Robert Williams

Interviewees: Elizabeth Anderson and Nimisha Thakur

Gender: Male

Robert Williams is a retired Captain who worked for 25 years at a fire department and has spent 32 years on active duty until 2020. He is also an award-winning SMART First Responder Technologist and Adjunct Professor. Robert shared many resources, listed below, of existing technologies used by firefighters. Additional resources on existing technologies used by first responders are also listed below. He also shared insights into evaluations and coaching during his time as an active firefighter and let us know that his process was always “praise in public and coach in private”. One type of training method he highly recommended was using a phone in a simple VR headset to walk through a space where a rescue operation had occurred. This allowed firefighters to assess the situation and figure out how they could do better in the next mission.

Certificate and Training Options

  • Fire instructor

  • Hazardous driver operator

  • Fire prevention

  • Rope rescue

  • Water rescue

Recommendations from interviewee

  • Yearly or quarterly review with volunteers

    • What’s your plan? What do you want to do in the next six months or year?

    • If you want to learn have a one, three, or five year goal

  • Casual coaching

  • Try to implement automation – when the call comes in there is two way voice so the system already has the list of people who will have the best experience for the mission

Additional Resources

Training and Evaluation

Policies

Technologies

People