Time to Task Completion is Critical for Situational Awareness

Your highest level of situational awareness is formed when you are able to make accurate predictions about future events. In science, we call this projection and it simply means you are able to predict, or project, future events. This is accomplished through mental models you develop that are founded in your training and experience. But for commanders, it requires more than training and experience to make accurate projections of the future. Let me explain.

Expectations

As you assess a scene and make predictions about future events you form expectations about outcomes. For example, if a crew of firefighters is sent inside a structure to extinguish a fire, company officers and incident commanders hold certain expectations about how things will change as the crew finds success (i.e., the black smoke will turn white and the flames will disappear). However, there is a second expectation that is every bit as important as the expectation of the outcome and it is one that is often overlooked by company officers, safety officers and incident commanders.

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