Our Speakers

Hans Neiling

Gerard Mann

Karel Lambert

Dave Payton

Jon Baldwin

Carl Batchelor

John McDonough

Steve Birch

Steve Luke

Michael Reich

Jon Baldwin is a Station Commander in the London Fire Brigade, having served at various fire stations across the capital since joining as a firefighter in 1998.

He has worked as an Aerial Ladder operator, Swift Water Rescue Technician and Fire Rescue Unit officer among other operational roles, and has a passion for improving operational response to High Rise incidents.

He is an operational Level 2 fire officer, Hazardous Materials & Environmental Protection Officer, Bulk Media Adviser, Wildfire Support Officer and Senior Accident Investigator.

Jon is currently working in learning & professional development, organising & delivering service-wide large scale training exercises on high-rise firefighting, fire survival guidance and evacuation, addressing the changes implemented following phase 1 of the grenfell tower inquiry. He is a firm believer in training for excellence, not just competence. Jon is a member of the Institution of Fire Engineers and is currently studying for a diploma in Fire Science & Fire Safety.

Jon Baldwin

Station Commander
London Fire Brigade

I started my Fire Service career in 1984 when I joined West Midlands Fire Service as a wholetime firefighter. I have experienced working in a variety of different roles within a local authority fire and rescue service and in addition to my operational experience, I spent around seven years in the training department, eventually heading up a team of staff delivering Breathing Apparatus, Fire Behaviour and Tactical Ventilation training to operational crews, officers and external organisations through accredited instructor courses.

I have also been involved in researching and writing national guidance, procuring specialist equipment, developing and building new fire training buildings, leading, developing and managing teams and accident investigation. I am now a freelance trainer and consultant and have spent a number of years working as an Associate Tutor working for The Fire Service College delivering Breathing Apparatus, Fire Behaviour and Tactical Ventilation instruction and training. I have also been heavily involved in the firefighter development programme, including the Operational Firefighter Apprenticeship.

More recently, I started working for Cold Cut Systems, the Swedish company that produce the Cobra Ultra High-Pressure Lance. I form part of a small but efficient team working mainly in the UK, supporting and liaising with both existing and potential customers.

Carl Batchelor

Tactical Firefighting Coordinator
Cold Cut Systems

Steve joined Greater Manchester Fire Brigade in 1978, giving 31 years full-time service. During this time he held various ranks and roles including training school instructor. He joined Akron Brass with a role of implementing european fire equipment to meet standards and European tactical firefighting methods.

Steve has worked for Safe Fleet (Elkhart Brass) for the last 5 years. His role has included identifying European market needs, lecturing at various training establishments on flow analysis, technical and tactical considerations when establishing flow rate requirements, and understanding high-rise pressure loss and the importance of pressure ratings. Steve holds the Global Innovation Award for firefighting nozzles.

Steve Birch

Specialist High Rise Fire Training & Fire Fighting Equipment

Karel Lambert has been a firefighter for 20 years. He is a senior officer with the Brussels Fire Department where he is in charge of 1st platoon (250 firefighters). He is also a volunteer company officer (sergeant) with the Oostkamp Fire Department.

Karel's main interest is firefighting. He strongly believes that more science should be involved in firefighting. He tries to improve the quality of firefighter training programs. Karel participated in training programs in the US, Canada, Croatia, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, France, Australia and Belgium to gather knowledge that could be spread in the firefighting community. He is a member of International Fire Instructor Workshop (IFIW) which meets yearly to discuss and examine current fire related topics

He was a lead instructor on the Canadian ‘From Knowledge to Practice’ project. This project looks to consolidate the current state of scientific knowledge and best practices related to fire dynamics. The Ottawa Fire Services and its partners (Halifax, Montreal and Calgary) are developing a comprehensive, evidence-based fire dynamics training (FDT) curriculum for all Canadian firefighters. Karel was member of the UL technical panel for the PPV study.

In the past years, Karel delivered CFBT instructor courses in Belgium, The Netherlands, France, Canada, Nepal, Greece and Hong Kong. He lectured in 16 countries all over the world.

In 2014 he completed the International Master of Science in Fire Safety engineering which is jointly organized by Ghent University (Belgium), Lund University (Sweden) and the University of Edinburgh (UK). Karel has been a part-time professor at Ghent University teaching a course about firefighting to fire safety engineers since 2014. Karel carried out scientific research into the use of PPV fans and published two peer-reviewed research papers about the subject. He is currently performing research into performance of firefighters at the fireground.

Karel is a co-author of the book "Brandverloop: technisch bekeken, tactisch toegepast" (2011). It was translated into French (2013) and into English (2015). He also co-authored the book "Brandbestrijding" which was published by Sdu in The Netherlands in 2015. Karel wrote over 95 articles and papers about firefighting that have been published in 11 fire service magazines in Belgium, the US, the UK, France, The Netherlands, Germany and Poland.

Karel Lambert

Senior Officer
Brussells Fire Department

Steve Luke started his Fire Service career with Tyne & Wear Fire & Rescue Service in 1999 before moving to County Durham & Darlington Fire & Rescue Service to serve at their multi-pump and specialist station in Darlington for over 12 years.

Steve moved into the CDDFRS training department in 2013, becoming the lead for BA, FBT and Tac Vent, where he combined existing courses to produce the Tactical Firefighting Coures. He was fortunate enough to become the Training Manager, working with an amazing team to create new courses and operate procedures in many areas, including new tactics for High Rise and Buildings of Height.

Having built up experience as an Operational Station Commander - with specialist areas in Fire Investigation, NILO, Water Incident manager, and Hazmat - he then joined the Fire Service College in 2022.

Steve is currently a seconded officer, working with the Fire Craft team, creating and delivering courses to new Instructors, Officers, and Firefighters from around the world in BA, CFBT, Tac Vent, and High-Rise Operations and Tactics.

Steve Luke

Fire Craft Instructor
Fire Service College

Gerard Mann is a Leading Firefighter from Melbourne, Australia. Gerard has 14 years’ experience in the Australian Fire Service, serving as both a career and volunteer firefighter. Gerard has spent the last 5 years sharing his time between operations and fire behaviour training, helping develop and deliver training based upon research and experience. Gerard has also helped develop and update SOP’s. He has a strong interest in the tall and complex environment, speaking on the subject at the tall building conference in the UK and FDIC in the USA.

Gerard Mann

Leading Firefighter
Fire Rescue Victoria

John has been a professional firefighter for 36 years and is an Inspector with the Fire and Rescue NSW (FRNSW). He is currently an operational Duty Commander in charge of 15 stations north of Sydney. From 2003 to 2017, he was Team Leader of the Fire Operational Training Team. This team trains all firefighter and officers in structural fire behaviour and fire fighting techniques and tactics.

After returning from a study trip to Sweden and the UK in 2002, he was tasked with the introduction of modern fire behaviour based firefighting techniques and tactics specifically developed to make the role of firefighters safer and more effective. These skills were taught within a training program known globally as Compartment Fire Behaviour Training (CFBT). Over the last 18 years, this has developed into a standardised doctrine for how FRNSW firefighters act and behave at the task and tactical level. It is taught at all levels from recruit to Station Officer. He has travelled extensively in order to study modern firefighting trends and benchmark against these for world’s best practice in developing training programs.

He has delivered fire training courses in Germany, Croatia, Belgium, Poland, France, Canada, Hong Kong and the US. In Europe alone he has helped train over 500 fire behaviour instructors. He is a founding member of the International Fire Instructors Workshop (IFIW). He was a lead instructor on the Canadian ‘F.I.R.E – Firefighting, Instruction, Research and Engineering’ project, designed to reduce risks and impacts due to fire (2013 – 2018).

He was also one of four international experts selected as a panel member for the ‘Study of the Impact of Fire Attack Utilizing Interior and Exterior Streams on Firefighter Safety and Occupant Survival’. This research was conducted by Underwriters Laboratories (Chicago 2014 - 2017).

He is a co-author of ‘3D Firefighting – Training, Tactics and Techniques’, which in published in the USA by FPP/IFSTA. In 2009 he was awarded Australia’s highest honour for Fire Officers, the Australian Fire Service Medal for his work in structural firefighting training. He has a Certificate 4 in Training and Assessment and an Advanced Diploma in Management

John McDonough

Fire Inspector
Fire & Rescue NSW

Co-Author book “Brandbestrijding” Dutch only

Technical Panel Member at ULFSRI during the interior attack study program.

Member of the International Fire Instructor Workshop group

Member of the Fire instructors panel at the Dutch Fire Academy

Retired Engineer Jet Engine Fuel systems (40 yrs)

Hans Neiling

Senior Fire Instructor CFBT/Managing Director
CFBT-NL

Dave Payton GIFireE, Eng.Tech joined West Midlands Fire Service in 1992 and spent 15 years as a firefighter at one of Birmingham’s busiest stations. He started delivering training to recruits before moving over to the BA department, working there until 2019.

Having established himself as an leading expert in fire behaviour, tactical ventilation and thermal imaging, he moved to being a Seconded Officer at the Fire Service College. Here he shares his knowledge, understanding and passion to developing instructors to ensure the area of Fire Behaviour continues to evolve.

Over his career Dave has undertaken hundreds of live burns, some in acquired structures including a 13-storey high rise. He has studied and learnt through experience, trial and error and a willingness to understand over a 30-year period.

As part of his contribution to ensuring the UK Fire Service has skilled firefighters and instructors he has designed and had built a 6 storey training rig that allows training on wind driven fires, pressurised staircases, protected lobbies etc in as realistic a manner.

Dave Payton

(Ret) West Midlands Fire Service, UK /
UK Fire Service College

As a civil engineer Michael Reick started to work as a researcher at the University of Stuttgart and at their fire testing and research laboratory. Besides participating and leading hundreds of large scale fire tests his specific research topic was about connections between steel and concrete.

As being a volunteer fire fighter for 12 years he graduated as a career fire service chief and worked in this position for 24 years. This work is structural fire safety design as well as supervising the fire departments in an industrial region in South Germany with 78 fire stations and 2.500 volunteer fire fighters.

Besides his career he continued to participate in research, fire experiments and lectures at different Universities and Fire Academies.

In 2004 Michael Reick used his study leave to perform computational fluid calculations about positive pressure ventilation. His aim was to prevent smoke spread into stairways to keep people and fire fighters safe by controlling the smoke and air flow in buildings. These calculations showed the high impact of keeping the upper part of doors closed during firefighting operations. Computer modelling proved that this is very helpful to prevent smoke spread in case of a fire and it also limits the development of a fire. Real fire tests have been added to the theoretical work and lead to the development of portable smoke blocking devices. This tool and the strategy to control fire and smoke developed itself to a proven standard for thousands of fire departments especially in central Europe.

Michael Reick

Prof. Dr.-Ing
Kreisbrandmeister/Brandschutzsachverständiger