Physical employment standard for Canadian wildland fire fighters; developing and validating the test protocol

• Published in: Ergonomics Vol. 61; no. 10; pp. 1311 - 1323
• Main Authors: Gumieniak, Robert J., Gledhill, Norman, Jamnik, Veronica K.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Taylor & Francis 03.10.2018; Taylor & Francis LLC
• Subjects: Adult; BFOR; Canada; Consensus; Employment; Employment - standards; Female; Fire fighting; Firefighters; fitness screening; Humans; job readiness; Male; Physical Fitness; public safety; Risk management; Surveys and Questionnaires; Task Performance and Analysis; Test procedures; Wildfires; Canada; BFOR; job readiness; public safety; fitness screening
• ISSN: 0014-0139; 1366-5847
• DOI: 10.1080/00140139.2018.1462408

Developing the Canadian initial attack (IA) wildland fire fighter (WFF) physical employment standard (WFX-FIT) began in a previous investigation with a physical demands analysis in which hand and back carrying a 28.5 kg pump, back carrying a 25 kg hose pack and advancing charged hose were identified as the critical IA emergency tasks. In the present study, a circuit was created incorporating simulations of the critical tasks with faster completion times required for provinces with more arduous terrains. The oxygen cost (mean ± SD VO 2  mL∙kg −1 ∙min −1 ) of performing IA WFF tasks sequentially on the job was 37 ± 6 compared to 37 ± 4 when performing the WFX-FIT, indicating strong construct validity. Content validation ratings comparing the likeness of on-the-job tasks to simulated tasks in the WFX-FIT provided strong agreement. These validations confirm that the physical demands involved in performing the WFX-FIT are the same as IA wildland fire fighting. Practitioner Summary: This paper details the process used to develop and validate the physical employment standard for jurisdictional employment and national exchange of IA WFF. The range of cut-scores reflects the differences in jurisdictional physical demands due to terrain difficulty, fire management policy on fire risk and forest value index.