Building AI capability across UK fire services
Tailored AI education for specialist organisations, connecting emerging technology to operational realities and building capability for evidence-based AI adoption.
When the National Fire Chiefs Council approached us in 2025, they faced a challenge that many specialist organisations encounter with emerging technologies: how do you prepare your people for AI when your domain expertise doesn't naturally align with how these systems are typically discussed or understood?
Fire services operate in a world of life-critical decisions, highly specialised knowledge, and operational constraints that don't feature prominently in most AI discussions. The probability distributions that power large language models aren't trained on the nuanced realities of emergency response, building safety regulations, or hazardous material handling. Yet AI's potential applications in fire services - from predictive analytics for fire risk to computer vision for scene assessment - were too significant to ignore.
Building understanding, not just awareness
Rather than delivering generic AI training, we designed three interactive cohorts of approximately 20 fire service professionals each. The 90-minute sessions combined structured knowledge transfer with open dialogue, recognising that fire service leaders needed space to explore how AI might intersect with their existing expertise and operational realities.
The educational challenge was significant: explain traditional and generative AI clearly enough that busy professionals could grasp the distinctions and possibilities, whilst avoiding academic debates about different AI approaches that wouldn't help someone trying to stop a fire. We focused ruthlessly on practical utility over theoretical completeness.
Each session moved quickly from "what is AI" to "what could AI do for fire services", using concrete examples that resonated with participants' daily challenges. We explored everything from NOAA's Next-Generation Fire System, which can detect fires as small as 0.25 acres within minutes, to the potential for AI-powered analysis of building inspection reports.
From scepticism to strategic thinking
The interactive format proved crucial. Rather than passive consumption of information, participants engaged with questions about their own services: where did they spend time on routine decisions? What data did they already collect that might be AI-ready? Where would human judgement need to remain paramount?
These weren't just educational exercises. They were the foundation for strategic thinking about AI adoption in their services. Participants moved from initial scepticism or uncertainty to asking sophisticated questions about implementation challenges, safety considerations, and change management approaches.
The conversations revealed the sector's inherent strengths for AI adoption: fire services already operate with rigorous data collection, systematic approaches to risk assessment, and strong cultures of continuous improvement. The challenge wasn't convincing them that AI could be useful, but helping them see how it could enhance rather than replace their expertise.
Capability building at scale
Across the three cohorts, we reached approximately 60 fire service professionals, creating a network of AI-informed leaders who could champion thoughtful exploration within their own services. This wasn't about creating AI experts, but about building organisational capability to engage with AI vendors, evaluate AI-powered solutions, and pilot AI applications safely.
The approach recognised that sustainable AI adoption in fire services wouldn't come from top-down mandate or external pressure, but from informed professionals who understood both the opportunities and the constraints. By investing in education that respected participants' expertise whilst expanding their technological literacy, NFCC created the foundation for evidence-based AI adoption across UK fire services.
The sessions demonstrated that even highly specialised sectors can engage effectively with AI when the education is tailored to their context and challenges. The key isn't simplifying the technology, but connecting it meaningfully to the problems that professionals are already working to solve.
Technological change continues to accelerate but only a quarter of charities say they feel prepared to respond to the opportunities and challenges. Let's close the opportunity gap together.
