Title of the project

THINCS Behavioural Marker System: Further Development

Name of the award holder

Phil Butler

Supporting institution/organisation

Cardiff University

Start date

1st August 2018

Anticipated completion date

1st February 2019

Brief description

A small project grant has secured a 6-month internship beginning 1st August for Phil Butler, a Cardiff University PhD research student, to work for the National Fire Chiefs Council concentrating on incident command. The project centres on further evaluating THe INcident Command Skills (THINCS) behavioural marker system with 6 UK Fire and Rescue Services: Hampshire, Scottish, South Wales, South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Tyne and Wear. The aim is to confirm the system’s reliability and validity in order for it to become freely available to UK local authority fire and rescue services.

THINCS enables the command skills of incident commanders such as decision making and personal resilience to be observed, reviewed and rated and for feedback to be provided. This offers a useful method of assessing the efficacy of key command skills and identifies tailored feedback for improvement. The internship will also showcase a THINCS mobile app aimed at enhancing the system’s utility and efficiency. Phil will be working to DCFO Andy Bowers who chairs the National Command and Control Users Group.

Outcomes being sought

DCFO Bowers explained
“This internship provides us with opportunities to use Phil’s expertise to develop a number of incident command related initiatives, from conducting research to further evaluate the THINCS system, to developing the national leadership framework and incident command competencies. It adds to the on-going collaboration between the NFCC and Cardiff University, through Professor Rob Honey and Dr Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, which has already resulted in multiple research awards.”

Contact details for more information

If you wish to discuss any aspect of this project, then please contact Phil Butler at butlerpc@cardiff.ac.uk or telephone 07513377707. Alternatively you may write to him at the:

School of Psychology
Tower Building
70 Park Place
Cardiff
CF10 3AT

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