Volume 3
Issue 2

"If we fail to share ideas between private and public sector organisations… we must prepare to fail in the future. It’s time to climb out of our silos…” says Peter Power in his series on command (p41).

On page 7 you will find news of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, which provides an overview of current and future risks to the global community and their predicted impact.

One of its proposals is particularly resonant in that it recommends countries establishing a new position of Country Risk Officer, based on the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) concept, widely used in the private sector. Governments would appoint a single Country Risk Officer to prioritise risks on a cross-sectoral basis, exploring private sector techniques of risk assessment, management and transference and acting as a focus point for strategic thinking and forward action.

On page 60 we review a recent international meeting of fire experts in London, where participants lamented the difficulty of reaching the right people in the European Commission and Parliament in time to inform them of fire concerns and the impact of EC proposals.

Likewise, European legislative bodies have sometimes found it hard to cut through the tangle of inter-linked national and international associations and institutions that are all lobbying on fire matters.

Some countries have already set up national representative bodies to address this problem (p58). Does the answer lie in a European Fire Bureau, as some have suggested, and could an evolved CRO concept – ie a standardised Country Fire Officer system – make a valid contribution to such an initiative?