensuring

that we receive, from our new supplier, clothing that meets set criteria and therefore allows

maximum protection to our FD personnel in daily tasks as well as during operational deployment.

The 3 major standards to which all firefighter clothing throughout the world is manufactured to are

ISO 11613 (Parts a & b), the European Standard EN 469 and the USA standard NFPA 1971/2007.

I communicated this information to him helping to ensure that we develop and implement systems

for ensuring that items purchased by the FD meet international standards in the future. We now

communicate regularly and I help him in any way I can to promote a positive HSE culture in all ways

in KAIA FD.

As I have mentioned before we have a number of contractors and visitors using KAIA FD on a daily

basis, I was aware that when they are using the FD we have a duty of care for them as much as our

own personnel, to ensure that we are communicating our HSE plans and procedures to them

effectively I created, in the HSE Policy document, a section covering Contractors and Visitors and I

created a sign in the car park that requires all contractors and visitors to report to our control room

(Fire Dispatch) upon arrival and before their departure, this allows us to not only ensure that we are

aware of what activities are taking place in our compound but also, in the event of an attack, allows

us to ensure everyone arrives in the hardened shelter. I signed the way to Fire Dispatch and inside

raised a ‘Visitor Health and Safety Brief’ which I ensured all Fire Dispatchers must read to our

contractors and visitors and introduced the old Fire Training Laptop into Fire Dispatch as a

computerized Logbook. This computerized Logbook allows easier auditing of our activities and is a

better tool for controlling Contractors and Visitors within the Fire Dept. compound. I have also

placed copies of all HSE documentation onto the Laptop to allow all our Afghani Fire-fighters to be

able to read, and better understand HSE, whenever they are on duty in Fire Dispatch, I will also place

copies of all the HSE training material that I will create as many of the Fire-fighters are keen to learn

so the more opportunities I can provide them the more aware and competent they will become in

terms of understanding, and acting on HSE matters. These plans as a whole I have put in place allow

us to effectively communicate to all contractors and visitors to KAIA FD our ongoing plans to

promote KAIA FD as a safe working environment whenever possible. To try to ensure that we are not

working in HSE isolated in KAIA FD I contacted the HSE Officer, a Mr. Michael Smith, from the major

base contractor KBR. Unfortunately due to the very complicated nature of the mission here in

Afghanistan, and in no small part to very differing agendas, my attempts in creating a base HSE

Committee proved ineffective, I had hoped to create this committee to allow a flow of information

on HSE in both pro and reactive manners to start a comprehensive recording of HSE compliance to

NATO standards as we all work for NATO. However, there are many agencies and agendas at work in

KAIA, and my attempts to promote HSE and take it to the next level above individual sections was

not as effective as I would have liked, this was no reflection on any HSE Officer, it was simply not

possible to achieve any consensus on moving forward for many reasons.

On a more positive note to ensure that KAIA had access to the most up to date legislation and

aircraft information available I subscribed to the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s (CAA) free Publication

Notification service which now sends me the most up to date aircraft information to ensure that we

are working to best practice in our training and awareness of hazards in dealing with any aviation

incident and I received my first update within a week, I also looked into subscribing to the

International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) notification service; however there was an annual

subscription charge for this service of over $1500, after a short discussion with the Fire Chief it was

agreed that the CAA service was professional enough to allow us to be working to best possible

practice in aviation awareness. I am also a member of the Institute of Safety and Health, Technician

grade member, and regularly update my Continuous Professional Development (CPD) page on their

website to ensure I am constantly moving forward in learning more about HSE. I also receive regular

updates from IOSH and communicate any information that is relevant to moving KAIA FD forward via

meetings, emails and the HSE Notice board with the aim of making our Afghani personnel

competent persons in terms of HSE activity and understanding.

601: Develop and implement the health and safety policy

In Afghanistan in May 2010 it was clear that a structured and defined approach to Health and

Safety and Environment (HSE) was not a priority within the senior management at Kabul Afghanistan

International Airport (KAIA) Fire Department (FD). With the arrival of a new Fire Chief, Andy Gavin

from the RAF, a new approach was demanded and, with the support of the Fire Chief, a position of

HSE Officer was created in September 2010 and I, Brian Jeffrey, was chosen to lead this approach

and move the FD forward in achieving compliance with our agreed HSE goals as defined within the

HSE policy that I was to create. KAIA is classed as a Category 9 International Airport and works under

the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) Airport Services Manual, Part 1, Rescue and Fire-

fighting, a copy of which I obtained and placed in the Training Room documentation area for

reference purposes and for general use. At KAIA FD we also operate under NATO control, I had to

research to find out which relevant NATO documentation we should be guided by and discovered it

is NATO Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) 336 procedures for Health and Safety. After

discovering this document I printed off a copy and again placed it in the Training Room for reference

purposes and general information for both ICC and Afghani personnel and I work to ensure that the

HSE Policy I have created works within the general confines of NATO SOP 336. Kabul Afghanistan

International Airport is made up of an International Category 9 Airfield, a Class 3 Military Hospital, an

International Command Centre, a Bunded Fuel Installation with a capacity of over 8,000,000 litres of

Aviation fuel and support and accommodation facilities comprising some 500 buildings to support

over 7,000 Afghani and NATO and ISAF Nations contributing personnel, from over 28 countries, who

live and work within KAIA. We at KAIA FD have a responsibility to provide emergency response fire-

fighting and lifesaving cover to all personnel and facilities. A major part of any HSE Policy is ensuring

that all levels within any structure have defined responsibilities in terms of HSE and I wanted to

create a series of documents that would achieve this important goal. To this end I created an HSE

policy for the FD. The HSE Policy contents included a series of formatted documents that would be

standard throughout the HSE documentation system that would allow for easier auditing and

controlling of any changes, or updates, to the overall HSE Policy document system. These formatted

documents include an HSE documentation front cover and HSE Policy Contents page a Policy and

Procedures document and an Amendments Summary. An HSE Policy Objectives document was

raised to ensure a clearly defined direction within KAIA FD in terms of HSE provision. The document

lays down what KAIA FD is seeking to achieve in terms of HSE provision and quotes the legislation

that our objectives are to be measured, and audited, against. In order to define the duties and

responsibilities of the HSE Officer I first outlined the organisational structure within the FD and then

determined how HSE systems would work within that structure. The duties and responsibilities of

the Fire Chief, Deputy Fire Chief, Training Officer and Fire Inspector, Shift and Deputy Shift Leaders

and Crew Leaders, Fire-fighters, Fire Department Dispatcher and the duties and responsibilities of

any Contractors and Visitors to the FD are also laid out in the HSE Policy.

My duties as HSE Officer are now defined in the HSE Policy and I also created a more in-depth ‘HSE

Officer Duties and Responsibilities’ document which is placed in the Health and Safety Policy folder. I

have also attached a copy of my NEBOSH National General Certificate to demonstrate my current

level of expertise in HSE matters. Due to my current academic level with regards to HSE, and, the

requirement to utilise external help on various projects there is a split designation with this role with

an outside consultant, Mr. Bill Ure from JB Management in Ayr, Scotland, named for additional

support in achieving the objectives laid out in the HSE Statement of Intent. To be effective the policy

must be communicated effectively so that FD personnel not only know that it has been created, but

also what it seeks to achieve and importantly, what it means to them personally., also, in order to

ensure that HSE develops effectively within the FD the Fire Chief was given overall responsibility for

HSE and to this end a signed and dated Statement of Intent was raised and placed upon the new

Health and Safety Notice Board that I created, also the policy will be reviewed on a regular basis or

following significant change. It was agreed with the Fire Chief that the FD HSE Policy will be audited

regularly against ICAO Safety Management System (SMS) Document 9859 AN/460. I also created an

HSE Policy Checklist to ensure that KAIA FD’s HSE Policy would meet, as far as is reasonably

practicable, the requirements laid down in NATO SOP 336 and I also created an Environmental Policy

document which sets out further aims of the Fire Department in terms of minimising the

environmental impact of the activities of the FD in Kabul. After I had created all the necessary HSE

documents I printed copies off and created an HSE Policies and Procedures folder and placed it in

the Training Room with other documented folders relevant to the operation of the FD and emailed

all ICC’s that the document had been created and that their duties and responsibilities in terms of

HSE compliance were contained within and I would be happy to field any questions they have at any

time, or, during the next ICC meeting.

I also obtained a witness testimonial letter from my Line Manager, Andy Dixon Fire Chief, to support

my knowledge and understanding of Health & Safety that I have displayed so far in both promoting a

positive HSE culture, and developing and implementing an HSE Policy. The Fire Chief was very happy

with my work in HSE to this point and this was affirmed during my end of contract Employee

Performance Evaluation report which contained positive feedback from both my Shift Leader, and

the Fire Chief himself.

501: Promote a positive health and safety culture

The promotion of a positive health and safety culture within the Afghani Fire-fighters was my

priority as up to this point nothing had been done to inform personnel of what HSE competency was,

nor what an effective communication is, so, to this end I created my HSE Planner for 2010/11 which I

sent to the Fire Chief who was very happy with it and wanted me to move forward on health and

safety as a matter of urgency. My HSE Planner covers a number of important areas from hazard

awareness training to signage to the environment and accident investigation / reporting. I also

wanted to ensure that the planning and policies I put in place would stand up to external auditing

from NATO HQ in Germany who are due to arrive in theatre around March 2011.

I sought the agreement of the Fire Chief that a meeting would be held monthly for the

International Civilian Consultants (ICC’s). An ICC is a civilian like me who is employed as a mentor to

KAIA FD, we are also operational Fire Commanders as well) within the FD. This meeting would cover

many things but I ensured that an HSE section was included; this gave me access to the 20 ICC’s

within the FD at one time to promote the need for an organised and effective approach to HSE in the

FD and I emailed all ICC’s about the upcoming meeting. This meeting was minuted by the newly

appointed HSE Officer, myself, and I minutes sent the minutes by email to all ICC’s and a copy placed

on the newly created HSE Notice Board.

During my first few months with NATO/ISAF in Kabul I became aware that the multi-agency nature

and military/civilian nature of the organisation an overall HSE umbrella would be difficult to achieve

and after speaking to the Fire Chief it was agreed that my HSE responsibilities would be to promote a

positive culture within KAIA FD and ensure any person visiting or working with the FD would be

aware of our commitment towards HSE and work within our guidelines.

Using my experience in HSE I decided that the initial promotion of a positive health and safety

culture in the FD would be through a very visible increase in HSE signage throughout the FD and the

creation and delivery of a PowerPoint presentation to inform our Afghani Fire-fighters of what

exactly does the term Health and Safety mean to them, and how will it improve their knowledge and

understanding of their FD duties. I called this presentation Think Safe, Work Safe, Be Safe -

Promoting a Positive Health and Safety Culture in the Fire Department. I delivered my HSE

Promotion presentation to all 3 Shifts, Alpha, Bravo and Charlie, and informed them that the

benefits of learning more about health and safety would be not only when they are working for the

FD, but, also back home in their homes in Kabul where they can help promote a safer environment

for their families by being made aware of the risks there are in their homes, and what they can do to

reduce this risk. I also explained to them that as they improve in their knowledge and understanding

of health and safety in the FD they would become aware that everything we do in the FD has a

strong health and safety vein running right through the middle of it, and, in the future, when ICC’s

like myself, leave Afghanistan it will be them the Afghani Fire-fighters who will be promoted to my

position, and a good understanding of health and safety will be a vital component in being eligible

for promotion to Fire commander. I also ensured that a training record for HSE training was created

and have copied a training signature sheet from each shift to ensure the promotion of HSE reaches

all FD personnel both ICC’s and Afghanis’. On the newly created HSE Noticeboard I also placed a

poster entitled ‘Health and Safety - What you Need to Know’ which covers the basics of the UK HSE

poster of the same name, the purpose of this poster was to allow our Afghani personnel a better

understanding of what the duties of NATO / ISAF are as an employer, but also what they duties are

as an employee and I also created a section on the HSE Noticeboard that informs all FD personnel,

and visitors, of the current threat warning that we are working under to ensure people are aware of

any hazards we are likely to face during our time here, I was also informed at this time that there

was no money for the HSE policy introduction I had planned so I searched the internet and found

excellent picture sources of free HSE signage that I downloaded and created my own signage for

free. I also scavenged through old shipping containers to find suitable wooden boards for the main

HSE sign that would be placed at the entrance to the FD that would alert all visitors to the FD that

there was an active HSE programme in place and I also created signage that ensured that all visitors’

onto the FD premises would be directed to report to our Fire Dispatch in the first instance.

A hazard that we face is of course an attack from Anti-Afghan Forces (AFF) the Taliban, we have a

reinforced concrete bunker for rocket / mortar attacks but the ends were not properly secured, to

this end I phoned our contractor, KBR UK, and arranged for earth boxes and sandbags to be put in

place to secure our reinforced bunker during any attack, other hazards that were not adequately

covered by signage and information was electricity, and the noise levels of equipment that we use

including our Breathing Apparatus compressor room, also I looked to inform people of their own

duty in terms of signage by placing small informative signs in the toilet mirrors for both our Afghani

personnel and the ICC toilet area. I also looked to tackle the spread of disease through an increase in

hygiene signage in the toilets and ensuring that our FD cleaner kept the soap dishes topped up at all

times, these I placed in the Afghani toilets and in the ICC toilets. Another risk to personnel during the

Summer months is de-hydration, to this end I introduced a Urine colour chart that allows personnel

in the toilets to check the colour of their Urine to ensure that they do not become the victims of de-

hydration, I also placed packs of water bottles in every Fire appliance to ensure on any emergency

that there is enough water to keep us hydrated.

Another tool I used to promote a positive health and safety culture in the FD was informative signs

that inform personnel of their duty to each other in a safety conscious workplace, to this end I

created and introduced some informative signage and placed them at key points within the FD

complex including the doors into Fire Dispatch and adjacent door into the Fire Training Room and

the door into the ICC crew Room.

Looking through the current FD Training Programme I realised that there was room to improve the

content and frequency of our HSE training delivery, and, after talking to the Afghani Fire-fighters, I

became aware that they were keen to learn more about health and safety and that it would be

important to ensure that the training and information I delivered to improve the health and safety

culture in the FD would have to be specific to their needs in the current social environment in Kabul

in particular, and in Afghanistan in general. I also wanted to ensure the signage programme would

have longevity and be constantly able to change to promote new ideas about whatever dangers may

become apparent throughout the year, especially as the physical environment fluctuates in

temperature from +40 degrees Celsius in the summer months down to -25 degrees Celsius in the

winter. To that end I introduced a Health and Safety Awareness section on the new HSE Noticeboard

and created a Toolbox Talk (TBT) section that details specific Hazards to FD personnel; the first TBT

was a simple Slip, Trip and Fall information leaflet, also I looked to create my first Hazard Awareness

Flyer to cover the dangers of Carbon Monoxide Poisoning which are a very real danger to our

Afghani personnel in the depths of Winter. The Flyer outlines what the hazard is, how it could affect

the FD members and what measures have been taken to reduce the risk and what people should do

to ensure they remain safe when within the FD compound.

The first Hazard Awareness Flyer I created on Carbon Monoxide Poisoning was due to the fact that

whilst during a lecture on LPG with my Afghani Fire-fighters I became aware that in Kabul many

families using Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) for heating and cooking, I was well aware that there

are a number of dangers from LPG domestic usage including a fire and explosive risk from the

pressurised container, and a poisoning hazard from a possible build-up of Carbon Monoxide (CO) in

their homes if the gas is insufficiently burned, indeed I was quickly informed that a large number of

people die in Afghanistan every winter from CO poisoning. This unfortunate fact gave me a very

effective opportunity to make the benefits of promoting a positive HSE culture easily understood by

our Afghani personnel. To this end I created the small Hazard Awareness Flyer on CO poisoning and

had the Afghani Administration Assistant called Zia to translate it into Dari, the local language, he

mentioned that pictures are very effective as many people are illiterate, I inserted some coloured

pictures of various potential sources for CO and once it was translated I had it distributed to all our

Fire-fighters and their families. I also asked the Fire Chief to look into purchasing CO detectors for

every member of the FD. This has made all our Afghani personnel more aware of what risks they are

exposing their families to, and, hopefully in a very small way will through the passage of information

reduce the number of completely unnecessary fatalities in Kabul through CO poisoning.

Unfortunately I was told that there was not any money allocated for CO detectors and was not able

to put this idea forward I would have liked.

In addition to the raising of new visible HSE signage I also removed some old HSE signage that was

no longer relevant to the needs of the FD to ensure that only the correct HSE signage was in place in

the FD. This helps to ensure that no mixed messages on HSE are seen around the FD as only proper

and necessary signage should be erected in any workplace.

Another aspect of the HSE is of course the Environment, and as Afghanistan moves forward their

awareness of the need to protect their environment will increase, as a very small step I found out

that recycling bins for plastic water bottles, of which there are many, and aluminium cans were now

available in KAIA. I then ensured that the FD took delivery of these bins and that signed them and

placed them around the Afghani and ICC Crew Rooms where most of the bottle and can waste is

produced. The bins are emptied by a local contractor and are small steps towards helping the

Afghani Fire-fighters protect their environment from pollution.

502: Develop and maintain individual and organizational competence in health and safety matters.

My assessment of the individual and organisational HSE competencies of KAIA Fire Department

commenced as soon as I arrived in Afghanistan in May 2010. My position prior to arrival in Kabul was

as a Safety Officer with a Dutch Offshore Oilfield construction company and therefore my abilities

and competencies in HSE had been honed and certificated over a number of years. I carried out an

HSE competence needs analysis of the then HSE provision in the FD and one part of my conclusions

were that we, NATO, were not providing proper training in HSE, and had no organised and

structured plan to provide our Afghani colleagues with the necessary competence in HSE that would

enable them to carry out their duties as competent and indeed safe thinking Fire-fighters. We had

not adequately assessed the risks we are faced with in a dangerous environment. Also, we had not

clearly defined the functions, activities, tasks and roles of each individual rank holder in terms of

their responsibilities and desired competencies in HSE that would enable the FD to work as an

organised unit of informed and competent personnel that understands, and adheres to, an

organised HSE training programme that would provide them with the HSE knowledge and abilities

they require to work in a safe manner.

I spoke with the new Fire Chief, Andy Dixon, about my findings, and, I also provided him with an

overview of what I felt we should deliver in terms of HSE training to improve our organisational and

individual competence in HSE. To ensure his buy-in into the programme I said that I would create all

the necessary documentation and training assignments and then deliver them to the newly arrived

Fire Training Officer, Nick Williams, to then oversee as a part of the organised Fire training

programme that he was looking to create. The Fire Chief agreed with my findings and it was then

agreed that I would create a 12-part HSE Training Programme with associated documentation, and

deliver the training to our Afghani colleagues before handing over control of the overall programme

to the Fire Training Officer to administer from then on.

The first task I carried out was to create an HSE Policy, and associated documentation, that would

set out clearly each individual member of the FD’s responsibilities in terms of HSE. This I did and

introduced a complete HSE policy folder into the FD documentation centre. I then informed all

personnel of the existence of the HSE policy and their own individual responsibilities in HSE through

the new HSE monthly Meetings that I had organised and held. When looking at what information I

intended to input into the HSE Training Programme I first had to overhaul what was a very

inadequate Risk Assessment plan. I created new Risk Assessment documentation and carried out

training with our Afghani colleagues to allow them to better understand how risk is identified,

assessed and ultimately controlled. I also referenced NATO/ISAF Standard operational Procedure

(SOP) 336 on Health & Safety to ensure that we were working in accord with our controlling HSE

document when creating our HSE Training Programme.

One thing of note which I found when looking through the then current HSE training presentations

was an obvious reliance on UK based regulations such as ‘Noise at Work Regulations 1989’, ‘Working

at Height Regulations 2005’ and the ‘Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974’ along with some other

specialised Aviation sector documentation from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) such as CAP

748 on Aircraft Re-fuelling. These documents are excellent UK documents but in many ways they are

specific to the UK and I believe not best suited, or indeed, completely transportable to an Afghani

audience whose life exposure to HSE in general has been very limited indeed. I also spoke with my

Afghani colleagues and they said they found UK regulations very technical both in approach and use

of the English language. This did not surprise me and I made it a point that the presentations and

documentation that I am producing are suitable for their target audience i.e. our Afghani colleagues

as it is they whom we are ultimately working to improve in this venture. Therefore I removed from

all HSE training documentation any reference to UK regulations. In some instances I refer to

information from the UK but I take care not to mention specific regulations that our Afghani

colleagues are not currently required to work to, I simply give an overview of the specific regulations

and then say that in the future as Afghanistan moves forward in terms of HSE they will create their

own regulations that they will then be required to work to.

Personally I have made it a big factor in all of my work that I always emphasis that they are the

future of Fire-fighting in Afghanistan, I am simply here to help and that everything I do is aimed at

making them as competent in terms of Fire-fighting ability and HSE awareness and competence as

myself, and that one day they will be responsible for the future direction of Afghanistan. I find this

approach has empowered my friends and many of them have subsequently shown a greatly

improved awareness and thirst for knowledge about HSE that has pleased me. Once I had completed

a thorough Risk Assessment programme I could then better identify which areas in HSE we should be

looking at to improve our organisational and individual HSE competence in an organised and

planned manner.

The methods of delivery I chose were theoretical, practical and role playing as each theme

required some of the HSE training is purely theoretical and designed to provide a greater

understanding about hazards, risks and ultimately in decision making processes that we all use to

make decisions from where other components are more practical and role play based where the

interaction between individuals then facilitates a greater understanding of the subject to be

achieved. There are of course advantages and disadvantages in each method, for instance, it is

easier to demonstrate practically Manual Handling technique rather than talk about it to an

audience where English is the second language, also, some people tend to naturally learn more from

one method rather than another. I found that although the educational life-learning of my Afghani

colleagues was of course not the same as the UK, when given the chance to learn and express

themselves they participate fully in all the methods I employed. When talking during a theoretical

session I always try to make it personal to an incident in the lives of our Afghanis such as when I

deliver a presentation on Utility Hazards I always mention the risks of using LPG indoors where

Carbon Monoxide poisoning is a real risk in Kabul where many people fall victim to this killer, this

personalising of the theoretical training allows them to better understand the nature of what the

theoretical session is covering.

Testing of knowledge is an important factor in any training programme and to that end I have

ensured the inclusion of an HSE section in the annual assessment that all our Afghani personnel

undertake which involves questioning on topics that have been covered during the previous period.

To ensure that I allowed enough scope for change for the new Fire Training Officer in HSE items I

created a bank of 30 HSE questions all related to items mentioned directly in the 12-part HSE

training Programme and emailed them over to the Fire Training Officer who has overall

responsibility for the Annual Assessment, during the course of the year there is reviews of Risk and

COSHH Assessments that are carried out in conjunction with the Afghanis and this also facilitates

learning on the varying risk we are exposed to in KAIA FD and HSE is what I have termed a ‘Golden

Thread’ that runs through every activity in the FD. This thread is an important factor I have

introduced that helps everyone to think about HSE whenever they are carrying out any activity in the

course of their duty and ensures that HSE is a theme that is constantly at play in the FD on every

shift with an aim of ensuring that the organisational competence is HSE is raised through individual

learning and awareness of HSE in every subject.

As a competent Fire Commander I have attended, and am certified by, a recognised international

fire academy namely the International Fire Training Centre (IFTC) based in Teesside, England who are

approved by the UK Aviation governing body the CAA. In order to ensure that I role-related the HSE

Training programme I researched IFTC’s website and studied which parts of the programme would

be best suited at each rank holder within the FD structure. Currently Afghani’s hold positions of Fire-

fighter and Shift Leader, it is an aim of the FD in general to promote Afghani’s into my position, Crew

Commander, within the next 18-24 months and to this end I have included some Crew Commander

items that will be attended by Afghanis selected to be suitable for possible promotion to the position

of Crew Commander. The 4 positions as rank holders we currently have are Shift Leader, Deputy

Shift Leader, Crew Commander and Fire-fighter. I created a role-related section in the Training

Programme for each item relating to HSE and coloured coded them to allow easy visual recognition

of which rank holder is to attend which training item. I also spoke with the new Fire Training Officer

and created a document that he inputted all the Fire related training items into and now all items of

training within KAIA FD are now role-related and specific to the needs of each rank holder to achieve

a level of competence that can be recognised by any external auditor, I then printed these sheets

and laminated them before placing them in the Training folder from where they become the

responsibility of the Fire Training Officer who has overall responsibility for the training of our Afghani

personnel in all aspects of Fire-fighting.

The 12-part HSE Training Programme was then created and is role-related aimed at ensuring each

individual rank holder achieves competence in their position in terms of HSE ability. This individual

competence combined with the HSE Policy, Risk Assessment programme, Monthly meetings and

new HSE noticeboard are all working together to ensure that KAIA FD, as an organisation, is

achieving a level of organisational competence that the annual external audit team from Germany

will recognise. As a further competence factor I also spoke with the Fire Chief and emailed him on

my suggestion that as the next step in achieving competence we should select 4 Afghani personnel

to attend the 4-day IOSH Managing Safely course that is held in the Fire Service College in Oman to

certify some of our personnel officially in HSE which will again raise the bar in terms of

organisational competence in HSE. The Fire Chief has said that this is an avenue that he is keen to

promote and that this option will be looked at again after the current training of Fire-fighters in

Oman is completed and the new training budget is agreed with NATO HQ.

The 12 new PowerPoint presentations which form the new HSE Training Programme which I

created are:

1. S-AS-01 – Airside Hazards & Risks

2. S-AS-02 – General Utility Hazards

3. S-AS-03 – Vehicle Safety

4. S-AS-04 – What is Risk Assessment

5. S-AS-05 – Safe thinking

6. S-AS-06 – Managing Conflict

7. S-AS-07 – Human Factors

8. S-AS-08 – Promoting a Positive Health & Safety Culture

9. S-AS-09 – HAZMAT (Hazardous Material) Identification

10. S-AS-10 – Why Respiratory Protection

11. S-AS-11 – Slips, Trips & Falls

12. S-AS-12 – Manual Handling

I gave all of the HSE training parts the designation of ‘S-AS’ as the normal designator for Fire

training is ‘AS’ for ‘Associated Training’ which the new Fire Training Officer has introduced, therefore

I designated all HSE parts ‘S-AS’ for ‘Safety Associated Training’. The 12 individual parts sometime

cover a wider range of subjects that I collated together, such as S-AS-02 which covers all Utility

hazards we can reasonably expect to deal with in an emergency situation which are: Petrol, Diesel,

Electricity and Compressed Gases, and streamlined them for the particular environment that we are

faced with here in Afghanistan, I also renamed some items such as the old presentation ‘Vehicle

Reversing’ as the new ‘Vehicle Safety’ as I wanted the presentation to cover all aspects of vehicle

manoeuvring in the FD and not just reversing them. I read that Job Safety Analysis (JSA) was

mentioned in the course guidance notes for this section. I have completed these JSA’s for my

previous company, Allseas, and found that they were completed in the same manner as the

Workplace Risk Assessments (WRA) I had completed at my old company Glasgow Prestwick Airport.

The terms JSA and WRA are inter-changeable and indeed the risk assessment document for Allseas

was actually named a ‘JSA/WRA’ where both terms were present on the one sheet. Therefore I have

only used the term ‘Risk Assessment’ in my dealings with my Afghani colleagues as this is their first

real exposure to any kind of risk assessment and I am introducing many new concepts, and new

terminology, into their lives, I felt it was important to try not to confuse them too much especially

with similar terms and stuck with the term ‘Risk Assessment’ because they already had some kind of

understanding of what that involves that I could build upon to raise their level of understanding of

identifying, assessing and controlling risk to a competent level and therefore the new HSE training

item AS-AS-04 – What is Risk Assessment is the document I use to teach everyone about the

principles of WRA/JSA’s. As, in the future, I will not be delivering the HSE Training I also created

Instructor Notes in the bottom of the PowerPoint slides and added information that will be helpful

to any future instructor required to deliver any of the presentations and I also copied off Instructor

note slides and placed a copy of these in the Training folder for Instructors to have at hand before,

and during the delivery of HSE training. I also created Instructor Briefing sheets that allow the

instructor to better understand what the training involves, where to carry the training out, what

items they will need to complete the session and what type of delivery method they will need to

employ during the session whether it be theoretical or practical role-playing and printed these off

and laminated them and placed copies in the Training folder.

All of the documentation I create is created with an eye on the fact that we are audited bi-annually

from NATO in Brunsun, Germany. I therefore work to ensure that all the documentation follows a

clear path in terms of purpose and direction. In these documents I sought to create them to ensure

that there is a clear audit atrial in terms of improving individual and organisational competence in

HSE in KAIA FD.

503: Identify, assess and control health and safety risks

The effective identifying, assessing and controlling of all the HSE risks in Kabul Afghanistan

International Airport (KAIA) Fire Department (FD) was a complex and time consuming task due, in no

small part, to the simple fact that upon my arrival here, and subsequent appointment as HSE Officer,

there was no understanding of the identification, assessment and ultimate control of risk process in

KAIA FD.

The existing Risk Assessment (RA) programme comprised 35 RA’s, insufficient Equipment Data

Cards, no Workplace Inspections, no environmental measuring equipment, no HSE training, no

understanding of legislative requirements within the NATO/ISAF structure, such as Standard

Operating Procedure 336 on Health and Safety, no electrical equipment testing plan and no officially

recognised certification for any FD personnel. These factors combined to show that there was no

comprehension of a Safe System of Work (SSoW) as any competent HSE trained person would

understand.

So far, I had created, and implemented the HSE Policies, promoted a positive HSE culture and

raised awareness of HSE through policy, procedure and training and created HSE meetings and

raised minutes and actioned items that were required to allow our Afghani personnel a basic

understanding of HSE, and their role within a recognised HSE structure in the FD. In the HSE Policy I

had laid out each rank holders individual duties and responsibilities under the HSE Policy and

communicated these duties through email and HSE meetings.

In order to effectively understand and ultimately control the risks we faced I needed to train all FD

personnel on what I was looking to achieve and how they would be involved in the process to

achieve it at every stage of HSE development. In the first instance to achieve a better understanding

of the process of identifying, assessing and controlling risk in the FD I had to create, and deliver a

training plan for all personnel. The first thing I did was to create a PowerPoint training presentation

which I called simply Risk and COSHH Assessment. This presentation covers what an RA is, why, and

how, we carry them out and is a continuation of the training information I provided in my ‘Think

Safe, Work Safe, Be Safe’ presentation which talks about what an SSoW and now moves into the

‘Hierarchy of Risk Control’ and reinforces the ‘Competent Person’ message that will be a golden

thread through all the documentation, plans and procedures that I am creating. Also, as a part of the

on-going process of training our Afghani Fire-fighters I explained to them about COSHH Assessment.

I was looking to give all of our Afghani personnel a better understanding of the need to identify,

assess and control risk in the FD whether it be physical, environmental or substance based, to ensure

that we all work in as safe a working environment as is possible here.

An important part of training is record keeping, and during my delivery of Risk Assessment training

to all crews I ensured that training signature sheets were completed to ensure that future auditing

and inspection of our HSE plans, policies and procedures will find an audit trail to follow. I have

achieved certification as an ISO 9001 Internal Auditor and am aware of the importance of the need

for a coherent and organised approach to all HSE documentation that allows auditors to easily follow

the direction and content of an HSE plan when they are assessing the plan is fit for purpose.

Like every item I was creating the delivery of information to all FD personnel was achieved through

attending each shift training sessions and introducing new HSE material as I created it. I had initially

created my HSE Planner 2010/11 which I had presented to our Fire Chief and in it I had detailed my

findings in terms of HSE activity and policy in the FD and what I was looking to create to bring the FD,

and importantly all FD personnel up to the standards of HSE awareness and ability that most people

in the Western World would be able to recognise.

The creation of the initial RA training plan also included the creation of ‘What is a Risk Assessment’

document that was delivered in conjunction with the PowerPoint presentation and covered in detail

the 5 points of an effective RA. I also placed a copy of this document in the HSE Policy folder and this

document is available to all personnel tasked with carrying out an RA to assist them in

understanding the terminology, direction, and process of RA. During the minuted monthly HSE

meetings that I chair I also inform all shift personnel on duty about any new documentation

introduced and also place a copy of the document on the HSE Noticeboard.

My work on HSE in the FD had begun immediately I arrived in Afghanistan and I had carried out

some RA’s in practical form and although everything I am achieving now in the FD is aimed at

improving our Afghani personnel’s understanding of the importance of HSE unfortunately, we

cannot control when we are attacked by Anti-Afghan Fighters (AAF). I identified quickly that we will

be attacked, as we have been attacked before and the war is on-going, and an assessment of the

existing facilities for protection within the FD compound on my arrival highlighted that our protected

bunker was not giving suitable protection against rocket or mortar attack,. Therefore I requested the

delivery, and placement, of HESCO baskets placed at both ends of our reinforced bunker at the FD to

reduce our exposure to fragmentation attack. This action meant that although I had identified the

risk from AAF attack and assessed our current level of protection and subsequently increased it, I

had only been able to control the risk as far as is practicable as a direct hit on the bunker would

probably mean that serious injuries would be inevitable. On a more mundane, but no less important

note, I also had some wiring that was crossing a pedestrian walkway and was hanging in a dangerous

manner placed above head height to reduce the risk.

The nature of HSE awareness and culture within the FD was such that, although I would have liked

to approach everything I have, and will be doing, in an organized and structured manner the scale of

the task, and existing threat from attack meant that sometimes I just had to achieve small things on

an ad hoc basis that I would have preferred to achieve in a coherent structured manner. Thankfully

now with my plans, policies and procedures starting to reach a level of maturity I am more able to

plan and deliver HSE in a manner more suitable to the needs of the FD that will move forward our

Afghani personnel’s understanding, and abilities in HSE with the overall goal of making them

competent in terms of HSE awareness and skills in keeping with the plans, policies and procedures

that I am delivering.

The starting point for my organized work in identifying, assessing and controlling risk in the FD was

NATO / ISAF Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 336 on Health and Safety. This document outlines

the top level approach to HSE and I sought to tie all of my documentation into this document and its

aims and objectives. Although this is a high level document it places duties onto each section to

control risks for NATO / ISAF personnel and all subsequent works were to achieve this overall aim. As

I have said, upon my arrival there was no attempt to understand this important SOP (indeed it was

me who found it and downloaded a copy for the FD HSE Policy folder) so all subsequent works have

been to ensure that the overall aim of the SOP, protecting personnel from harm is achieved, I would

have liked to have placed a copy of the SOP in my portfolio, however, it is a controlled document

and it is not possible for me to copy it and place it in this portfolio.

Before I had trained all FD personnel in the basics of RA I created a new RA template which was

colour coded and as simple as possible for our Afghani colleagues to use. After I had trained them in

the aim of an RA and talked them through the RA procedure I then asked them to carry out

individual RA’s with my assistance and from there we were able to begin the process of identifying

all risks we in the FD are faced with.

The RA folder, which I now control as the HSE Officer, was being run by 1 International Civilian

Consultants (ICC) with no input, or subsequent advancement in HSE ability and awareness, of our

Afghani colleagues. One of the prime objectives that we as ICC’s in the FD have is to mentor and

train our Afghani colleagues to take over from us when they have attained an agreed level of ability

to command and control emergency planning, response and recovery. To this end I made it a priority

to include my Afghani colleagues at every level of the HSE improvement process as I only foresee

myself working here until mid-2012 when some of the Afghani’s will take over as Crew Leaders

complete with a good understanding of HSE responsibilities placed upon them by the HSE Policy

duties and responsibilities that I created. All of the existing RA’s were of a Qualitative nature and this

continued to be the case for all of the RA’s that were subsequently completed in KAIA. The main

reason for the selection, and continued use, of a Qualitative approach is that we, in the FD, do not

have direct financial input into the ordering, sourcing, selection, testing, ordering maintaining

programme that associates all KAIA FD equipment and vehicles, therefore Quantitative RA’s were

not required as we have no control of the cost implications of say the loss of a Major Foam Tender.

Although the loss of a Major Foam Tender would have large financial consequences, a Rosenbauer

Panther 3 6x6 costs delivered in excess of 500,000 Euros, the FD does not have any direct control

over fiscal matters. Fiscal matters are controlled by the FinCon ‘Financial Control’ Officer with only

legislative requirements being asked from the FD as the performance criteria of the vehicle being

ordered.

In the RA folder I had decided to sectionalise our FD activities into categories and then assign each

section with a different indicator abbreviation: For example:

Risk Assessments covering FD vehicles are titled - Veh

Risk Assessments covering FD equipment are titled - Eq

The process I put in place is not only easier for all FD personnel use but is also easier to audit.

The aim of this plan was to make the RA’s easily identifiable as sections as well as to ensure that

any changes to any individual assessment within the RA folder would not impact on the document as

a whole, for example, the RA’s were numbered 1 to 35, if a piece of equipment was removed from

service, and its RA was subsequently removed, this would mean the re-numbering of all subsequent

RA’s to ensure that the system continued to be numbered correctly. Also, if a person needs to find

an RA for a specific task, or piece of equipment, then it is easier to find that RA if it is placed in a

folder with other RA’s of the same nature as opposed to looking through a Microsoft Word folder

containing over 100 RA’s not in any order at all. I also created a combined Word document that runs

through each section in a clear and easy to follow manner as it is important that all RA’s are readily

accessible to anyone who requires using them.

After I had completed this training and informing process I started to mentor my Afghani colleagues

in carrying out the RA’s for the FD. During the completion of the RA’s we considered not only the FD

personnel potentially involved in the activity, but also anyone who may be affected by the activity of

the FD be it pedestrians walking around the base during our high speed response to a casualty

trapped inside a crashed aircraft. We also had to consider what actions we may have to take in the

event of an AAF attack which creates a fire situation and consider the HSE needs of the FD primarily

during attack.

The section folders I had created to be assessed were:

1. Equipment

2. Vehicles

3. Breathing Apparatus (BA)

4. Station General Tasks

5. Operational

I allocated individual Afghani Fire-fighters with RA’s and over the course of 10 days ensured that

the RA’s were completed in a thorough manner. I carried out a large number of RA’s, and have

included a few as evidence of my work; the RA’s included in this Reflective Account are highlighted

with a reference number in red.

Some of Risk Assessments I produced in conjunction with my Afghani colleagues were in excess of

8 pages long. I have only photographed the front page of each assessment, which contain the dates,

names and signatures of the persons carrying out the RA’s, for this portfolio.

As we are training our Afghani people in a large number of different pieces of hazardous and

complex Rescue equipment I have included in this Reflective Account a photo of RA ‘Eq 04 – Working

with Self-powered Hydraulic Rescue Equipment’ and a photo of one of our Afghani team with the

equipment deployed to allow better understanding of some of the equipment we use and have risk

assessed.

The sections of RA’s we completed were:

1. Equipment

In the FD we have a large range of complex and hazardous equipment that we can deploy as

required to facilitate rescue and to mitigate the damage fire can do to buildings and aircraft.

The RA’s we completed included Eq o4 Working with Self-powered Rescue Equipment’

commonly called ‘Cutting Gear’ which is powered hydraulically from a Petrol 2-stroke

generator. We have 3 types of toll available to us Cutter, Spreader and Ram; these can be

used to cut/spread open crushed vehicles or buildings or to cut/spread Aircraft doors/exits

in the event of an emergency. We also have ‘Air Bags - High and Low Pressure’ these are

powered by our BA cylinders which we charge via our ‘Air Compressor’ to an internal

pressure of over 300 atmospheres. This equipment is used to lift vehicles, or any other

trapping object, which is trapping a person. We also carry a large variety of handheld

tools/equipment that were assessed and are used in many ways during any emergency in

conjunction with other rescue equipment. Other equipment we assessed included Ladders

and working with what we call ‘Secondary media’. Secondary Medias are chemical

compounds that aid in the extinguishment of a fire and are applied according to the fire

hazards we face from Aircraft engines / undercarriage to Aircraft internal fire to building fire

and vehicle fire. Each secondary media is designed for specific purposes and is used by Fire

Crews competently trained in their application. Secondary Medias we use are ‘Chemical Dry

Powder (DP)’ and ‘Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF)’. Water is classed as a ‘Primary

Media’.

2. Vehicles

We have a large selection of FD vehicles donated from mission contributing nations. Vehicles

we have include Major Foam Tenders which weigh over 36 tons and must accelerate from 0

– 60 mph in under 40 seconds. They are capable of carrying up to 10,550 litres of water,

1,500 litres of AFFF and 225kg of DP. We also have a Hazardous Material Incident truck, 2

Domestic trucks which attend fire incidents in the KAIA North compound, and a selection of

4x4 vehicles. The RA’s completed looked at the using of a vehicle of any type and were

generic in this aspect as the operations of vehicles included Vehicle Testing, Vehicle Cleaning

and Vehicle Reversing. Actual operation of the vehicles during an incident is covered in the

‘Operational’ section. The need to work in a safe manner with all FD Vehicles was reinforced

recently when a 36 ton Major Foam Tender whilst reversing collided with a container, the

vehicle sustained some superficial damage but the fact that the Afghani driver lost sight of

the other Fire-fighter acting as vehicle Marshaller but continued to reverse nevertheless

underlined the need to create this entire HSE project to allow our Afghani colleagues to

understand the core of HSE which is looking after each other’s wellbeing at work. I also

found out that the investigation was carried out by the Officer In Charge of the training, I felt

this was a conflict of interest as not only did he have a vested interest in ensuring things

were not reported properly, he was not qualified in any way as an HSE practitioner to carry

out any investigation and try to highlight any root causes for the incident. I emailed the Fire

Chief to explain my reasons for requiring an independent person to be appointed as

investigating officer and in future it will be I who is alerted to any incident that requires

investigating.

3. Breathing Apparatus

Breathing Apparatus is a crucial piece of safety equipment that is worn by any Fire-fighter

required to work in an irrespirable atmosphere, such as in a building fire. BA is also used in

atmospheres which may contain airborne contaminants that may present a major health risk

in the future, such as Carbon Fibre involved in a fire. BA is a controlled piece of equipment

and has specialised control documents for its usage such as UK Technical Bulletin 1/97. The

RA’s carried out covered BA training; operational usage and the subsequent replenishment

of BA post incident. For BA training we assessed from the initial alert through to equipment

replenishment. When required to use any BA there are set stages to be gone through and

the HSE aspects of these were assessed in a ‘Don and Start’ RA and the subsequent usage of

BA in either training or actual emergencies were covered in RA’s looking at Working in Hot

and Humid Atmospheres, Working in Smoke and Search and Rescue. Some of the RA’s tie in

with other duties and these were covered in separate RA’s such as ‘Casualty Recovery’.

When a BA team enter an irrespirable atmosphere for training or operations a Crew Leader

is specifically designated with no other duty other than the monitoring of the BA Team,

communications with the BA Team and ensuring they exit the risk area at a pre-designated

time. An RA was carried out covering the HSE aspects of his duties. When the use of BA is

completed the cylinders from the equipment require to be replenished from the BA

Compressor and an RA was completed for this task.

4. Station General Tasks

RA’s were completed on other tasks that are carried out around the FD, some were generic

tasks such as ‘Manual Handling’ and ‘Working in FD Offices’ whilst others were more specific

to certain tasks that occur during normal operations within the FD compound such as ‘Use of

the FD Gymnasium’, ‘Working with Electrical Heaters’ and Fire Department Cleaning.

5. Operational

The operational responses for the FD vary, and the RA’s carried out for these duties focused

on the HSE aspects to e everyone involved in the activity be it FD personnel or casualties, or

visitors to the FD. The operational responses we covered were ‘Responding to Airfield

Emergencies’, ‘Responding to Domestic Emergencies’, ‘Responding to Insurgent Attack’ and

‘Casualty Recovery. These emergencies create different hazards to the FD by their location,

duration and overall number of persons likely to be involved. The primary function of the FD

is to save life, we are willing to take some risk, and train for this eventuality, but we are

willing to take little or no risk to save unsaveable lives of property. These objectives of taking

risk are in keeping with best HSE practice and I instil at every opportunity to my Afghani

colleagues that risk management, and the understandings of risk are key responsibilities of

competent Fire-fighters and that the Golden Thread of Health and Safety runs through the

heart of everything we do as a Fire Department.

Upon the completion of the RA scheme I updated the FD Equipment Data Card system to include a

Hyperlink system to the RA folder. An Equipment Data Card runs through the operating process in a

step-by-step fashion for any piece of FD equipment and gives instruction to any member of the FD

who is tasked with operating with that piece of equipment.

To allow all FD personnel to better understand the hazards associated with operating our

equipment, and what control measures are in place to reduce the risk from using that equipment

down to a manageable level, I updated all the relevant Data cards via a Hyperlink to the RA

associated with that piece of equipment. The associated RA is now made available to the operator

via the Hyperlink giving the equipment operator a complete understanding of any given piece of FD

equipment. The overall aim of the Data Card system is to create a database for all our operating

equipment and ensure as far as is reasonably practicable that we have assessed the equipment and

its hazards to ensure that all FD operations, regardless of the task, are carried out in a controlled and

as safe a manner as is possible. Upon the completion of the Hyperlinked Data Card system I printed

off a copy of each newly updated Equipment Data Card and placed them in an organised folder for

easy referencing.

I also created a ‘Workplace Inspection’ document that details what to look for during a routine

inspection including ensuring the FD compound remains as sterile as possible, reducing as much as

possible the opportunity for insurgents to place explosive devices in the FD compound, this

document is to be used by the HSE Officer and a member of his Shift on a monthly basis, the results

of the inspection are communicated to the Fire Chief with any strong recommendations being

highlighted for discussion with the Chief. Any items found on the inspection will be communicated to

the FD as a whole during the monthly HSE Meeting and via email to all ICC’s if necessary and also via

a copy of the Workplace Inspection being placed on the HSE Noticeboard. During my initial FD

Workplace Inspection I became aware of the fact that some of our electrical extension cables, with

multi-point adapters, are not marked in any way that would signify the equipment being tested to

any European/US standards, and indeed some of them along with some strip lights being used in the

ICC Crew Room were showing signs of fire damage. To this end I contacted the Fire Safety Officer

and informed him of this matter, he has now began carrying out inspections of all buildings in Kabul

Afghanistan International Airport (KAIA) and I have removed all such electrical items from the FD. All

electrical cables now in use in the FD are ‘CE’ certified. I then informed all personnel of the need to

not only utilise CE marked electrical cables in the FD but also in their accommodation as well, I also

informed our Afghani Fire-fighters of the dangers of using unsafe electrical equipment via a new

Toolbox Talk on Electrical Safety. The Workplace Inspections also highlighted that we need to carry

our proper scheduled checks of our entire electrical appliance within the FD and to this end spoke to

the main contractor within KAIA, KBR UK, about coming on an annual basis and testing our electrical

equipment. However, I was unfortunately informed that this is not a stipulation of their KAIA

maintenance contract and therefore they would not be willing to carry out this work as KAIA is large

and if they tested for the FD, they will have to test for KAIA as a whole. This was disappointing news

and underlined again the difficult conditions of working within a framework more concerned with

profit than safety. As the Workplace Inspections continue it is hoped that smaller faults will be

spotted earlier and that KBR will then be called to carry out preventative repairs as required, this

they are willing to do which was a small victory.

Another important part of identifying, assessing and controlling HSE risks is via a Control of

Substance Hazardous to Health (COSHH) assessment for all the chemicals and substances that we as

an FD use. To this end I looked at the chemicals and substances that we store and use in the Fire

Dept., and searched for the Material Safety Data Sheets for them. Unfortunately I found none, so I

searched the internet until I had located copies of all of the substances we have and printed off

copies to place in the COSHH folder I was looking to create. I then created a COSHH Assessment

template document and I also then created the COSHH Assessment folder and placed it in the Fire

Training Room next to the HSE Policy Folder. COSHH assessments were carried out by me as I am a

certified COSHH assessor and any control measures required were implemented including the

removal of some cleaning agents deemed hazardous to the wellbeing of Fire-fighters due to an acid

content. On one of our domestic Fire Tenders we have an Emergency Decontamination Shower that

can be put up in 1 minute for emergency decontamination and I signed the COSHH area with HSE

signs indicating to all personnel where the emergency decontamination shower is located. I also

raised other relevant HSE signage indicating the types of hazards we are working with in KAIA FD and

printed off copies of the COSHH Assessments I have compiled. I then placed all of this together at

the entrance to where we store our chemicals and substances used for servicing, cleaning and

inspecting our equipment. Where necessary I also Hyperlinked the COSHH Assessment onto the

Equipment Data Card system allowing any member of the FD tasked with using a piece of equipment

to go to a single point and access the Equipment Data Card, the associated Risk Assessment and also

the associated COSHH Assessment to have a complete understanding of that piece of equipment,

how to use it in a safe manner, what the inherent risks are, and what hazards he may be faced with

when cleaning and maintaining that piece of equipment, also, the identification, assessment and

control of risk was the environmental factors within the FD compound. The general environment is

of course dangerous, with attacks being carried out in our area, and against the base as a whole by

AAF on a regular basis. These attacks, and the general war like feeling of KAIA can sometimes be

obstacles to carrying out basic life safety tasks and the ‘well we’re at war’ attitude is prevalent in

many areas of KAIA. I do not believe that just because we are in a hazardous environment that we

should somehow discard basic life safety measures that we would all take for granted in Europe and

certainly these attacks do not somehow override our basic commitment to health and life safety.

The general environment around Kabul is one of very poor air quality, especially in the colder winter

months when many poorer people have to burn anything they can find to keep themselves, and

their families, warm. A report drafted by the American Army carried out in a base approximately 3

miles from KAIA found that the ‘Particulate Matter (PM2.5) in the Kabul area was 102.5micrograms

per Metre cubed. This amount of PM2.5 is considered a significant hazard to health and eye, nose,

ear and throat infections are common place although the levels of Metals in the air were found to be

‘Low’. The report its self is controlled by the American Army and I am unable to print a copy but can

use the information contained within it where necessary and unfortunately we cannot do anything

about the air quality around Kabul other than monitor the reports from the American Army and take

action as the report indicates. KAIA has no air quality testing equipment available in KAIA and

although I spoke to, and emailed the Fire Chief asking for measuring equipment for both air quality

and noise levels to be purchased this was not supported as another US military person is looking into

purchasing the equipment for KAIA, hopefully then we can get some testing done and understand

better the environmental hazards we face here in Kabul

As I have said, we cannot do anything about the surrounding air quality but we should certainly be

aware of the risk, assess it and see what measures we could introduce to seek to control it from our

own compound rather than relying on an American Army base 3 miles away. Although I have been

unable to carry out any environmental measuring here in Kabul in my previous role as Safety Officer

with Allseas, a Dutch Oil and Gas construction company, I carried out a large number of

environmental and gas testing duties including void spaces, fuel tanks, ballast tanks and air quality

all of which had to be recorded and measurements sent to HSE HQ in Delft, Holland as required. In

order to carry out these duties I attended, and became qualified in, gas testing and have an OPITO

(Oil and Gas industry standards body) approved Gas Tester Level 1 Certificate.

Another issue I had was that we have a duty of care to our Afghani personnel, although we could

not achieve a successful outcome in the air quality area I had hoped that we could provide our

Afghani personnel, and their families, with a regular health check up at the Class 3 Military Hospital

that we have here in KAIA. To this end I emailed, and then spoke with the Fire Chief, and Deputy Fire

Chief about setting up a health screening programme for out Afghani personnel, unfortunately, both

of them were not supportive of this idea and I was powerless to make the change I felt we could

have made a small, but important difference in the lives and wellbeing of our people, but this was

not possible, prevention is better than cure after all.

On a more positive note I spoke with the RAF Officer based in Brunsun in Germany who carries out

the bi-annual inspection for KAIA FD and have informed him of the work we are doing in improving

the HSE culture in KAIA FD, he was very pleased with the work we have done so far and will be

mentioning it in his next audit report and will be looking for constant improvement in HSE in KAIA

FD, to this end, I will be looking to highlight issues of concern to him where possible and hopefully a

more ‘top down’ approach will be more successful than my ‘bottom up’ approach so far in some

areas of identifying, assessing and controlling HSE risks that we are faced with at KAIA FD.

When I had completed my identification, assessment and controlling of risk plan I went and spoke

to the Fire Chief and showed him my work on both the Risk Assessment and HSE Training

programmes. He was very pleased and drafted me a witness testimony letter on sections 502

Maintenance of Competence and 503 Control of Risk. He was happy with the good work I had done,

and how it is helping our Afghani personnel to better understand risk, and therefore, make them

better Fire-fighters and is certainly working towards achieving our main aim of mentoring the

Afghani personnel to take control of KAIA FD in the future as informed and competent Fire Officers

and Fire-fighters.

504: Develop and implement proactive monitoring systems for health and safety

The measures I have already put in place since my arrival are all part of a comprehensive HSE

system that is in many ways already proactive in its approach. Initially I created an HSE Planner that

laid out the shortcomings that I had found and put in place a detailed plan to resolve the

shortcomings and give our Afghani personnel the opportunity to raise their skill level in HSE and

through these skills via the ‘Golden Thread’ principle that I introduced, a further opportunity to

become more aware and competent Fire-fighters. I also created an HSE Policy that laid out the

responsibilities each individual in the FD has in terms of HSE and made everyone aware of their

responsibilities during the monthly ICC meeting and HSE meeting and printed off a copy of the

complete HSE Policy and placed it in the HSE folder that I created and placed in the Fire Training

room which is easily accessible to everyone as well as placing a folder in the internal server called

‘HSE Policy documents’ that allows everyone in the FD to access a soft copy of their responsibilities.

I also created and raised HSE signage throughout the FD compound and trained our Afghani

personnel on how to brief visitors and contractors to the FD on our new HSE Policy and its

requirements on them in HSE terms when they are within the FD compound. I also created my ‘Think

Safe, Work Safe, Be Safe’ PowerPoint presentation and delivered it to all KAIA FD personnel and

introduced monthly HSE Meetings that take place on shift with a different Fire Shift each month.

After these meetings I send a copy to the Fire Chief, or his Deputy Fire Chief, for approval and then

visit the Fire Chief to discuss the outcomes of the meeting and in particular raise verbally any

suggestions or concerns that were raised by our Afghani personnel during the meeting. I then email

copies of the HSE meetings to all ICC personnel and place a printed copy of the minutes on the HSE

Noticeboard that I raised to allow visual information passage to everyone on, or visiting the FD for

any reason. These measures have raised HSE awareness and visibility and all work together to

facilitate proactivity in the FD towards HSE and HSE matters. Although I have not been able to inform

a lay audience on the findings, and HSE training and competence programme that I have created I

did with my previous employer delivered training presentations, and Inductions talks, to visitors

onto the Oil and Gas Pipelay vessels that I was Safety Officer on-board all around the world to

different cultures and ethnicities always seeking to ensure that some of the more complex

information was taken in by them to best ensure their safety whilst on-board what were vessels that

were covered in hazardous and complex equipment.

The minutes that are created by myself as HSE Officer are recorded and placed in the HSE folder

with a log that I created being updated with any outcomes that require action from the HSE meeting

along with the name of the person selected as responsible for seeing the agreed action through as

well as an expected completion date for the item. If any items are raised at the meetings I then can

contact the person responsible for creating a solution to the item, for instance, on the first HSE

meeting that I chaired I asked about the general health and physical wellbeing of our Afghani

personnel and found out that they received little or no support from the FD management in terms of

their general health. I found this to be an area that we, as a caring company, were falling short on

and emailed the Fire Chief about my concerns and put forward a proactive proposal to provide

annual health screening for all Afghani personnel at the Class 3 French Military Hospital that we have

on site, unfortunately my suggestion was not taken up and I explained to the Afghanis my idea and

the unfortunate outcome, we do now however take our Afghani personnel to the Hospital when

they arrive for duty unwell, although this is a step in the right direction I am still unhappy that we are

not providing the proactive health screening that I feel would be a real benefit to our Afghanis.

Our Afghani personnel are very keen on physical fitness and enjoy using our Gymnasium and

running around the compound area, to try to inform them of the possible injuries from taking part in

physical fitness I contacted a Captain John Mason who is a Physiotherapist in the small American

Hospital we have attached to the larger French Hospital. I spoke to John and asked him if he had any

ideas on improving our Afghani personnel’s knowledge of the dangers of trying too hard in physical

fitness, some of our Afghanis are very keen indeed, and he arranged to provide an afternoon’s

course on ‘Safe Running Technique’ that we delivered to all 3 Fire Shift’s and I put it through as

training item and completed training signature sheets for this proactive session that seeks to inform

our Afghanis to prevent injury during physical training sessions.

The Deputy Fire Chief, Binni Frederickson form Iceland, has now left NATO and will be replaced in

around July/August time when I will raise the matter with the new Deputy Fire Chief when I build a

personal relationship with him and I certainly felt that we should be more aware of the

environmental hazards we are all faced with each day in Kabul and to this end I requested verbally

and via email to the Fire Chief the purchasing of environmental monitoring equipment after I had

asked other contractor companies if their HSE personnel had any we could use.

As we are working on a daily basis providing mentoring and training to our Afghani personnel I

discovered that their awareness of the hazards they are exposing themselves, and their families to,

on a daily basis was poor. I became aware, particularly towards the colder winter months that

everyone uses LPG cylinders in their house for cooking and as I spoke further with them it became

apparent that many Afghanis die each winter from Carbon Monoxide poisoning, they had really no

idea what Carbon Monoxide poisoning was. After this discussion I created a flyer on Carbon

Monoxide poisoning and had it translated into the local language of Dari and printed off a large

number of copies and handed each Afghani 3 or 4 copies each and explained to them the dangers of

Carbon Monoxide poisoning and asked them to hand out the copies to their families to raise

awareness of the dangers of cooking with LPG indoors, I also at that point created a Toolbox Talk

section on the HSE Noticeboard and created the first Toolbox Talk about the dangers of slips, trips

and falls in the winter months which informs personnel in a proactive manner about the hazards we

are exposed to at specific times of the year.

Some other work I have completed that seeks to be proactive in improving competence in HSE is

the 12-part HSE training Programme that I created and inserted into the Fire Training Programme,

this programme seeks to inform our Afghani personnel about various hazards we face in both our

daily duties as well as when we are attacked by AAF’s and also when we are responding to Airfield

and Domestic emergencies, I also inserted into the FD Induction and visitation presentation a section

on HSE that informs all new employees and visitors to KAIA FD that we have an HSE programme in

place and expect them to comply with the requirements that we inform them of at all times when in

the FD compound.

The complete training programme will also raise the general HSE knowledge of our Afghani

personnel and will lead directly to a better understanding of how, and why, we complete the

Workplace Inspections programme that I also created. I trained the Afghani personnel from my Shift

on the how and why of Workplace Inspections and then selected one of my Afghani Fire-fighters

called Baqer to assist me in carrying out the first Workplace Inspection, I then sent a copy to the Fire

Chief as well as posting a copy on the HSE Noticeboard and placed an item in the Shift Handover

book and included a talk on Workplace Inspections in the HSE Monthly Meeting for June 2011.

Another important area where I sought to raise the competence of our Afghanis was in Risk

Assessment; I completed a Risk Assessment training course with all Afghani personnel and then

completed a complete Risk Assessment programme on KAIA FD with the assistance of our Afghani

personnel. This programme was a great success and the theoretical training I provided was then

driven home to them when we actually completed the practical Risk Assessment programme in the

FD.

A completely new idea that I introduced into KAIA was an Unsafe Act / Unsafe Condition reporting

system. The system is a Logbook that I created and placed in Fire Dispatch and inside the Logbook I

placed instructions on how to complete the log and I also emailed all ICC personnel on the new

Unsafe Act / Unsafe Condition giving instruction on what is expected from them in overseeing the

initial reporting from our Afghani personnel on the new pro-active reporting mechanism. I also

raised a new Toolbox Talk on the Unsafe Act / Unsafe Condition Logbook which informs all personnel

on exactly what an Unsafe Act is and what an Unsafe Condition is. As a part of the 12-part HSE

Training Programme that I created is a presentation called ‘Think Safe, Work Safe, Be Safe’ that

covers the terminology of Unsafe Act, Unsafe Condition and Near Miss and so I also trained our

Afghani personnel on how to use the reporting system via the HSE Monthly Meeting, and an email to

all Fire Shift Leaders on what the system is, and how to use it effectively, all completed sheets are

placed in Fire Dispatch and I collect them daily and record the information on them that I action as

necessary, I also send a copy of the information contained on the sheet to the Fire Chief and inform

all ICC personnel about during the ICC meetings that are facilitated by the Deputy Fire Chief.

One piece of measuring equipment that we do use is a set of scales to weigh every Carbon Dioxide

(CO2) fire extinguisher that we have in the Airfield. We have over 1,000 extinguishers in North KAIA

Camp and the Airfield and the Fire Inspector is responsible for carrying out inspections of all of them.

I thought it would be beneficial to the knowledge of our Afghani personnel if we completed the

annual inspections programme of all of the extinguishers we are responsible for, as in the event of

an emergency we have to use them. An additional benefit of carrying out the inspection programme

was also that these extinguishers are located in all the buildings in the Camp and Airfield and this

gave our Afghani personnel an opportunity to become more familiar with the layout of the Camp

and Airfield that we are responsible for fire cover in. During the early summer we completed the

annual fire extinguisher checks and as part of this we used a set of scales that we were trained on by

the Fire Inspector. Each CO2 extinguisher weighs 5kg, the extinguisher body its self weighs 3kg and

the CO2 inside is stored under pressure as a liquid and weighs 2 kg, the weight test is completed

annually and any decrease of over 10% of the 5kg is recorded and the extinguisher replaced as the

weight loss is an actual loss of the liquid CO2 inside the extinguisher, after we completed the

weighing and inspection of all fire extinguishers in KAIA we returned the data to the Fire Inspector

for collation into the Fire Safety programme.

The reporting of incidents, diseases and dangerous occurrences regulations, RIDDOR, do not apply

here in Afghanistan but I have used them before in an HSE role at Glasgow Prestwick Airport FD

where any incident of a failure of a BA set is automatically a RIDDOR incident and is thus reportable

to the UK HSE and I have prepared and completed RIDDOR reports in the past. Any HSE information

that I gather from my pro, and re-active, monitoring is used only for the benefit of KAIA FD and the

only outside influence to report anything of note to is NATO Brunsun in Germany where RAF

Warrant Officer Paul Hume is the contact, and audit team lead who visits the FD in Kabul twice a

year. I have already contacted Paul Hume and informed him of the progress I have made in HSE and

he now has a section of his audit report that is about HSE. His initial report will be made around

July/August time and the Fire Chief then implements any action points from there and I will have

responsibility for ensuring any action items with an HSE aspect are implemented.

Our only procedure from outside KAIA FD is NATO SOP 336 on Health and Safety that I found on

the NATO secret server, I downloaded a copy of this procedure and informed the Fire Chief of its

existence, we now work where ever required by the SOP to that guidance and are audited by Paul

Hume from NATO Brunsun on its guidance.

The only other external influences on the HSE programme I have created and can use in a pro-

active manner to ensure our competence is maintained to best industry practices are my CAA email

notification service that I use to update any of our policies or documentation to reflect the new

information and best industry practices available to us here in Afghanistan my professional HSE

memberships in IOSH.

As I create my safety management system I do so always with an eye on the bi-annual audit from

Brunsun and work to ensure that our systems are auditable in line with the best practice from ISO

9001 of which I am a qualified Internal Auditor.

Some of the evidence I have provided in this Unit I have already created during the course of my

work in creating a safety management system for KAIA FD and also I have used some new evidence

as to my competence in developing and implementing pro-active monitoring systems for the HSE

programme here in Kabul.

505: Develop and implement reactive monitoring systems for health and safety

To understand where we, as a Fire Department were in terms of our then current accident and

investigation provision I first looked at NATO SOP 336 on Health and Safety and what types of health

and safety loss events had occurred recently in the FD, how they had impacted our ability to operate

as per our NATO mandate, and what had been done to ensure that there is no re-occurrence of the

event.

In SOP 336 there was a section on Accident Investigation but as I read through it I quickly realized

that it was a more generic document and not sufficient to allow a proper recording of the accident,

and then the in-depth investigation process that would follow, to be robust enough to highlight the

causal factors of the event that would then ensure that a remedial action plan could be created that

would, when completed effectively, ensure that there would be no re-occurrence of the accident. I

also found that the accident investigation form was of poor quality and lacked in several key areas,

such as witness testimony, that would provide a robust enough investigation to be completed as

there was insufficient opportunity to record important information and then act upon it.

As I have said the documentation form available in SOP 336 allowed for no formal recognition of

witnesses testimony, nor did it facilitate any opportunity for their witness testimony to be recorded

and documented into the investigation process thereby denying the opportunity for prime

information to be realised and then included into the investigation system.

This denial would almost certainly in every case deny the opportunity to pinpoint the causal factors

sufficiently and from there the whole system would be inadequate and the prevention of a re-

occurrence of any accident would not be realized as should be the case from a robust and in-depth

analysis of the events surrounding an accident, and its underlying causal factors.

We in KAIA FD operate under NATO Stannag’s and also in a strange manner also to ICAO Annex 14,

Part 1 on Fire-fighting provision at a Category 9 Airport. The strange balance between civilian

operations, which came under ICAO regulations, and NATO/ISAF military operations, that are

covered by NATO Stannag’s, mean that we can change from one requirement under certain

legislation to another from one minute to the next.

The main operating mechanisms we have in the FD are our equipment, and our personnel, either

of these mechanisms can suffer from a health and safety loss event which will have an impact on our

ability to meet the requirements that we are working to under either NATO Stannag’s, or, ICAO

Annex 14, Part 1, legislative requirements. Each of these regulations contains specific numbers of

vehicles, personnel and equipment that we must have to meet the requirements of the legislation.

I carried out a review of our recent health and safety loss events and two significant events that

had a direct impact upon our operating ability were a Rosenbauer Major Foam Tender had been

damaged whilst being reversed in the FD compound, this damage resulted in the vehicle being

unserviceable for a period of around an hour whilst a mechanic from KBR MT Pool carried out an

inspection of the vehicle before declaring it serviceable again, and the other was the falling from our

Emergency Water Supply vehicle of one of our Afghani personnel resulting in a broken finger and his

subsequent then inability to work and be a part of our legislative requirements in terms of the

number of Fire-fighters manning our vehicles.

Another aspect that I quickly found was that another important factor of any investigation was not

being looked at in any way. The need to document evidence in a planned and thorough manner is

also to allow for any injured party in that accident to seek financial recompense for any injury

sustained that was their fault. This important factor of any investigation is a key contributor to

allowing every member of any organisation, in this case KAIA Fire Department the peace of mind

that when something goes wrong, they can expect the system to protect them, and where

appropriate recompense them for their pain and injury due in any part to the negligence of their

employer that has been found. Neither of these health and safety loss events had been thoroughly

reported and investigated as the policy and procedures, documents and forms that are required for

proper and sufficient reporting and recording of the events were simply not there.

After I had looked into the FD’s then investigation processes I formulated my thoughts into a plan

and then emailed, and spoke with, the Fire Chief on the shortcomings I had found in our accident

reporting and investigation processes, and my plans to create and develop a robust, and thorough,

health and safety loss event reporting and recording system.

The Fire Chief was very supportive of my plans and I then created a complete Accident

Investigation and Reporting Policy that lays out in an in-depth and thorough manner responsibilities,

definitions and the important recording and investigation associated documents that I had created

and developed as well as explanations on each part of the reporting and investigating of the health

and safety loss event process from initial reporting in a proper Accident Book that I bought in

Scotland through the associated Accident Investigation Report form to the Witness Statement form

and into the Corrective Action form as well as the purpose and requirements from an investigation

to exactly what is a ‘Causal Factor’ into why we collate information and complete a ‘Corrective

Action’ form’ and the need to ensure that we record everything we do for future analysis and

auditioning purposes. The Policy also includes detailed instruction on how to complete each

document that may be required to be completed during the course of the reporting and

investigating of any accident. I had decided that all accidents to any member of the FD or any of our

equipment will require a formal investigation. The reasons for this are that no one in the FD had any

real exposure to proper reporting and investigating procedures in the past, especially our Afghani

personnel to whom this was a completely new process. Therefore I decide that to best facilitate

learning and understanding we will complete reports and investigations on damage reported to

personnel or equipment.

One very important factor to communicate to our Afghani personnel was the ‘No Blame’ approach

to our reporting and investigating, I have experienced over the last 14 months I have been working

here in Afghanistan that the Afghani culture is very reluctant to admit blame for basically anything in

case of losing face. In the light of this cultural wall against honest reporting I had to communicate to

all levels from the Fire Chief through to the new Afghani Fore-fighters we have that the purpose of

reporting and investigating accidents is to ensure they don’t happen again in the future so that we

are working in as possible a ‘risk free’ environment as we can create. I looked to achieve this through

communicating my objectives to both the ICC leadership element in the FD as well as during another

meeting with the Afghani Crews.

I also looked at better understanding what can go wrong in our response to any incident as a Fire

Department and I wanted to create a document that would allow the command element of the FD

to understand what could go wrong in our technical response to an incident, what the causes could

be, and what options are available to them to choose to ensure that the effect of any failure of a

vital piece of our response capability was mitigated as quickly as possible to ensure that we achieve

our response goal of saving saveable lives. I chose to create a Failure Mode Event Analysis (FEMA)

for KAIA FD.

I looked at creating a Fault Tree Analysis document for the FD but I felt that this tool was not best

suited to our specific environment and is a tool that is mostly retrospective in an after event

investigation process. I may use a Fault tree Analysis in the future but I chose to create an FEMA to

allow our command element to understand what has gone wrong in the past and what options are

available to them to mitigate the failure of a vital piece of our response equipment as quickly as

possible.

After I had completed all the above documents I held a meeting with the ICC personnel. We have

many different nationalities in KAIA FD ICC and some of our southern and eastern European

personnel had very limited experience of proper accident reporting and investigating process.

Therefore, I took everyone through the whole process, and each documents purpose and place in

the process, piece by piece and confirmed their understanding of the process as we went through it.

This was in many ways a meeting with a lay audience and I wanted to ensure all ICC personnel

completely understand the process as they will be the people who will be completing the reporting

phase of the process before myself, and any other person appointed by the Fire Chief, carry out a

thorough investigation of the causal factors of the accident to prevent any possible re-occurrence.

As I communicated the policies and procedures, documents and forms I had created and how they

are to be introduced and completed, recorded and filed I also had to emphasise that we need to

proceed with a delicate touch during any investigation and be sympathetic to the cultural

sensitivities that our Afghani personnel may be experienced during the process. I then printed off

copies of all the documentation and placed them in the Health and Safety Policy folder and then sent

an email to all ICC personnel telling them that the new documentation was now on file and ready to

be used. I also linked the folder destination of the documentation in our computerised system onto

the email and also requested that they involve Afghani personnel deemed suitable for future

promotion in the accident reporting and investigating process to allow a learning and understanding

opportunity for our Afghani personnel.

After I had completed the Accident Reporting and Investigation Policy I created and developed an

Accident Reporting and Investigating Procedure. I developed this procedure to provide guidance to

ensure that everyone required being involved in the reporting and investigating phases as detailed in

the Accident Reporting and Investigating Policy understood clearly what they should be doing, why

and what they should be looking to achieve from the reporting and investigating mechanisms that I

have created and developed. It lays out the responsibilities of the persons involved in the reporting

and investigating, covers the categories of injury to person that may be involved and what each

injury category covers from ‘No Treatment Injury’ to ‘Fatality’ and provides guidance on the

associated documentation that may require to be completed by the responsible person designated

to report and investigate the accident. I chose what each category of accident is from the UK HSE

RIDDOR regulations that I have worked with during my time as HSE Representative at Glasgow

Prestwick Airport Fire Service and agreed with our civilian personnel office in the City Centre that we

will record, report and investigate any injury to a member of the FD that lasts over 3 days, as per UK

legislation which I feel is suitable also here in Afghanistan. Other injuries from ‘No Treatment’ to

‘Fatality’ will be reported, recorded and investigated as per the new Accident Reporting and

Investigation Policy and all documentation will be sent to the Fire Chief for approval before he sends

it to whomever requires to be notified. The Agency who carry out an audit on KAIA FD are based in

Brunsun in Germany and the Fire Chief will forward any relevant documents and findings form any

investigation to Paul Hume, the Auditing Officer, when he feels it is relevant to allowing Paul to

understand what is happening here in Afghanistan before his audit.

I would have liked to have found a more robust Policy in place that I could have used to track our

new policy and procedure against, but there was not the guidance, or legislation here to follow so I

simply created the necessary documentation and had it approved by the Fire Chief who said I had

done brilliant work and said it was long overdue even in the environment we find ourselves.

In the letter the Fire Chief complimented me on the work I had done in complimenting my work on

504 Proactive and 505 Reactive monitoring systems for Health and Safety.

As I have said I chose to introduce the complete system to the key ICC personnel who will be

responsible for ensuring its implementation at Fire Shift level on a daily basis through the ICC

meeting and explained the documentation and how it is to be completed as well as all the why’s and

wherefores that are covered in the policy and procedures, again the Fire Chief was present and

confirmed to everyone that this was great work and it was the responsibility of all of us ICC mentors

to introduce our Afghani personnel to the new ideas and help them understand that the

documentation that accompanies any accident is there to help everyone in KAIA FD and also to

ensure that any injury that they sustain as a result of their FD duties will help them to achieve

financial recompense should that be appropriate from the accident.

I also informed our ICC personnel that the subsequent investigation from any accident will look at

our existing Risk Assessment provision, and nay changes to the assessments will be implemented by

myself the HSE Officer and the Shift on duty and that all changes to our Risk Assessment provision

will be recorded and all personnel will be informed via email, HSE meeting and also a notice will be

placed on the HSE Noticeboard informing everyone to the outcome of the investigation and its

subsequent changes to our HSE provision in the FD, any information released from any investigation

will be agreed with the Fire Chief to ensure that no sensitive information is released, and

importantly none of the findings have an extreme adverse reaction from our Afghani personnel

whose culture places a strong emphasis on personal dignity that can sometimes mean that any

wrong doing by an Afghani person must be addressed with them in a private manner that allows a

free discussion to take place that does facilitate an understanding in the problem that has occurred,

but also allows them not to lose face in front of the other Afghani personnel.

All of the information I have created was delivered to ICC’s and our Afghani personnel have been in

verbal and written formats.

When I was a Safety Officer with Allseas Oil and Gas Construction I used Microsoft Excel to create

graphs, mostly Pie Charts and Line graphs, as easy to read visual reference to deliver to multi-

national audiences with different levels of English language ability to ensure that whatever message

on health and safety was delivered with as much understanding as possible. There are of course

many other tools available to me including ‘Cusum charts’ which are cumulative sum charts that can

work out average occurrences and allow for an understanding of the possible movement up and

down from the average sum that may occur over any given period of time in percentage form, say a

week, a day or a month.

There is also Poisson distribution is another cumulative chart that can be used to predict future

events from the figures achieved in any current environment and is good tool when looking at future

HSE matters and predicting possible future events and occurrences. These tools are excellent future

and average occurrence predictors but they require a good understanding of mathematical

principles, unfortunately, the vast majority of my Afghani personnel do not have the required

knowledge on mathematical probability that would allow any real understanding of information that

was presented to them in these manners and therefore I chose not to use them.

The agreement on any Corrective Action from an investigation may require outside agency

specialised help, such as a KBR electrician or Military Officer, and I have spoken with the Fire Chief

and he has agreed that he will review all investigation findings with the HSE Officer and contact any

agency required to facilitate the introduction of any improved standards that can ensure there is no

re-occurrence of the causal factors of the accident when necessary.

When an investigation is completed it is important that all relevant documentation is stored

correctly, to this end I created a section in the HSE Policy folder that will keep any Incident

Investigation forms, completed Accident Book forms, Witness Statement forms and Corrective

Action forms in numerical order that will allow easy accessing of any information from the forms

required in the future as well as allow for easier auditing of the forms during any inspection form

Brunsun, also, I created a Corrective Action sheet that will allow for the documenting of any agreed

Corrective Action from an investigation to be highlighted, and delegated to the relevant person, or

contractor, for action and the sheet will be updated as Corrective Actions are closed out and the

whole document will be reviewed by the Fire Chief when any Corrective Action is closed and will be

signed off by the person responsible for Action in the fault uncovered, the HSE Officer and the Fire

Chief.

The causes, types and impacts on us and our equipment are important to be understood and that

is why I created the whole 12-part HSE Training Programme for our Afghani personnel and the

creation of the Accident Reporting and Investigation Policy and Procedure as well as the associated

documents are all part of my co-ordinated plan to increase the HSE skill levels of my Afghani

personnel to allow them to understand risk, and what we are doing to control it and the whole

reactive monitoring system is another tool that they are now aware of that is being used to achieve

the overall aim of the whole policy which is to inform and educate our Afghanis to ultimately

Afghanistan a safer place for everyone to live in the future, this is my small contribution to that aim.

At this time the entire reactive monitoring system has just been introduced, therefore there is no

collated HSE information that I can distribute to key identified personnel, or, thankfully, no incidents

that I can investigate to allow for the formation of reporting information to relevant persons.

However, during my time with Allseas I was responsible for accident investigation on-board and I

investigated many accidents to personnel and damage to equipment and ensured the subsequent

corrective actions agreed with the Vessel Master and Oil company on-board Client Representative

were accomplished as speedily as possible. I was also responsible for collating the monthly HSE stats

and sending them to our head office in Delft, The Netherlands where they collated the information

form all 7 vessels and then sent out the overall fleet statistics to the on-board HSE Officers where we

delivered them in verbal, written, graphical and visual formats to all on-board personnel via email,

HSE meetings, Toolbox Talks and vi the HSE Noticeboards on-board.

After I had completed my reactive monitoring system and sent copies to the Fire Chief, he

subsequently sent copies to our Civilian Personnel Office and they I have been told are now looking

at their provision in reactive monitoring systems and any feedback may result in changes to the FD

system. The only other external factor is Brunsun and the Fire Chief has contacted Paul Hume there

and told him of our advances in reactive monitoring, any feedback again will be monitored and acted

upon if necessary. Although we are not subject to UK common law and statutory reporting

requirements I always refer to UK legislation such as the Health and Safety at Work Act, RIDDOR

regulations, COSHH regulations, Noise at Work, Manual Handling, Working at Height and any other

UK legislation required as well as European standards where necessary including European Norm

(EN) 1486 which lays out standards for protective clothing for specialised fire-fighting that I used to

inform the Deputy Fire Chief of when we were looking at ordering new clothing for all KAIA FD

members.

To summarise, the documentation that I created as part of my reactive monitoring system for loss

reporting and recording process are:

• Accident Investigating and Reporting Policy

• Accident and Investigating Reporting Procedure

• Accident Book

• Accident and Incident Reporting Form

• Witness Statement Form

• Corrective Action Form

• Failure Mode Event Analysis folder

506: Develop and implement health and safety emergency response systems and procedures.

Due to the very nature of my role in KAIA FD and the selection process in employing ICC’s to

mentor and command our Afghani colleagues we are competent and certified in Incident Command

and Emergency Response. As a part of my personal continuous professional development in May

2010 I attended an Emergency Planning Management course in Newark, Nottinghamshire.

The course was facilitated by a company called Skills 2 Share and the Chief Instructor was a Mr

Nigel Humphreys who is an emergency planning management consultant to the UK Government

Cabinet Office from where UK emergency planning documentation, policies and leadership is

centred. The course was certificated By BTEC, the Business and technology Education Council, and I

am now certified in Emergency Planning Management to BTEC Level 4 Award.

An added benefit from the cost of the course is a year’s membership of the Emergency Planning

Society (EPS), this membership is certificated and allows me to place the letters MEPS - Member of

the Emergency Planning Society, after my name on my CV and allows me access to a continuous

professional development programme an online forums in emergency planning management.

As members of the fire department here in Kabul and our job is to plan for, and respond to

emergency situations, assess the risk, and initiate emergency plans to control the risk and facilitate

rescue of personnel. As the NATO/ISAF mission is 24/7 we must also look to promote business

continuity around the Airfield, and its environs up to 10 kilometres outside the perimeter, to ensure

a speedy recovery from any emergency to allow the mission to achieve as normal an operational

level as is possible under the circumstances.

Another aspect of our role is to mentor and train our Afghani personnel in emergency response,

first aid and emergency command and control. We also train all our personnel in the use of our

emergency response and rescue equipment, which is extensive, and its risks and advantages and

disadvantages to any rescue situation we can reasonably expect to encounter as identified in the

Risk Assessment programme I created and implemented.

The sources of emergency we respond to have been identified from experience as:

1. Aviation emergency

2. Domestic emergency

3. First aid

4. Insurgent attack

5. Humanitarian assistance

1. Aviation emergency

Kabul Afghanistan International Airport was classified under ICAO as a category 9 airfield, we

operate 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year in many different aviation roles

Including:

• International aviation – Flights leave all day to the Middle East, India, Former Soviet

Union Asian Republics, Pakistan and Germany. These aircraft are certified and

maintained to international standards.

• Domestic Aviation – Flights leave throughout the day to other Afghan cities including

Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat. These aircraft are not certified to any

recognised international standard.

• Military Aviation – We have ISAF support mission aircraft using KAIA on a 24/7 basis

in varying roles including fire support, transport, supply and medical emergencies.

2. Domestic emergency

KAIA FD provides emergency response to North KAIA camp which is home to over 7,000

personnel and over 500 buildings (including permanent and tented accommodation) and

over 1,000 vehicles transit various personnel into the camp 24/7. We also cover emergency

response to an area up to 2 kilometres directly from the camp and up to 10 kilometres, or

more, on the order of the camp commander.

3. First aid

We respond on humanitarian grounds to rescue and provide first aid to any injured

personnel in our response area and manage emergency recovery of these people, both

NATO/ISAF and Afghani civilian on a 24/7 basis.

4. Insurgent attack

KAIA is a prime target for Anti-Afghan Fighters (AAF) including the Taliban and Al Qaeda. We

suffer rocket and mortar attack, small arms fire and suicide attacks, both personnel and

vehicle borne, on a regular basis and KAIA FD responds to the aftermath of these incidents

whenever they occur.

5. Humanitarian assistance

KAIA FD responds to requests for humanitarian assistance from local Afghanis including

vehicle accident and casualty recovery from inaccessible places including water wells where

people have an unfortunate habit of falling into deep wells, we provide recovery equipment

as requested with permission received from the base commander to respond.

All of our emergencies are trained for by KAIA FD and in particular any emergency involving

a risk of AAAF activity requires the support and protection of Belgian Army Force Protection

(FP) before we can deploy our unarmoured vehicles to any incident of this kind.

KAIA FD has the following vehicles and equipment at our disposal:

• 2 x Rosenbauer Panther 6x6 Major Foam Tender – Aviation fast response vehicle 10 metres

long weighing 36 tonnes fully loaded carrying:

• 10,000 litres of water

• 1,500 litres of fire-fighting foam meeting ICAO performance category ‘B’

as required by ICAO legislation, carried in 2 x 750 litre tanks

• 1 x 50 metre high pressure fire-fighting hose reel with branch

• 225kg of Chemical Dry Powder used to extinguish aircraft undercarriage

fires in conjunction with water delivered via 60 metres of rubber hose

line with applicator.

• 90kg Carbon Dioxide used to extinguish aircraft engine fires and all types

of electrical fires delivered via a 50 metre rubber hose line with applicator

• Associated equipment for delivery of water foam including fire hoses of

different diameters at 30 metre lengths and fire-fighting branches to

protect fire crews and extinguish fire

• 3 x Eagle 6x6 Major Foam Tender

• 9,000 litres of water

• 1,000 litres of fire-fighting foam meeting ICAO performance category ‘B’

as required by ICAO legislation

• 2 x 50 metre high pressure fire-fighting hose lines with branch

• 2 x 50 metre low pressure fire-fighting hose reels with branch

• High and Low pressure airbags lighting capacity up to 40 tonnes and

associated connectors, hoses, gauges and lifting blocks

• Positive Pressure Ventilation fan

• Holmatro hydraulic rescue and cutting gear comprising:

• Cutting tool

• Spreader tool

• Hydraulic Ram

• Hydraulic Ram attachments including tips and chains

• Hydraulic hose reel

• Self-powered petrol hydraulic generator

• 1 x Mercedes Domestic Response Vehicle 4x 4 – Domestic response vehicle which attend

incident in North KAIA camp carrying:

• 1,000 litres of water

• 90 litres of fire-fighting foam in 3 x 30 litres containers

• 2 x 50 metre high pressure fire-fighting hose lines with branch

• High and Low pressure airbags lighting capacity up to 40 tonnes and

associated connectors, hoses, gauges and lifting blocks

• Holmatro hydraulic rescue and cutting gear comprising:

• Cutting tool

• Spreader tool

• Hydraulic Ram

• Hydraulic Ram attachments including tips and chains

• Hydraulic hose reel

• Self-powered petrol hydraulic generator

• 1 x Mercedes Hazardous Material Incident truck – Responds to any incidents involving

dangerous goods carrying:

• Chemical protective gas tight suits

• Absorbent spill granules

• Absorbent pads

• Fuel recovery system

• 1 x Ford F350 Command Vehicle 4x4 – Incident Commander Vehicle with communications

equipment for Incident Commander.

All of our vehicles also carry Breathing Apparatus (BA) sets and control, board and spare cylinders

to replenish exhausted cylinders at any incident requiring the use of BA and also 2 cases of drinking

water as extended incident deployment in protective fire resistant PPE in temperatures in excess of

35 degrees Celsius are common place and drinking water is a vital component in ensuring the

effectiveness of KAIA FD members and the ability of command personnel to make the correct

decision.

Of the 5 Major Foam Tenders 4 are always on operational standby and these 4 vehicles as well as

the Domestic Response Vehicle carry first aid kits. Inside these kits are latex gloves, blood pressure

testing kits, stethoscopes, Guadal airway devices to keep the airway of an unconscious casualty, or a

casualty with a serious facial injury, pads and dressings of wounds and bandages as well as special

absorbent granules which ware applied to heavily bleeding wounds cauterising the wound at a

temperature of up to 90 degrees Celsius.

All members of KAIA FD are certified in first aid and indeed our Icelandic colleagues are qualified

Paramedics. We deliver first aid training to our Afghani colleagues a part of the KAIA FD training

programme and have appropriate first aid provision including bandages, first aid kits and eye wash

facilities within the FD compound as well as a chemical decontamination shower which is carried in

the Domestic response Vehicle.

Our entire training programme is aimed at training our Afghani personnel in emergency response

and teaching them how to work under pressure and make decisions based on information gathered

en route to, and at the scene of any emergency we are tasked with attending, this training

programme is overseen by a UK qualified training officer, Nick Williams, and follows ICAO Annex 14,

part 1 on rescue and fire-fighting and also on various NATO STANNAG’s that are aimed at ensuring

the pre-determined level of response availability that we must have available on a 24/7 basis to

respond to any incident involving both aviation and domestic incidents.

Although we have STANNAG’s to follow for emergency response I found that they were not

suitable for the responses that we carry out here in KAIA and they did do not clearly define roles and

actions of KAIA FD and other agencies and were not a coherent effort at assessing our risk and

embedding the control of those risks into suitable emergency response plans. Therefore I spoke with

the Fire Chief and it was agreed that I would create a series of emergency response plans for KAIA

FD. I then looked at our responses and any areas of North KAIA that are critical to the ISAF mission,

after this I spoke again with the Fire Chief and we decide that I would create 2 types of emergency

response plan these were:

1. Critical Infrastructure – Emergency Response Plan (CI – ERP)

2. Emergency Response Plan – Aviation and Domestic (ERP)

After assessing our major hazards in terms of buildings and roles I created 3 CI – ERP’s and 8 ERP

which I collated into a single document.

After I had created the plans I sent them to the Fire Chief in draft copy as these plans will have to

be approved by the Commander of KAIA and introduced into the overall emergency response plan

that a Turkish Air Force Officer has been tasked with creating. The Fire Chief is unsure as the

competency of the Turkish Officer and I have volunteered my services to him, and anyone else

should they require them, to ensure the creation of a coherent integrated emergency response

plan for the entire airfield and camp.

The 3 CI – ERP’s that I created were:

1. CI – ERP – 01 – Bunded Fuel Installation

This facility is the fuel storage depot for all the aircraft that service the mission, all the

vehicles that transport personnel and equipment around Kabul and all the generators that

provide power and emergency power generation to the entire North KAIA Camp and the

Airfield itself. A loss of this depot would therefore have a dramatic impact on the ability of

North KAIA to operate, and into the mission against the AAF’s as well therefore a detailed an

organised plan for KAIA FD to action in the event of an emergency was required.

2. CI – ERP – Role 3 French Hospital

The Hospital provides daily medical care to all personnel within KAIA as well as free

treatment to local the Afghani population and is therefore a vital tool in winning the ‘hearts

and minds’ of the Afghani people in the war against the AAF’s. The Hospital also provides

emergency care for all these people as well as any ISAF mission military personnel injured up

to a radius of approximately 100 miles and we receive daily helicopter medical evacuations

for outlying posts for both NATO/ISAF and Afghan National Army and Police units. In

addition to this risk there are also immobilised injured persons within the Hospital who

could not self-evacuate in a fire. The Hospital was deemed therefore as critical infrastructure

and I created a KAIA FD response plan to ensure a speedy and co-ordinated action plan was

available.

3. CI – ERP – IJC (ISAF Joint Command)

The IJC building is a large former gymnasium located in North KAIA. I cannot comment on

this building but suffice to say it is important to the military mission. Therefore this building

is of critical importance to the entire ISAF mission and I created a response plan to ensure

speedy and efficient response to any fire emergency within its grounds.

In addition to the CI-ER’s I also created ERP’s for all the aviation and domestic based incidents that

happen here. Although these incidents are not as serious as incidents within CI – ERP facilities they

are actually more common place, therefore suitable and sufficient plans detailing response and roles

within the response had to be created. After I had created these 8 plans I emailed them to the Fire

Chief in draft copy and they are currently working their way through the NATO system before being

implemented. I also sought the agreement of the Fire Chief to email all the ERP’s to all ICC

personnel, in particular the Shift Leaders who command incidents until the subsequent arrival of a

more senior officer, to allow them to read and understand the plans before there implementation.

The ERP’s I created were:

1. ERP – Aviation and Domestic

Contained within this document are 8 plans covering the various emergency situations we

face here, they are:

Aviation based

• ERP_AC_01 – Searching for an Aircraft in Low Visibility

• ERP_AC_02 – Aircraft In-flight Emergency

• ERP_AC_03 – Aircraft Accident

• ERP_AC_04 – Aircraft Ground Incident

• ERP_AC_05 – Aircraft Refuelling Incident

• ERP_AC_06 – Aircraft Emergency Standby

• ERP_AC_07 – Aircraft Overheated Undercarriage

Domestic based

• Dom 01 – Domestic Fire

Any incident that involves the death of any passenger, or member of the flight crew, may require

to be investigated by any number of people including: the aircraft owner (if civilian) the aircraft

operator, the aircraft manufacturer, the national aviation body from the nation where the aircraft is

registered, the national aviation body of the country where the aircraft manufacturer is based and

the relevant Afghani authority. Currently the Ministry of Transport Civil Aviation (MOTCA) is the

Afghani authority charged with overseeing aviation safety in Afghanistan, unfortunately bribery and

corruption are everyday occurrences here in Kabul and there is no guarantee any investigation into

any air crash will be sufficiently robust enough as recent air crashes into mountains of both cargo

and passenger carrying aircraft have found out. In a recent crash the aircraft operator was found to

have fake certification for its aircraft and no insurance, that legal case in now on-going but several

prominent Afghanis are in jail as I write this account.

The normal procedure for investigation I have detailed above happen in the more developed

countries around the globe and as Afghanistan moves forward MOTCA will gain more experience

and hopefully more teeth. To this end I have created our ERPs and all the other associated

documentation that is created during any post incident phase will be collated together including the

accident report and witness testimonies of KAIA FD personnel involved. The creation of my ERP’s will

ensure that any post incident investigation finds a detailed and organised approach to emergency

response within KAIA FD that will allow for at least the understanding of what we did, and why,

during any incident that is subsequently investigate.

Within KAIA there are a number of agencies that respond to any emergency including Flight Safety,

Force Protection, Medic 1 (Ambulance) and Flight Security, these agencies presence at any incident

are the responsibility of the Duty Air Traffic Controller (ATC) to alert. Whenever KAIA FD deploys to

an incident the Shift Leader communicates with ATC to ensure that the relevant agencies have been

contacted, and, on a 24 hour basis all ICC personnel within KAIA FD carry 2 handheld radios, one

radio is for FD communications only and the other is a secure network facility that all the above

agencies monitor on a 24 hour basis on Channel 2 and as soon as an emergency is announce,

normally by ATC, all agencies are alerted, to ensure no agency does not receive notification of an

emergency the Shift Leader contacts ATC and asks for confirmation that all requested agencies have

been contacted and twice daily radio checks are carried out with all agencies by Air Operations to

ensure communications are functioning correctly. Also on a daily basis there is a meeting with the

above agency commanders including the Fire Chief and he can take any requests from an ICC

meeting, or personal information from myself as HSE Officer or any other ICC to the meeting where

plans are furnished to ensure the inter-operability and functioning of all agencies in any emergency

is improved as required, and certainly after any future incident there will be a paper trail created

from KAIA MFD that the Fire Chief can use to seek improvements where our enquiry finds any

shortcomings in our emergency response provision.

We are working in a secure environment and at this time there is no provision for allowing media

units into KAIA in the event of an emergency, given the nature of the mission here the media

companies stationed in Kabul city centre would definitely seek entry into the Airfield but this would

only be achieved through the Commander of KAIA, certainly during the training course all UK ICC’s

attend in IFTC there is a section in the notes on post incident considerations that covers handling the

media and we simply direct all media to the nearest Military Police officer and do not give

statements on any issues as mission security is a priority at all times.

On an environmental level KAIA FD does not carry any ionising radiation based equipment and

there are no radiation risks that we are aware of within North KAIA Camp, however, the release of a

large volume of aviation fuel from any emergency would certainly have a substantial environmental

impact, at this time there is no policy in place to remove contaminated earth and as Afghanistan

develops hopefully environmental issues will gain a foothold.

I created an environmental policy here within KAIA FD and always stress during training the need

to protect Afghanistan from environmental contamination for future generations, however, with the

current climate of hostility the environment is not receiving as much focus as it should.

507: Develop and implement health and safety review systems

Throughout this section I have referenced evidence from all the work I have completed in all the

sections over the last 10 months as well as creating new evidence following in sequential order.

The safety management system (SMS) that I have created and been developing over the last 10

months has a number of working parts that, when working in a combined and cohesive manner, will

simply seek to protect members of KAIA FD, and any visitors or contractors using the FD compound,

from harm. The component parts of the SMS that I have formed are covered in a document I created

called KAIA FD HSE Document Chart and also in the HSE Folder document that informs users of the

HSE Folder on its purpose and contents.

Included in the HSE Folder document is a Review Audit and Amendment Section. In each policy

that has been created there is an Amendment Summary section that allows for the tracking of any

changes made to that particular policy, the Review Audit and Amendment Section allows for the

tracking of all the changes made to each particular policy and gives any reviewer or auditor access to

all changes made to the SMS in one place.

This HSE Document Chart is colour coded and allows for easy visual referencing to all component

parts of the SMS which are:

1. HSE Policy

2. NATO SOP 336

3. Accident Investigation

4. Risk Assessment

5. COSHH Assessment

6. HSE Training

7. Emergency Response

8. HSE Monitoring

9. Various HSE documents

Each component part of the SMS has certain factors and features that allow the individual parts of

the SMS to be effective, these factors and features include:

1. The HSE Policy includes:

• A signed and dated statement of intent to set clear visual objectives in HSE from the

Fire Chief and senior management team for all KAIA FD personnel to see and be

aware of

• A Policy document that includes the roles and responsibilities of each rank holder in

terms of HSE matters

• An HSE Planner that sets out the objectives for the SMS for that year

• An Environmental Policy that seeks to introduce a completely new concept into the

minds of our Afghanis

• A Structural Chart that lays out the structure of the FD and each person’s position in

it

• The roles and responsibilities of the new HSE Officer and all KAIA FD personnel

• An HSE Checklist that can be used in any review or audit to ensure that the SMS as a

whole is working properly and achieving the goals as lays out in the statement of

intent and roles and responsibilities of each member of KAIA FD

2. NATO SOP 336

• This document is the overarching control document that outlines responsibilities

and actions for all sections of the IASF mission in Afghanistan.

3. An Accident Investigation policy that increases the depth of reporting action from SOP 336

and includes:

• Accident Reporting and Investigation Policy laying out responsibilities and actions of

the necessary people involved in the reporting and investigating of any accident in

AKA FD

• Accident Reporting and Investigation Procedure that follows in a step-by-step

manner what needs to be done to effectively report and investigate any accident in

KAIA FD

• A UK Accident Book that allows for better reporting of any accident and provides

better cover for any member of KAIA FD requiring to seek financial recompense for

any injury received

• A Witness Statement form that allows for formatted information to be collected

from any person who has witnessed an accident

• A Corrective Action form and document that collates the information received from

the investigation and then documents exactly what KAIA FD is going to do to seek to

prevent any re-occurrence of the accident, who is responsible for seeing the

corrective action through and when the agreed expected date of the corrective

action to be achieved

• Failure Mode Event Analysis document that looks to better understand what can go

wrong in responding to any emergency situation and what actions are in place, and

actions requiring to be taken by identified persons to achieve as swift and efficient a

recovery from the failure as is possible under the circumstances

4. A Risk Assessment programme that contains:

• A ‘What is a Risk Assessment’ document that covers the 5 steps of carrying out an

RA and goes step-by-step through the RA format that I created for KAIA FD.

• Blank RA templates that can be used in carrying out any new or updated RA

• The completed RA’s for KAIA FD serialised and prefixed to highlight the separate

sections and activities that we assessed for KAIA FD.

5. COSHH Assessment

COSHH Assessments are carried out by the HSE Officer and the completed assessments are

printed off with copies placed in the HSE Folder and at the worksite with First Aid treatment

sections included.

6. HSE Training

I created a 12-part HSE Training Programme and associated documents to facilitate efficient

learning for Instructors including:

• Instructor notes – These are printed off with additional information that I inserted to

allow any Instructor to give clear instruction on any part of the HSE Training syllabus.

• Instructor briefing – I created and laminated briefing sheets and inserted them into

the overall Monthly Training programme, they inform the Instructor as to what

equipment they will require to complete the training component selected

7. Emergency Response Plans (ERP)

I created 2 types of Emergency response documents:

• Critical Infrastructure Emergency Response Plans for facilities highlighted as being of

critical importance to the mission here in Afghanistan

• Emergency Response Plans – Aviation and Domestic, I created these individual; plans

and collated them into 1 document, they cover Aviation and Domestic scenarios we

are likely to face during the course of our duties.

Both of these ERP’s lay out the actions KAIA FD are to take in the event of any of these

emergencies occurring.

8. HSE Monitoring

The Monitoring document in this section is an unsafe Act / Condition Logbook that I created

and trained the Afghani Fire Dispatcher’s on completing as well as emailing and informing FD

personnel at both ICC and Shift monthly meetings and through the HSE Noticeboard. This

document is used to monitor activity in the FD and to highlight any trends of unsafe activity

that can be acted upon early to prevent injury or damage to equipment that may affect the

FD’s ability to respond to emergencies, also included in this section are the Workplace

Inspections that I and Afghani Fire-fighter complete, these documents are then recorded

and placed in the HSE Folder.

9. Various HSE documents

There are a number of other documents that form part of the SMS including the HSE

Document Index Chart its self, Contractor and Visitor brief located in Fire Dispatch that I

used recently by allowing Zia, our Afghani administration officer, to brief 120 US Marines

and then 85 US Army personnel who were sleeping in the FD compound buildings due to

lack of available sleeping accommodation in KAIA North, and Toolbox Talks that I created

and raise onto the HSE Noticeboard to inform all FD personnel of any seasonal weather that

we must be aware of, or, any dangerous occurrences reported in the Unsafe Act / Condition

Logbook.

I colour coded this index chart to make the HSE folder easier to navigate and review and to allow

for the easiest possible access to all KAIA FD HSE documents by any of our Afghani personnel who

are looking to have a better understanding and knowledge of HSE in general. The HSE folder is under

the control of me, the HSE Officer, and I have placed copies of all the documentation onto our

computer central network server from where the relevant documents required, for accident

investigation and report for example can be accessed and the reporting process started without the

presence of the HSE Officer.

After I had uploaded copies of all HSE documents into the KAIA server I created a hyperlink to the

destination of the new HSE folder and then sent an email to all KAIA FD supervisors both ICC and

Afghani about the folder, its contents and uses.

After I had completed the HSE Folder document I reviewed the then current HSE Folder and

printed off any documentation that was required to ensure that everything listed in the index chart

was included in the folder and then assembled all the documentation into the folder as per quality

requirements for documentation.

The HSE folder its self will be reviewed under certain conditions. The folder will be reviewed

periodically, or after any investigation highlights a shortcoming gin our HSE provision, or after the

arrival of new equipment or after the finding of a new threat or hazard to KAIA FD personnel. If

there is a change in the management structure then I as HSE Officer will communicate the complete

SMS to the new management member and see if they have any input they would like to see

introduced into the SMS. I am also a member of IOSH, which I have just renewed my Annual

membership and a subscriber to the CAA notification service, therefore any information gained from

these sources that will aid KAIA FD in a better understanding of the hazards we face will also result in

a review of the SMS.

The SMS is a cost effective document as I am a volunteer as HSE Officer and any subsequent HSE

Officer role will be filled again by a volunteer so the cost impact of the KAIA FD budget is minimal as

there are no direct staff costs involved in the creation and review and updating of the SMS. As I have

been communicating my SMS to the Fire Chief, and Deputy Fire Chief through personal conversation

and email and indeed have received many witness testimony letters from the Fire Chief on the work

I have been doing on the KAIA FD SMS I believe the introduction of an SMS into KAIA FD is being

effective in communicating HSE to all FD members and raising the awareness of our Afghani

personnel through training and instruction in HSE. I have also been communicating my SMS to all

ICC’s though the monthly ICC meetings and receiving positive feedback on my SMS.

We are currently close to selecting our more able Afghani Fire-fighters to attend the Fire Service

College (FSC) in Oman on Fire Crew Leader course to certify them to internationally recognised

standards as part of our improvement in competency for our Afghanis. This improvement will

eventually lead to my stay here in Afghanistan coming to an end as our Afghanis achieve

competence in Fire Crew Leading activities.

In an effort to increase the general level of HSE competency in KAIA FD in HSE matters I sourced

IOSH 1-day Working Safely courses at the FSC. These courses can be ‘bolted on’ to the 2-week Crew

Leader course and I have detailed the benefits of our best Afghanis attending these courses to

improve HSE competency in an email to the Deputy Fire Chief and I believe as the travel costs to

Oman will already be included in the Crew Leader training budget the this ‘bolt on’ method of

achieving internationally recognised certification in HSE is a very cost effective way of raising our

ability in HSE to a new level. As an integral part of the ‘Afghanisation’ plan of training Afghanis to do

ICC jobs I also included the great opportunity to send the Afghanis we select on the 4-day IOSH

Managing Safety course that again can be ‘bolted-on’ to the 2 week Fire Supervisor course that our

Afghanis will attend.

External HSE reviews are carried out by an RAF Warrant Officer called Paul Hulme who I had an

opportunity to speak with in March when we was passing through to go down south to Kandahar for

an audit and I informed him of my progress in HSE and asked him to review the work I have done

and to include HSE in the next review of KAIA FD that is due sometime later this year.

There is a section in the reviewing report for HSE but as no one had been pro-active the only

component of anything like an SMS was RA’s and because of this and the general unsafe

environment we live in the HSE section was not being reviewed in anything like a robust manner.

Now when Paul arrives to complete a review he will be reviewing the HSE provision of KAIA FD as

per the reporting requirements he has in Germany which I am not subject to at my level of security

clearance. I recently emailed Paul in Germany and informed him of my progress in creating a

comprehensive SMS for KAIA FD.

Internal HSE reviews are under the responsibility of the Deputy Fire Chief, Nick Williams as Binni

Fridriksson has left NATO employment. Nick asked all personnel with delegated responsibilities to

carry out internal review of their remit and mine is as HSE Officer. I therefore informed Nick by email

and verbally to confirm that I have recently carried out an internal HSE review and created my HSE

Folder document and document index chart for easier usability of the HSE Folder that I have

upgraded and placed in the Training Room.

As I am an unpaid volunteer in terms of my HSE Officer duties, and Paul Hulme is RAF, there is very

little cost implications to the work I am creating towards the complete SMS for KAIA FD, I even

bought my own printer and have my wife send over colour cartridges as there is a surprising lack of

printers and especially colour ones here in Kabul. The only real cost implications are the IOSH 1 and

4 day courses that I have asked our selected Afghani future supervisors to attend in Oman, the cost

efficiency and effectiveness of the SMS I am creating is therefore excellent, I am creating a complete

SMS for very little cost to the FD and only very limited impact on the overall KAIA FD budget if I am

successful in achieving the courses for our future Afghani supervisors. The training and

documentation and systems and policies I have created have a very marginal impact on the FD

budget and as I create the essential factors I have detailed above the future cost implications for

efficient delivery of the SMS are again, very marginal compared to the increase in HSE awareness

and competency that is being achieved in our Afghani personnel.

We are creating both paper and electronic records in KAIA FD and the use of both these systems

are based on the principles that access to information is critical in achieving an understanding of

what risks we are faced with from the hazards present in a challenging environment like

Afghanistan, and that as we train our Afghani personnel in HSE and general training they will have to

use both systems to effectively convey information to whomever requires it, sending information

electronically is fast and efficient, and a paper copy, signed and dated of an important document

allows for effective reviewing and auditing of the SMS as a whole. Paper copies of documents can

be handed out at meetings to facilitate exchanges of information and streamlining of ideas and

electronic copies can be used to keep personnel informed of progress in any matter remotely and

the use of overhead projectors and electronic presentations can again facilitate the focused delivery

of information to a large number of people at one time with confirmation by electronic means after

the meeting and final agreed measures printed off in paper copy for dispersal to the relevant

persons to file and use as required.

A principle throughout the creation of the SMS for KAIA FD is the need to inform and educate our

Afghani personnel in the benefits effective use of HSE can bring into their lives and into their families

lives, by working and creating communication systems with our Afghanis and allowing the flow of

information and answering the multitude of questions they have on HSE I have allowed a growth in

HSE knowledge not only in KAIA FD but also in the communities and family groups that our Afghanis

live in by simple measures such as the Toolbox Talk I created about the dangers of Carbon Monoxide

that I had translated into Dari and then distributed copies to all Afghanis to take home to their

families. This kind of responding to the needs of my Afghanis is important to me and making a small

difference in their lives is what drives me on to improve their knowledge of living a safer life with

their families.

External to KAIA FD I have access to controlled documents and reports on environmental hazards

through my application for a NATO/ISAF Secret account. This account allows me to access more

information on the hazards we face both from AAF’s and the general environmental conditions and

keep up to date with new legislation from NATO that may impact our SMS in the FD. As for best

practice on review I am qualified as an ISO 9001 Internal Auditor and work through all my

documentation policies and procedures with an eye on what a reviewer wants to see and

importance of ensuring that our documentation is organised and easy to understand is a part of my

thinking throughout the creation of our SMS. As there has been no real review of the SMS I am

creating I await the next review from Paul Hulme and take any action he deems appropriate as my

auditor.

After I had completed my work I showed it to the Fire Chief and he drafted me a witness testimony

letter from Fire Chief on my work on 506 Emergency Response and 507 HSE Review.

508: Maintain knowledge of improvements to influence health and safety practice

Throughout this section I have referenced evidence from all the work I have completed in all the

sections over the last 10 months as well as creating new evidence following in sequential order.

I have been working in HSE now for over 15 years with direct responsibility for over 11 years.

During this time I have grown into an ever increasing awareness that HSE is an ever evolving and

shifting world in which the need to network and resource with other HSE bodies and professionals is

paramount. HSE today is a world in which the need to ensure that I am up-to-date with advances in

guidance and best practice in my industry mean the difference between achieving set goals for

myself and my company and not.

My current position in HSE is as an HSE Officer here in Kabul with NATO where we face many risks

from Aviation, to Domestic to regular attacks by Anti-Afghan Fighters from Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Some of these risks I have mitigated and controlled through better protection for all KAIA FD

members in an improved Bunker and the creation of effective Risk Assessments and Emergency

Response Plans that lay out in detail our response to any given emergency we can reasonably expect

to be involved in.

Throughout my tenure here as HSE Officer I have been the driving force behind the development

of all KAIA FD HSE policies and procedures and have used my experience and membership of

professional, non-professional and technical groups to ensure that what I have created. The witness

testimonial letters from my Fire Chief point to the fact the work I have done has been recognised

and the impact that the completion of an SMS has been a positive one with my Afghanis now able to

answer questions I out to them during training on risk awareness and identification, hazard

avoidance and what is competency. I have also sought to promote a better more qualified

competence in our Afghanis through the adoption of training programmes in Oman and the

adoption of the complete SMS into the FD arena and indeed further afield to ISAF HQ CHMRO who

create the human resource policies we work to.

Here in Afghanistan there is currently very little HSE legislation available as the GIRoA’s various

departments have had had very little exposure to HSE and the NATO/ISAF SOP’s are thin on the

ground in HSE and when I located SOP 336 on Health and Safety I found that it was not a robust

document that would facilitate a comprehensive identification, assessments and control of risk to

KAIA FD. In order to ensure that I am at the forefront of best practice in HSE I have, over the last

number of years, joined a number of professional bodies and networking groups that have allowed

me to improve my own HSE knowledge and skills and maintain my professional competence in line

with the best available. These bodies and groups have been excellent for a professional such as

myself who is working in a remote location with little opportunity to travel to seminars or group

meetings through IOSH and allow for the sharing of information and the opportunity to influence

and understand new legislation in progress such the transitioning from BS 25999-2 to ISO 23301 on

Business Continuity.

The various body’s and groups I am an active member of include:

1. The Institute of Safety and Health – IOSH

2. The Emergency Planning Society – EPS

3. LinkedIn

4. CAA Notification Service

Membership of these groups which include professional, non-professional and technical groups

allow me to contact other professionals in the fields in which I am working including Health and

Safety and Emergency Planning, and facilitate the opportunity to compare information on best

practice and encourage the sharing of information to allow members worldwide to be at the

forefront of HSE influencing and implementation in many different fields in many different cultures

and countries. The different benefits of professional, non-professional and technical groups are that

you can engage with a very wide body of opinion and knowledge that can allow you to better

understand the HSE implications for any subject, for instance, a professional manager may not be an

HSE professional, or indeed be a technical authority on any particular aircraft type, but, they may

have an idea or suggestion on how to deliver a particular piece of information in a particular manner

that is best suited to that particular problem. So, even although this person is not a professional HSE

manager they can provide means of communication and delivery of knowledge that a professional

HSE manager can use to achieve a certain goal.

The bodies that I have active membership in are:

1. Institute of Safety and Health (IOSH)

I am currently a Technician grade member of IOSH which is a technical and professional

organisation, and of which I only last week renewed my annual membership. As a part of my

membership I update a Continuous Professional Development (CPD) page as a member of

their website. I am a member of the West of Scotland and Offshore Industry branches and

regularly enter the online discussion groups which enable me to ask questions of other

professionals as well as give advice to any member with a question I feel I can contribute to.

The CPD section allows me to record all of the improvements in skills and ability that I have

gained over the course of this portfolio and is an approved record of my continuous

improvement in HSE that I am looking to help me to achieve my Graduate membership of

IOSH this year with the aim of achieving Chartered Member status within a further 2 years.

IOSH membership also entitles me to copies of a professional HSE magazine called the Safety

and Health Practitioner (SHP). The SHP is a great source of information on new ideas and

developments in HSE and allows me even from Afghanistan to keep up-to-date with all new

concepts in HSE from the UK.

2. The Emergency Planning Society (EPS)

The EPS is a professional organisation for emergency planning and I have worked in

emergency planning and response for a number of years and to collate all my experience,

skills and competencies I achieved a nationally recognised accreditation in BTEC Level 4

Award in Emergency Planning Management (EPM) The achievement of this award allowed

me to attain membership of the Emergency Planning Society and the opportunity to

document my progress in EPM through a CPD section that I look to complete each time I

create new Emergency Response documentation. Membership of the EPS allows me to place

the letters MEPS – Member of the Emergency Planning Society after my name to allow

employers to see that I am accredited in a nationally recognised EPM body and also allows

me to join discussion groups and have access to development sin EPM and network with

other professionals in the field of EPM.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional, non-professional and technical networking site that allows

members to join groups that are of interest to them and join in discussions in any aspect of

HSE that benefits the members, it also allows members to create links with personnel in HSE

from around the world and facilitates learning and the uploading and sharing of information

and presentations on various HSE matters

4. CAA Notification Service

The CAA is a technical authority and I was looking for an authorised Aviation authority

website that could provide me with constant updates to increase the knowledge and

awareness of KAIA FD personnel to any new risks that have been uncovered in the Aviation

world. The uncovering of risks allows us to better plan for, and understand, possible

emergency situations at KAIA. The CAA Notification Service is a fantastic tool that sends up

updated notices on the latest potential problems with any type and size of Aircraft

worldwide.

The impact of new developments in any business depends on the ability of the HSE professional

and that attitude and motivation of the line manager initially to understand the benefits to his/her

section in implementing the development of these improvements in HSE. It also will depend upon

the prior training and awareness that all employees of any company have received as to their

general attitude in grasping the purpose and benefit of any change to their work practice. However,

the most important person in HSE in my experience is the person with overall responsibility for the

line managers, the Vessel Master or Fire Chief in my experience. If the Senior manager does not

place HSE in the forefront of his/her thinking then the opportunity for even the most enthusiastic

HSE professional to facilitate the implementation of improvements in HSE practice and provision can

be limited as all line managers take their lead from the Senior manager and it is his/her attitude to

HSE that is critical in facilitating the introduction of developments in HSE practice that can have a

positive impact on any business.

HSE can have great benefits in many areas of any company, from reduction in accidents through

removal of faulty equipment through the workplace inspection programme to the empowerment of

the workforce through training and giving of knowledge that can allow a better understanding of risk

and therefore a more competent future Afghani Fire Crew Leader.

As I have created the term ‘Golden Thread’ in my creation of a KAIA FD SMS through every

presentation, practical deployment and exercise always mention the benefit to the individual

Afghani Fire-fighter of understanding the nature of the incident we are attending, and of the need to

be aware of the hazards present, and the importance of carrying out a dynamic risk assessment

before selecting a proper safe system of work.

Around September/October this year we will be holding Crew Leader selection and I have made

my personnel aware that FD HSE matters will be included in the written test, practical assessment

and interview as HSE is a core subject for all competent Crew Leaders.

As I have been creating my SMS I have constantly had to focus on the nature of what I am creating,

why we need it, and how it will be best delivered to our Afghanis in a manner that will facilitate an

increase in their HSE competence. The importance of how I have communicated with my Afghanis

has been crucial in the raising awareness in HSE, I have utilised all forms of communication from

verbal to written to print to email to present via PowerPoint. I have used whatever form of

communication I felt would best deliver the results I sought and by printing all documentation into

the HSE Folder and placing copies of all the documentation into the server and also placing

electronic copies on the Fire training computer I have created as many avenues to learning as

possible for all KAIA FD personnel, both ICC and Afghani, to ensure that the aim of increasing HSE

awareness and competency to reduce accidents and incidents can be achieved in as thorough a

manner as possible here in Kabul.

The aim of all communication is to impart information from 1 person to another, there are many

avenues to deliver this information as I have mentioned but it is important in all communication that

it is delivered in a clear and concise manner that the receiver of the information can understand. As

we have British, Dutch, Bosnian, Icelandic, Estonian, British, Portuguese as well as Afghani personnel,

all of whose grasp of written and spoken English is different I have placed a great emphasis on

spoken communication to confirm learning from presentations and responses.

As we were responding the other night to an attack by the Taliban on 7 fuel tankers carrying

around 200,000 litres of Petrol I became acutely aware of the nature of HSE here in Afghanistan, we

were riding in unarmoured Fire Tenders with body armour and helmet whilst our Belgian Army FP

vehicles were armoured and indeed we all felt the vulnerability of our situation. This really put HSE

into perspective that even in a war torn country that is Afghanistan you can still make even a small

difference in a small way that hopefully can change minds and plant seeds that will grow over time,

why, because up until a month ago we didn’t carry body armour and helmets on our Fire appliances

as standard.

Overall I’ve enjoyed this experience here in Kabul, it’s been a real bonus to see people grasp new

ideas and concepts and run with them, we now have some very good Afghani Fire-fighters who will

be the future of Afghanistan long after I’m gone and hopefully some of the seeds I’ve planted, and

trees I’ve grown will continue to grow and help the people of Afghanistan move forward in

understanding and ultimately controlling risk and promote a safer and more environmentally

friendly country for them and their families.