This year has been an exciting and transformational year for the IFE, its members and volunteers. In 2020, we carried out a comprehensive review of our communications and activities with the aim of reshaping our services to members and developing clear strategies for activities under two core themes of competency and sustainability.
In the summer, we launched our new strategy and have already made some significant progress.
Our new focus has involved input from members, volunteers, staff and stakeholders to create an organisation that is more relevant than ever.
Our hard work continues at pace. We are all seeing fire engineering and the environments in which it operates evolving rapidly. Advances in technologies and materials, external factors such as climate change and learnings from major incidents such as Grenfell are driving changes to regulations and standards, new ways of working and highlighting the importance of knowledge and information sharing to evolve our skills and capabilities worldwide.
From engaging in consultations that will shape the legislative and regulatory frameworks for all aspects of fire engineering work around the world, to establishing new SIGs, we have been at the forefront of influencing many aspects of future guidance.
As part of this work, we also initiated an industry workshop to examine the practical implications of the Fire Safety Act on the role of fire risk assessors in the UK; a workshop we will be repeating in the New Year. Our collaborative work with other organisations in the industry, such as this, is enabling us to ensure consistency and clarity on key issues of interest to our members.
The shift to virtual learning and events continued in 2021 and has widened access to CPD and other events to our members around the world, increasing our ability to knowledge share and learn from each other. These activities have been underpinned by our new online CPD hub as well as a return to more face-to-face events that put us at the forefront of networks, enabling us to shape ideas, innovation, policy and regulations.
A key priority for 2021 has been to better support our valuable cohort of volunteers. We have already established a dedicated hub on our website which is being updated with new features for 2022.
Our global network of branches is vital to our work in both competency and sustainability, and we are currently consulting with them on a branch support hub to be launched in 2022. The new hub will provide valuable resources so involving members at this stage will ensure it meets their needs now and in the future.
Our work to support branches, will be further reinforced by the recruitment of a volunteer and branch support manager who will provide them with one point of contact at IFE HQ. We are also recruiting a member services executive. The new roles will further open knowledge sharing opportunities and give members greater access to useful insight and resources as we navigate the changes, innovations and opportunities ahead.
With new SIGs exploring areas such as cladding, lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles and the unique challenges of fires in waste and recycling, we are continuously looking to establish further groups that can inform practice. Next year, our new chair, Mark Chubb, is planning a human factors SIG and other groups are being considered to examine topics as diverse as firefighter operations and logistics.
The pandemic has accelerated the use of digital means of communications worldwide and this has provided exciting opportunities for both collaboration across branches and networks. It also gives us an opportunity to simplify our processes, and we are currently exploring moving exam bookings online through the MyIFE portal.
Finally, sustainability is an area where we feel the true value of our global community will come to the fore and this area of focus will be a priority in 2022. We will be building on the work we are doing already on alternative fuels for transport and heating, supporting community resilience and examining how fire engineering to design and deliver safer infrastructure and buildings can be improved in the future. As part of these activities, we have signed up to the UN’s Decade of Action on Fire Safety which establishes a number of local and global priorities for the sector.
We are already looking at how we can help our members adapt to the challenges ahead and will have more exciting news to share on this in the New Year.