Developing a Course of Action

The Course of Action (COA) tab is where Incident Owners and Editors can describe the overall fire management strategy and develop and document one or more Action Items that will accomplish the Incident Objectives and Requirements developed for an incident. The COA should express the leader's (Agency Administrator) intent, and should be aligned with direction provided in the delegation of authority. A COA is a required part of a decision and must contain at least one action item.

On the COA tab, you can:

• Set a Strategy slider bar to describe how the incident will be managed on the continuum from Monitor to Full Suppression. (optional, appears in the decision if used)
• Write a comment describing the overall strategy for the incident as described by the slider bar. This content may be thought of as an overarching 'umbrella statement' on the strategy from which subsequent detailed Course(s) of Action are developed. (optional)
• Develop and document Action Items to be included in pending decisions and manage Action Items that are included or excluded in previous, current or pending decisions.
• Filter the Action Item list to determine the active status for each or quickly identify which are included or excluded from a pending decision.
• Create a pending decision after you've developed your first Action Item (this option only available if you have not already created a pending decision from the Decisions tab, or answered the question regarding success of the pre-planned response on the Validation tab).

Create Action Items in a way that an individual Action Item can be easily excluded from a pending decision if its no longer applicable. For example, if one Action Item contains a bulleted list of actions, you would have to exclude the entire Action Item if one or more bullets are no longer applicable and then re-type all of those actions that still are.

If the planning area is modified or new Incident Objectives and Requirements are added to a pending decision, the proposed COA should be modified, as needed, to ensure that it will accomplish Incident Objectives and Requirements and address recent changes. A new COA, and a new decision is warranted if the current, published COA no longer accomplishes Incident Objectives and Requirements

Action Items are automatically included in the decision content whereas the strategy slider only appears if you choose to use it. Once a pending decision has been created, you can use a decision editor to add, as appropriate, supporting text, map images, analysis outputs or pictures to clarify the COA (decision editors are only accessible after you’ve created a pending decision).

CAUTION: Do not embed external links into the decision or report. They will be stripped from the content when the information is copied into a rich text editor field.

To document a course of action:

1. From the Incident list, select the incident you want to enter objectives for.
2. Click View Information. The Edit Incident page appears.
3. Select the Course of Action tab. The Course of Action page appears.
4. Use the optional Strategy slider bar to designate the Agency Administrator's intent regarding the Strategy (monitor up to full suppression) for the incident. Use the optional Strategy Comment box to describe the overall strategy from which the required Course(s) of Action will tier.
5. Create Action Items. You must include at least one Action Item in the Course of Action to publish a decision.
6. Click Create action item. The Create Action Item page appears.
7. Enter an action item. Be as specific as possible. Remember, this information appears in the published decision.
8. Click Save. A message appears saying that the action item has been added.
9. If you have not already done so, you may be asked to create a pending decision. If so, select Create Decision.
10. Repeat steps 6 through 8 as needed.
11. When finished entering Action items/action items, click Return. The Action Item list reappears with the newly added action items at the top of the list.

    To include an action item in the decision, select the action item, then click Include. To exclude an action item from the decision, select the action item, then click Exclude.

Until the decision is reviewed, you can edit action items, even if they have been included in the decision.

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Last updated on 8/14/2015 7:00:05 PM.

 

In This Section Course of Action To complete a course of action:

Reference Field Descriptions Glossary Resources Spatial Data Reference Landscape Data Source Reference Relative Risk Reference Organization Assessment Reference Fire Behavior Reference About the WFDSS Decision Editors