Annual Conference 2018 – MAYO

Dave is a Civil Engineering graduate from University College Cork, Dave spent a number of years in London working with Arups. Dave joined North Tipperary Fire & Rescue Service in 1995 and was appointed Chief Fire Officer for North Tipperary in 2001, subsequently taking the role of Chief Fire Officer for Tipperary on the amalgamation of North & South Tipperary County Councils in June 2014.

Senior Fire Investigator/Northeast Regional Director. NFPA
Robert is the Fire Investigator for the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association), which is based in Quincy, Massachusetts. Robert is responsible for conducting investigations of technically significant incidents to gather, “Lessons Learned” from each incident to apply those lessons to improving NFPA codes and standards. The investigation of these incidents includes documenting the emergency
services response, the structure(s) involved as well as the events leading up to and following the Incident.

As Regional Director, Robert is responsible for outreach within the northeast states regarding code adoptions, and training. He also serves as a point of contact for stakeholders in the NFPA process; including the fire service, engineering and safety professionals.

Robert has conducted investigations into several significant incidents including; fire fighter fatalities in Albert City Iowa, Lake Worth Texas, Marks, Mississippi, New York City, Phoenix, Arizona, Keokuk, Iowa, Coos Bay, Oregon and Houston, TX, a cruise ship fire in Miami Florida, a grain elevator explosion in Kansas, a bulk retail warehouse in Phoenix, AZ, a large “green” office building in WI, as well as the total loss of a sprinklered warehouse in KY, among others.

Robert was a member of the FEMA Building Performance and Assessment Team (BPAT) that studied the World Trade Center disaster in 2001.

Robert was named the New England Regional Manager for NFPA in 2003. In this role, Robert interfaces with fire and building officials in the New England states on code related issues. His region has recently expanded to include NY and NJ, and is now referred to as the Northeast Region.

Robert was also involved in the 2003 investigations of the tragic Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 and the Hartford, CT nursing home fire that claimed 16 lives.

Robert serves as the Chief of the Atwood Hose Fire Company in his hometown of Wauregan, CT, where he has been a member since 1981. He has worked as an emergency services dispatcher in a regional fire department dispatch center in northeastern Connecticut since 1986. He also serves on the instructional staff of the Eastern CT Fire Training School. He recently retired from the CT State Fire Academy after 20 years as a staff instructor.

Robert serves as a Communications Specialist for CT-TF1 – Connecticut State Urban Search and Rescue Task Force. He is also a member of the CT Region 4 Incident Management Team (IMT – 4).

Robert holds a bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology from Northeastern University in Boston, MA.

Vladimir joined the full time Fire Service in 1984 and has worked in various ranks since then. He is currently the Chief Fire Officer of the Fire and Rescue Brigade of the Moravian-Silesian Region. He has inter alia responsibility for the Operational Management of the Fire Service, Integrated Rescue Systems and Crisis Management.

Vladimir holds a Ph.D. from the University of Ostrava (Faculty of Safety Engineering) and is Associate Professor in the Technical University of Ostrava.

Vladimir has participated in many EU projects and as Team Leader in EU Civil Protection missions most recently in the Humanitarian Assistance in Jordan – Syrian refugees crisis. He is a national expert of the Ministry of Interior and Team Leader of USAR (Urban Search and Rescue), WASAR (Water Search and Rescue Team) and HCP (High Capacity Pump) teams.

Vladimir is currently president of the Czech Association of Fire Chiefs CAFO and represents them in FEU (Federation of the European Union Fire Officers Associations) since 1995.

Ivana is a senior researcher and project leader in the Language Technology Lab of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence in Saarbruecken, Germany (since 2008), where she is leading the Talking Robots Group (since 2013). She holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Czech Technical University (1992) and a PhD in mathematical linguistics from Charles University (1998), Prague, Czech Republic. 1999-2000 she held a British Academy Visiting Fellowship and a Royal Society / NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship for research in discourse semantics at the University of Edinburgh, U.K. 2001-2010 she held a research position at the Department of Computational Linguistics and Phonetics, Saarland University, Saarbruecken. Her research includes various topics in discourse and dialogue modelling and context-sensitive natural language processing for dialogue systems and human-robot interaction. She has more than 70 peer-reviewed publications. Since 2013 she has been leading the European integrated projects NIFTi (www.nifti.eu) and TRADR (www.tradr-project.eu), which address the cooperation of human-robot teams in disaster response. On Sept 1 2016 she led the deployment of a TRADR human-robot team in earthquake-struck Amatrice, Italy.

Paul joined Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service in September 2009 as Deputy Chief Fire Officer and became Chief Fire Officer in June 2015. This appointment followed 20 years operational and managerial experience in Somerset County Fire Brigade, London Fire Brigade and Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service. He has also worked for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) as a team leader for Operational Assessment of Service Delivery.

Paul was awarded the Queens Fire Service Medal (QFSM) in the 2018 New Year’s Honors list and has previously completed the UK Fire and Rescue Service Executive Leadership Programme. He continued his studies with Warwick University to achieve a master’s degree in public service leadership (MSc) and is also a Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers (FIFireE).

During his time in Cornwall, Paul has led many change and improvement projects supporting the Service in gaining sector and partner recognition as a high performing service that embraces and delivers wide reaching and varied community safety prevention and response services across Cornwall. An advocate of collaborative working Paul has led on innovative work to introduce a Tri Service Safety Officer role for rural communities in Cornwall and a public realm CCTV function within Cornwall’s Critical Control Centre.

Paul leads the National Fire Chiefs Council International Coordinating Group and has been the UK representative on the Federation of the European Union Fire Officer Associations for the past 10 years as well as an active participant in the European Union exchange of experts programme.

Sean Hogan is a Civil Engineer. He has worked in Fire Services in Ireland for more than 30 years. He was designated as National Director for Fire and Emergency Management in June 2009 by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. He has been nominated as national coordinator of recent severe weather events including ex Hurricane Ophelia (Oct 2017) and Storm Emma (Mar 2018)
He has overseen the development of a collaborative approach in the provision of fire services in Ireland between central and local government.

Sarah is Principal Adviser (Housing Advisers &Building Standards) in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. Her responsibilities include managing a multi-disciplinary team to assess and advise on capital works projects in accordance with procurement requirements, sustainable communities polices, quality building and value for money largely in the context of social housing at present and to provide a strong and evolving building code and regulatory framework through the Building Control Acts. She is a Chartered Engineer, holds a Civil Engineering Degree from NUI Galway and an MBA from UCD. Prior to joining the Department, Sarah worked as a Structural Design Engineer with Ryan Hanley consulting engineers in Galway.

Markus is a native of Gussung, Austria.After completion of his second level education he attended the University of Vienna and graduated with a degree in French and history.He was a member of staff of the Firefighters School in Eisenstadt from 2002-2003. Since then Markus has been working with the Austrian Firebrigade Association – OBFV in the capacity of Secretary General.
Markus is also a Commander in Chief of a firestation in Burgenland (South Eastern part of Austria).

Alasdair Hay was born and grew up in Edinburgh before moving to Essex in 1983 to join the Fire Brigade. He rose rapidly through the ranks in Essex being promoted to Station Officer in 1990. He completed a two year secondment, as the Senior Instructor, to the Scottish Fire Service Training School from 1992 until 1994 before transferring to Tayside Fire and Rescue.

He continued to rise through the ranks and on promotion to Divisional Officer Grade I in 2002 he Became a member of Tayside Fire and Rescue’s corporate Management Team, serving firstly as Commander Technical Services then as Commander Personnel Services. He was promoted to Assistant Chief Fire Officer in 2007 with a wide ranging portfolio responsible for all service support functions. He
was further promoted to Deputy Chief Fire Officer in June 2008 with responsibility for all the service delivery aspects of Tayside Fire and Rescue.

In 2011 he was seconded to work with the Scottish Government for a period of six months to consider in detail the operational service delivery and operational command supervision of the fire and rescue services across Scotland as part of the wider reform of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. On his return from secondment Alasdair became part of the Strategic Peer Support Team supporting Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service through their challenges and was promoted to Tayside’s Chief Fire Officer in April 2012.

In addition to the management progression and specialist courses at the Fire Service College, Moreton in Marsh and the Scottish Fire Service College, Alasdair has completed a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, a Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resource Management and is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

He was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2002, Fire Service Long Service and Good Conduct Medal in 2003 and the Queen’s Fire Service Medal in the Birthday Honours list in 2011 for distinguished service.

On 16 August 2012, Alasdair was announced as Scotland’s first Chief Officer of the new single Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, which was launched on 1 April 2013.
In 2017, he was awarded a CBE in the Birthday Honours list for services to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.