so....maybe we could approach this from an opportunity to get better perspective....rather than a rule to be enforced and piss people off one.
Maybe - Brigade participation is voluntary, but if the whole Brigade participates, some measure of $$$ support from CFS/Corporate Sponsor (e.g. Flatfoot Brigade Fitness Program sponsored by Coopers Brewery) to help buy sporty stuff. Everyone in the Brigade does the test to get their own baseline level. From there a program is put together that helps everyone improve....Week 1 walk blah blah km's, Week 2 Interval training (walk /run) and so it goes. Progressive tests done every 8 weeks. Reward (yup, more $$$ or something similar) for those Brigades that improve by 20%(or 5% or whatever). The aim is improved health(and therefore less risk) not a magic number and a rule. It becomes a team building challenge, not an enforcement process.
Sounds like an easy program to put together and take to the 3rd year Sports Science kids at UniSA as part of their studies/assessment. Better still trade a non combative from Safecom for a $50k research grant and publish the results and let some young whiz earn their Masters/PhD as well. Everyone wins.
As an aside, the US Forestry Service who use and rigidly enforce the Pack Test Program , suffer numerous exertion related deaths each year. By comparison, when u crunch the numbers for differences in firefighter numbers, we have way fewer deaths from exertion. Do we have to do anything might be a question, or have we adopted a practice of working our people within their own unique capacity and modifying what we can achieve accordingly? Interesting topic
