Training of fire protection officers - interview with Dr. Friedl

The training for fire protection officers will be put on a completely new footing by DGUV Information 205-003 from the beginning of 2024. We interviewed the 35-time specialist book author Dr. Wolfgang J. Friedl from Munich, who has been working in fire protection since 1986 and is considered a very pragmatist, explains what he thinks of the change.

Question: Mr. Dr. Friedl, as a fire protection engineer you have also been training fire protection officers in accordance with DGUV specifications since 1998. What has changed about it over time?

WJF: People's motivation has remained the same, which makes me very happy. But the initially good training has become more theoretical, i.e. more abstract. That doesn't do it justice and some people confuse quantity with quality. Unfortunately, the mentality, knowledge, skills and nature of future fire protection officers are increasingly falling by the wayside.

Question: What do you mean specifically by that?

WJF: Fire protection officers are usually experienced craftsmen - that makes sense and is positive. But you shouldn't overwhelm these people either professionally or intellectually. For the basic course, structural, technical, organizational and legal information is of the highest priority on the prevention side. And on the defensive fire protection side, the essential contents of ASR A2.2; but what happens? Theorized topics and rare peripheral topics suppress the essentials. Examples Would you like? The retention of extinguishing water may sometimes be important, but not for this training - and if it is, then no newcomer comes to be the only fire protection officer in a company like this! The newly introduced practical phases are completely uneconomical and – sorry – a laughing stock. Let me quote two sentences that reveal the increasing worthlessness of DGUV training: “ The training participant must prepare a meaningful report on the practical phase in text form, which shows which competencies they have used and were able to improve (reflection ). The report must be signed by the person in charge. “I know a lot of training institutions and a lot of training speakers and when I talk to them on the phone, you sometimes need hearing protection in order to be able to comply with the limit of 85 dB(A) set by the professional association, they laugh so loudly at so much nonsense. Unfortunately, some people no longer dare to stand by their opinions - this also applies to other areas and when you see how quickly people are punished for their opinions, you understand this cowardly attitude.

To me, such words about reflection or imparting skills sound like the theory of communism - it may sound nice to infantile ideologists, but anyone with a halfway intact brain knows that it won't work. Then came the idea with the practical phase - who should be the "teacher", i.e. the controller, if A works in Munich, B in Stuttgart, C in Hanover and D in Leipzig in a company that the speaker doesn't know? The idea of ​​the practical project is also a joke to the power of two. One could also suggest: Now everyone will become decent and well-behaved and we therefore no longer need door locks on the front doors. It's simply infantile what a few theorists - from a university, by the way, i.e. beginners with no professional experience who have no idea about fire protection or pedagogy - have thought about. Unfortunately, no professional explained to the boys and girls how fire protection really works. Then a self-learning phase is recommended - I'm against that too, because very few people are self-taught, so it's doomed to failure and the level will drop significantly. And the training times are now regulated so that an introductory event with at least 12 teaching units must take place. For God's sake, that's 12 hours wasted - give a quick introduction and then go straight into medias res! Communicate facts, not nonsense. Based on my personal and professional experience, I believe much more in clear information and not softened blah blah. Yes, I have also held courses from 7:45 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.! And people stayed with me because I was able to inspire them and motivate them on a regular basis. Real personal and professional friendships were formed and people had fun and realized that they had something and could solve problems.

But it is probably a trend of the times to ensure that education is reduced or even dumbed down - it seems to me like 12-year-old students who can use the Internet better than me, but have not even remotely mastered mental arithmetic or grammar. Here too, due to their aloofness, the responsible authorities no longer understand that “conventional” should not always be confused with “wrong” and “modify” should not always be confused with “super-boh-ey-good”.

Question: What do you think about digitalization? We are now asking consciously and confrontationally based on your critical statement regarding your obviously manageable ability to deal with new media.

WJF (laughs): Just because I'm over 60 doesn't mean I'm a senile person. No, seriously – I love new media now. Never in the last 6,000 years has it been so easy and inexpensive to obtain so much and such good specialist knowledge. I recently held a three-day course from Munich for the Haus der Technik in Essen and the people really learned a lot and they noticed it. At the end they were in such a good mood, so warm, it's great to experience something like that!

When I was studying in the early 80s, there was the first distance learning university in Germany in Hagen. We students laughed about it because we enjoyed our student life and had fun that today's generations can no longer imagine - I mean e.g. B. the student life of my children, both of whom have been working for a long time at the age of 26 and 28. And - very important - we really learned knowledge back then, crammed until 3 a.m., then drank two more beers and at 8 a.m. we stood in front of the professor and delivered convincingly. So, to cut a long story short: I changed my mind about distance learning courses today after more than 40 years, thanks in part to the Corona pandemic. Digital training helps the environment, the entrepreneur's wallet and the trainee. I've been doing such training for over a year and am finding it more and more fun. Other speakers stopped, didn’t want “something like that”. The fact is that people constantly see my face and thus my emotions on the screen in small form - like in a lecture hall - and the presentation is on the screen in large size. People are casually at home at the living room table, lying in bed with their laptop or sitting at their desk in the office in front of the big screen. You can have a drink at any time, ask questions later and – this is the big advantage of video training – stop to go to the toilet or eat something. And even with video training, people have the opportunity to ask questions later via email or live event (whether on-site or digital). In addition, unlike nuclear physics, fire protection is not only understandable for the top 1% of high-flyers, but - if you listen - completely logical and not difficult to understand. What makes it difficult is the amount of information. And people can also rewind the training to listen to the last few minutes again. Isn't that great? I can also honestly report that there are practically no questions of comprehension because the material is understandable. The questions usually relate to specific situations in the company and how to deal with them.

Question: The DGUV wants to ban such courses in information 205-003.

WJF: Well, firstly, this is information from the professional associations and neither a rule nor a regulation. Secondly, the BG cannot issue such bans. And thirdly, some people there apparently didn't hear the shot yet. We no longer live in the 80s or before. And even then, students were already being trained at a distance and without a lecture hall. Back then, it was still sending paper that you had to read through. This has been greatly improved today - just look at my course at Bildungsgrad, where short films, fire tests and informative texts were skillfully mixed by a dedicated professional and it's really fun to listen to. This is how knowledge transfer works today: effectively and efficiently!

Question: And you also do the training with hand fire extinguishers theoretically?

WJF: We have to ask ourselves whether fire protection officers really need this. After all, if there is a fire in the company, it is very likely that it will not be the fire protection officer on site to put it out, but the workforce. So you have to be able to delete it. In order to eliminate this dilemma, a few years ago DGUV Information 205-023 required that there must be at least 5% fire protection assistants. But as is so often the case when the state tries to improve something, unfortunately things get worse afterwards. So now 95% of the workforce knows that a few can use extinguishers. Conclusion: Of course, 95% do not put out fires in the event of a fire because it is obviously the job of the other 5% to intervene now. The capable fire department chief Jürgen Wolf from Boehringer in Ingelheim is unfortunately already retired. He brought this dilemma to my attention; He thought this 5% rule was counterproductive and managed to practically train 96% of the workforce on hand fire extinguishers. People like that impress me - they understand what it's about. But theorists who have never held a training course themselves, nor have ever led a company in the direction of “fire safety”, then create such specifications. Unfortunately. Welcome to reality. It seems to me like in politics, where sometimes college dropouts or even complete school failures at the age of 23 or 35 and without ever having worked want to tell us what is right and what is wrong. It's a very dangerous trend when dilettantes and failures are in charge. We have to counteract that. “Well-intentioned” is often 180 degrees away from “well done.”

Question: It sounds like you could do everything differently and everything better.

WJF (laughs): Usually just small corrections make a lot more sense than turning the steering wheel. The system must not falter, no, it must be optimized - but please by capable people, by practitioners! Yes, I would do some things differently. More goal-oriented, more pragmatic. Put your finger on the wound and convey the essence. That's what I do with my training and I'm doing well with it. The success of my fire protection technical books also shows me that I am at the very top with my nature and the way I impart knowledge.

Question: Why is the market changing so quickly?

WJF: Today knowledge has a half-life of around 2 years, 20 years ago it was 7 years and in the Middle Ages it was around 300 years. That's a fact. You have to react quickly to the increasing changes. But many don't manage to do that, especially the so-called “big ones” are lagging behind the supposedly oh-so-good old days. Change is necessary because, like an e ^x function, more and more knowledge is available at ever shorter intervals of time. You have to change and be able to keep up, and it doesn't matter whether you're 20, 45 or 61 years old. Some can't or don't want to do that and they will soon no longer be available on the active market. This is the real reason why digitalization is supposedly wanted by everyone - but when you implement it, the backbenchers moan and are against it. In reality, they do not want to change or are unable to change because of their own inertia. It's no different in politics: of the states that signed the certainly sensible Paris climate summit, only 10% are sticking to it and 90% are not. Back to fire protection, because some people are really keen to switch to the new technology, such as BWV e. V. in Munich trains insurance people, he converted his training courses in record time and has thus become the market leader. Today the following applies: it is not the better who depends on the worse, but the faster who depends on the slower.

But, sorry: if students are already allowed to be trained digitally and even university exams are held on the PC at home - how are you supposed to convey to even an averagely intelligent person that you can train a tax advisor, a teacher or a future judge in this way? but not company fire protection officers. My school friend Thomas's daughter is studying to be a teacher in Siegen; She has now spent two semesters almost exclusively listening to laptop lectures, questions were not possible, and even took the exams from home. It works - so why not with fire protection officers? Future generations will laugh at these retrograde blockers and ash worshipers just as we laugh at the Luddites today, according to the Internet around 1844 - the weavers were justifiably and understandably afraid that their jobs would be lost if fabrics were produced faster and cheaper with machines , instead of paying the many weavers. So Silesian weavers first destroyed modern technology because it was about their existence - social legislation was only introduced by Bismarck about 50 years later. But progress cannot be stopped and if so, then only in the short term. You see – we humans have not developed further. By the way, this also applies to politics, unfortunately!

Question: How does the market react to the absolute DGUV requirements and the planned restrictions?

WJF: Some with a proactive obedience that can hardly be surpassed in terms of embarrassment, as it probably corresponds to our German mentality. Others think about drafting their own standards and guidelines and designing the training according to their own specifications. Then the DGUV becomes increasingly irrelevant, analogous to the decline of the VdS requirements.

Question: But doesn't it make more sense to standardize something?

WJF: In theory yes, but if the guidelines become a) too narrow and b) too nonsensical, then you shouldn't just defend yourself - no, then you have to defend yourself. Fire protection is the priority. The focus is on transferring knowledge. People are in the foreground. Please don't emphasize false ideologies or abstract theories!

Question: What should happen next?

WJF: It can only be done together, with constructive criticism. Not either/or, but both/and. More tolerance, more leeway. Where does it say that there should necessarily be 64 teaching units? 10 years ago, the oh-so-modern 8-year high school in Bavaria was changed back to 9 years, after 9 years of high school had previously proven itself over 5 decades. Isn't it nice when people - here the politicians in Bavaria - realize that they have taken the wrong path and then turn back? What the CSU has achieved in Bavaria, the DGUV will also achieve, I am sure. Because there are a few capable people there - but just like in today's politics or in companies, there aren't always the right people at the top.