How to Write a Fire Department SOG: Step-by-Step Guide for Officers

Why Most Fire Department SOGs Get Ignored

Walk into any firehouse in America and you can find an SOG binder on a shelf, dusty, untouched, and irrelevant to the way the crew actually operates. The policy is on paper. Nobody reads it. When a question comes up on a call, nobody references it. When discovery comes after a bad outcome, the plaintiff's attorney reads it carefully, finds the gap between what the policy says and what the crew actually did, and that becomes the case.

The problem is rarely that fire officers don't know what their policies should say. The problem is that writing a usable SOG is harder than it looks. There's a federal framework most departments have never read, a verb-discipline trap that catches almost every first-time author, and a structure that has to balance legal precision with the reality that a probationary firefighter has to be able to read it on a phone at 0300 and know what to do.

This guide walks through the actual writing process, from blank page to ready-for-chief-review draft. If you've been handed the assignment of writing or rewriting a department policy and don't know where to start, this is the place to begin.

SOG vs SOP: The First Decision You Have to Make

Before you write a single line, decide whether the document you are creating is an SOG or an SOP. The difference is not stylistic. It changes the verbs you use, the legal weight the document carries, and what happens if a member doesn't follow it.

• SOP (Standard Operating Procedure): mandatory. Deviation is a disciplinable offense. The verbs are shall, must, and will. Use SOPs for anything where the law, OSHA, NFPA, or the chief's authority dictates that there is one correct way and no judgment call is allowed. Examples: SCBA inspection, controlled substance handling, evidence preservation at fire scenes, hazardous materials decontamination sequence.
• SOG (Standard Operating Guideline): a default that commanders may deviate from based on conditions. The verbs are should, may, and will consider. Use SOGs for tactical operations where conditions on the ground require judgment. Examples: fireground ventilation tactics, apparatus placement, search priorities, attack-line selection.

The mistake almost every first-time author makes: writing a document that says SOG at the top, then using shall language throughout. That's not an SOG. That's an SOP that's been mislabeled, and it creates legal exposure when a commander makes a reasonable judgment call that contradicts the document. If you mean it to be mandatory, call it an SOP and use mandatory verbs. If you mean it to be a default that allows discretion, call it an SOG and use permissive verbs.

The FA-197 Framework

FEMA published FA-197: Developing Effective Standard Operating Procedures for Fire and EMS Departments as the reference manual for fire-service policy writing. It is the closest thing the American fire service has to a standard for how to develop SOGs and SOPs. Most accreditation reviewers expect to see departments following its framework. Most departments have never read it.

The FA-197 process boils down to seven steps:

1. Conduct a needs assessment. What problem is this policy solving? Is the gap a training issue, a discipline issue, or a missing-policy issue? If you can't articulate the problem in one sentence, you are not ready to write the policy.
2. Develop a plan of action. Assign an author. Assign reviewers. Set a target completion date. Decide who has the authority to adopt the final version.
3. Establish a steering committee. Even a small department needs more than one set of eyes. Include a company officer who will operate under the policy, a senior firefighter, and where applicable a union representative or safety officer.
4. Develop the document. Draft, circulate, revise. Plan for at least three full revision cycles before the document is ready for chief sign-off.
5. Implement the document. Train every affected member. Document the training. Make the document accessible on every rig and every phone.
6. Evaluate effectiveness. After incidents that invoke the policy, review whether it was followed and whether it produced the intended outcome.
7. Revise as needed. Plan for an annual review cycle and an event-driven review after any significant incident or near-miss.

If the framework feels heavier than the SOG you're trying to write, scale it down to the size of the document. A two-page SCBA inspection SOP doesn't need a steering committee. A new aerial-ops SOG covering a $1.2 million ladder truck does.

The Anatomy of a Usable SOG

Every SOG should have the same structure. When members get used to the format, they can find what they need fast. A consistent structure also makes the chief's review easier and accreditation cleaner.

1. Cover page or header. Document title, document number (every SOG should have a unique number), revision date, version, owner of the document, and a DRAFT or ADOPTED stamp depending on status.
2. Purpose. One sentence. Why does this document exist? "To establish a standard approach to fireground rehab consistent with NFPA 1584." That's it.
3. Scope. Who does this apply to and when? Career, volunteer, both? All members or just officers? Every incident or only working fires?
4. Definitions. Define any term that has a specific operational meaning. If you use "interior structural firefighting," "rehab sector," or "two-in two-out," define them so the probationary firefighter knows what you mean.
5. Procedure or guideline body. The substance. Step-by-step for an SOP. Framework with discretion language for an SOG. Use numbered or lettered subsections so members can reference specific provisions on the radio.
6. Roles and responsibilities. Who does what. The engine company's role versus the truck company's role versus the incident commander's authority.
7. References. NFPA standards, OSHA regulations, federal or state law, and any internal documents this policy depends on. Every claim of legal authority needs a citation.
8. Signature block. Fire chief, legal counsel review, safety officer, training officer, and where applicable union representative and accreditation manager. Signature blocks are not decoration. They establish a chain of accountability if the policy ever lands in a courtroom.

If your current SOGs don't have this structure, you are not behind the curve. Most don't. Add the structure to your template and the next policy you write becomes professional almost by accident.

The Verb Discipline Trap

This is the single most common reason fire department policies fail legal review or get ignored on the rig. The author meant the document to be a guideline, then used mandatory verbs throughout, and now the document means something different than the author intended.

The rule: pick your verbs based on the document type and use them consistently from the cover page to the references.

• SOP verbs (mandatory): shall, must, will. "Members shall wear full PPE in the IDLH zone." Deviation is disciplinable.
• SOG verbs (discretion): should, may, will consider. "Officers should consider transitional attack on confirmed-occupancy structure fires." Deviation is allowed when conditions warrant.
• Verbs to avoid in either: encourage, recommend, where possible. These dilute the document into a wish list. If the policy doesn't say it clearly enough that a member could be held to it, the policy doesn't exist.

Run a verb audit on every draft before the chief sees it. Open the document, search for shall, should, must, and may, and confirm every one of them is the right verb for the document type. Most word processors will let you highlight all four in different colors so you can scan the page in seconds.

The Five Mistakes That Get Your SOG Ignored

1. Writing it longer than three pages. Members will not read a 12-page policy. They will not even start. If your draft is over three pages, you are trying to do too much in one document. Split it. Make a parent SOG that defines the framework and child SOPs that handle the operational details.
2. Writing it in legal-brief voice. The audience is a probationary firefighter at 0300. If they need a thesaurus to understand the document, the document is not usable. Write at a level a high-school graduate can read fast under stress. Save the legal precision for the references and the signature block.
3. Skipping the input from the people who will follow it. SOGs written in the chief's office without crew input face immediate resistance. Get a company officer and a senior firefighter to redline a draft before the chief sees it. They will catch the operational nonsense the chief won't.
4. Citing standards you haven't read. Don't cite NFPA 1500 if you have not opened it. Citing a standard you don't understand is worse than not citing one. Auditors and plaintiff's attorneys read references. If your policy says "consistent with NFPA 1584" and your rehab procedure contradicts NFPA 1584, that's the case.
5. Adopting the document and never training on it. Publishing a policy is not the same as implementing it. Every member affected by an SOG should have classroom or hands-on training documented on the policy. Without training records, the policy doesn't protect you in court. It accuses you.

The Review and Adoption Process

Once you have a draft you can defend, route it through review in this order:

1. Operational review. One company officer and one senior firefighter who will operate under the policy. Catch operational nonsense.
2. Safety officer review. Confirms the policy is consistent with OSHA, NFPA, and the department's safety doctrine.
3. Training officer review. Identifies the training program required to implement the policy. If the training plan can't be built, the policy is too ambitious.
4. Legal review. Department attorney or municipal counsel. Reviews verb discipline, references, and liability exposure. Skipping legal review is the single most expensive mistake in fire-service policy writing.
5. Union review where applicable. If the policy affects working conditions, discipline, or member rights, get formal union sign-off before adoption.
6. Chief adoption. The fire chief signs the cover page, dates the adoption, and assigns the document its number in the SOG library.
7. Member implementation. Training, documentation, and accessibility on every rig and every phone.

Most policy failures happen because the author skipped one of these steps. The legal review and the operational review catch different categories of errors. You need both.

The Fast-Track Approach

Writing an SOG from scratch the right way takes 20 to 40 hours per document for a first-time author. Multiply that by the 50 to 100 SOGs a typical department needs and you understand why most departments operate on outdated policies. There is more work than there are hours.

The fast-track approach is to start with an AI-drafted first pass that already has the FA-197 structure, the right verbs for the document type, and the NFPA and OSHA citations baked in, then run your steering-committee process on top of that draft. You go from blank page to chief-ready review in hours instead of weeks.

The StruckBox SOG Drafting Assistant is built for exactly this. You enter your department context (state, type, staffing, water supply, OSHA coverage, union status, accreditation), pick a topic from a 28-topic catalog, and the AI generates a full draft tailored to your department. The draft includes the cover page with DRAFT watermark, purpose and scope sections, definitions, the procedure or guideline body, references with NFPA and OSHA citations, signature blocks for the chief, legal, safety officer, and training officer, and a verb-audit appendix that flags any inconsistencies. You download as .docx, run your steering-committee review, edit freely, and adopt when ready. It's free, the tool runs in your browser, and you can generate up to three drafts per day per email.

It does not replace the chief's review, the legal review, or the steering committee. It compresses the time from blank page to first reviewable draft from days to minutes.

Bottom Line

Writing a fire department SOG is a real skill. The framework is in FA-197. The verb discipline catches first-time authors. The structure should be consistent across the department. The review process needs both operational and legal eyes. And nothing on the rig matters if the training program doesn't follow the policy out of the binder.

Whether you write the document from scratch or start with an AI-drafted draft and run your steering committee on top of it, the discipline of the process is what protects your members and your department. Build the discipline in once and the next 50 policies you write will be cleaner, faster, and harder to ignore.