In these times of increased  and very public – accountability, there is a heightened expectation upon organisations to provide far reaching, highly developed emergency management solutions.

As the creator, author and editor of the Victoria Police Emergency Response Guide (currently in its 5 th edition) Alan is able to provide real-world solutions to achieve and surpass expectations.

Alan led the development of the Wildfire Standard Operating procedures for Wildfire arising from the 1997 Dandenong Ranges bushfires.   An integral part of that plan was the creation and establishment of  Traffic Management Points, a solution now established within emergency management across Victoria to manage traffic into and out of emergency zones, not merely block it.

He then created a dynamic process with the Victoria Police Division for maintaining and updating the documentation as a continuous improvement program.  He also introduced processes for the provision of regular training exercises, updates and testing each year to keep the improvements in mind.  These Standard Operating Procedures and processes formed an integral part of police training since the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009.

Alan’s overall skills and abilities as a proven emergency management professional was called upon to support the police operation in Australia’s greatest peacetime disaster.

Alan was called in to manage the Police Operations Centre from 4pm on the day of the fires until 9 am the following mroning, at a time when cool heads were needed to oversee the police response and to prepare and plan resources and logistics for  the next day.

During that follow up operation Alan was also called on to be a key liaison officers with the Australian Federal Police and other police through the Federal Resources Co-ordination Centre and later was selected as Deputy Operations Commander to the fire still raging east of Marysville and taking in the maintenance of the police post fire response to areas from Kinglake across to Flowerdale and  to Marysville.

Alan is able to bring that high degree of expertise across the whole emergency management spectrum to the planning for  responses to any emergency, documenting the planned response and training staff to undertake their roles and assume ownership of the response.  His overall objective is to empower members of  organisations to maintain their own preparedness.