Meeting the Rising Operational Challenge: How Fire Services Can Build Reliable, Compliant and Deployment-Ready Asset Systems

Fire agencies across Australia and New Zealand are entering another high-risk fire season, with early-season bushfires already destroying homes, prompting emergency declarations and causing fatalities in NSW and Tasmania. National outlooks show elevated fire danger across multiple states after years of fuel build-up and drying conditions. These pressures sit alongside the continuing reform agenda shaped by the Black Summer Royal Commission and recent AFAC reviews, which highlight ongoing gaps in preparedness, asset oversight and information flow.

At the same time, leaders face sharper scrutiny. Heavy Vehicle National Law obligations apply to emergency fleets, including chain-of-responsibility duties for executive officers. New Zealand’s review of FENZ funding signals similar expectations for accountability and sustainable capability. In this context, agencies must demonstrate that vehicles, equipment, stations and ICT assets are safe, compliant and ready – backed by reliable, lifecycle-wide evidence.

Budgets are tight, risk is increasing and the operational footprint continues to expand across metropolitan, rural and volunteer environments. Decision-makers need confidence in the data that underpins readiness, replacement planning and investment arguments. This briefing brings those pressures into focus and helps leaders clarify what robust, future-ready asset governance now requires.

Key Discussion Points

• Governing complex, dispersed and shared asset fleets: Unpacking the structural challenges of managing heavy fleet, specialist equipment and stations across metropolitan, regional and volunteer-based environments.
• Real-time confidence in “fit for use” assets during peak demand: Exploring what it takes for leaders to be confident that appliances and equipment are safe, reliable and ready to deploy when incidents escalate.
• Heavy fleet obligations and chain-of-responsibility risk: Examining how Heavy Vehicle National Law and chain-of-responsibility duties apply in a fire services context, and what incomplete records or unclear ownership mean for organisational and personal liability.
• From fragmented ownership to lifecycle stewardship of data: Looking at how procurement, finance, engineering, logistics, ICT, safety and audit each touch the same assets – and what needs to change so decisions are based on a single, trusted source of truth.
• Using evidence to argue for funding, replacement and prioritisation: Discussing how senior leaders are using asset data to justify budgets, shape replacement programmes, manage risk and plan for more severe and more frequent fire seasons.

Who Should Attend

Executives, directors and managers across metropolitan fire, country/rural fire and SES agencies throughout Australia and New Zealand, including:

• Assistant Commissioners, Chief and Deputy Chief Officers
• Directors and Managers of Asset Management, Asset Strategy, Fleet, Engineering and Technical Services, Infrastructure and Logistics
• Senior leaders in Accounting and Finance, Risk, Governance, Compliance, Monitoring, Audit and Assurance
• ICT and digital leaders responsible for operational systems, integration and data
• Safety Managers and WHS leaders overseeing operational and fleet safety governance