Assigning Field Units and Setting Priorities: applying rules you have never seen

Assigning Field Units

You read a set of rules for assigning units to incidents, then decide for each incident which units go — POST's own description is "no, one, or more units", so assigning nobody is a real answer rather than a trap. The incidents give the area, whether the call is an emergency, and what each unit is currently doing.

Five minutes for twenty incidents means the rules have to be learned once rather than relearned per item. Writing them down as an order of precedence — who covers what, who is free, what an emergency changes — is what makes the pace survivable.

Setting Priorities

You are given a priority code and sets of three events, and you rank each set first, second and third. The code is what decides, not how serious the event sounds, and codes are written so that the dramatic-sounding event is often not the top priority.

Classify all three before ranking any of them. Where two events fall in the same code the code will contain the tie-breaker; find it rather than deciding by feel.

One difference between this practice and the test

On the real Assigning Field Units subtest you mark every unit you assign, and POST reports 32 response alternatives across the twenty items. This engine serves single-answer multiple choice, so the same decision is offered here as one choice among unit combinations, with every option naming every unit and marking it Y or N. The reasoning is the same; the way you record it is not, and it is better to know that in advance.

Related guides

• The eleven subtests on the POST dispatcher battery
• Evaluating Facts and Clarity: the two sections with fewer than four choices
• The Public Safety Bulletin section, and what three minutes is enough for