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Incident Qualifications and Certification System (IQCS)

Established by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG), the IQCS application is a management tool to record, track and report on responder qualifications for NWCG Standards for Wildland Fire Position Qualifications, PMS 310-1, and agency-specific standards. The original wildfire agencies collaborated to develop IQCS to support NWCG and their incident qualification standards.

The IQCS application is a PeopleSoft product but has been heavily customized to reflect incident position requirements maintained in the NWCG Standards for Wildland Fire Position Qualifications, PMS 310-1, and agency-specific standards. 

To determine qualifications, IQCS compares the responder’s task book, training, experience, and other accomplishments (referred to as competencies) to the position qualification criteria.

History

In the early 2000s the original wildfire agencies collaborated to develop a single application to support their qualification standards.  Responder data was migrated from legacy systems to IQCS during the early months of 2004.

The Department of Interior joined IQCS with the Incident Position Qualification Guide (IPQG) in 2011 and began utilizing the application for responder incident qualification management for all eleven (11) DOI agencies.

In November 2016 the United States Air Force signed an agreement to use IQCS. They imported and began managing their responder incident qualifications in the application January 2017.  

The United States Army Service signed an agreement with IQCS September 2018 and the agency began managing their responder incident qualifications in the application July 2019.  

Management of IQCS

The IQCS application is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) with active business oversight from agency leads (representatives) from each of the agencies that utilize the application for responder qualification management. There are eleven (11) agency leads in total, of which seven (7) compose the IQCS Change Management Board (IQCSCMB) that directs the business scope of IQCS to ensure it meets NWCG business requirements.

IQCS Major Functions

Fundamental business processes and functions include:

  • Certification Standards Management: reflects the incident response position performance standards and their respective qualification and certification requirements for all hazard and wildland fire positions.

  • Incident Responder Management: tracks responder information related to qualifications and work history that includes information such as: positions, experience, training, fitness, and licenses and certifications.

  • Import and Export of emergency responder qualification data: import and export qualification data for individuals and groups in several different formats to assist account managers as employees transfer between qualification systems (IQS and IQCS).  

  • Training Management: provides the ability to coordinate training by tracking courses, pre-course requirements, class schedules, student registration and class participation information.

IQCS Integration

May 2017 IQCS first connected to the Integrated Reporting of Wildland-Fire Information (IRWIN) to only read (pull) incident header data for the population of the IQCS  incident catalog. The connection to IRWIN further expanded March 2020 when the qualification applications became part of the write/read systems in the integration to share data. 

IQCS writes (sends) responders and their agency certified qualifications to IRWIN using business rules as defined the IQCSCMB. Responder records must be integrated in IRWIN and their qualifications certified to be sent. Once the responder and their qualifications are in IRWIN, other application (i.e., ordering, dispatch, etc..) can read (pull) in the data.

The IQCS application will read (pull) incident and responder experience records for the qualification management process. The experience records that the qualification systems pull in are ones that have been completed (assigned and released from an incident) in the ordering systems for IQS and IQCS responders. 

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