Logistics Makes or Breaks Emergency Response: Logistics Ninja LN Lurie

Speaker A: In my opinion, we make the party plans the party and they send out the invites. But like, you want to make sure that the clown is there and that the pool is filled and uh, at a perfect temperature and that, that there are pink sprinkles on the cupcakes. You know, all of that is logistics.

Speaker B: In a world filled with chaos and a myriad of risks, there is opportunity. You're listening to Riding the Wave Project Management for Emergency Managers, where we discuss how we adapt and rise above those rolling waves of hazards and threats we face and rise to the top. And now your host, the president of Pinnacle Performance Management, Andrew Boyarsky. I have as my guest today Alan Lurie, who is a logistics and operations leader known for turning complex labor intensive operations into efficient scalable systems. With experience managing wildland fire crews, fire camp and festival facilities, large scale mobilization, supply distribution, inventory tracking, warehouse layouts, warehouse management systems and volunteer logistics. Alan brings both field test execution and systems level problem solving. And Ellen and I worked together during the COVID pandemic and public health emergency response. And I'm very glad to have you join the podcast, Ellen, thank you for having me. My first question is what are some of the, and I forgive the pun here, burning issues when it comes to emergency management that you see in the field?

Speaker A: Uh, as far as for wildland, uh,

Speaker B: wildland emergency response, I think mostly because you do a lot of work in logistics and wildland firefighting. So if you want to start there and then expand, it's fine.

Speaker A: Sure. So, uh, a big thing that I see is that, and I had this as like a patch and a joke and a tagline on my emails is that a lot of people think that logistics is easy. And if you try to plan a five year old's birthday party and you're just like, well, we're just going to invite people and then they're going to show up and then they're going to have a good time. But you're kind of forgetting like where are people going to park? Where are they going to eat? How are they going to use the restroom? Where are they going to use the restroom? Are you having this at a park? Are you having it at a restaurant? Do you need to tell all these people all of this is logistics? And another phrase that I love to tote is that I think it was Alexander the great and his 10,000 men. Maybe it was Napoleon, I'm not sure. But somebody had 10,000 men. But behind them sherpaeing all their stuff was 100,000 logisticians and a Lot of people forget all of this. And it's the little nitty gritty details, it's the very unsexy stuff, but it makes or breaks an operation in my experience. And so a lot of the things is like. And you work in plans and so, you know, like, yeah, it's good to have a good, a solid plan. And from the logistics side, it's really good to have a Rolodex. And it is, it's totally and still will be and probably forever will be a who do you know? And who can you pull up in your phone to call and say, I need a hundred porta potties at this location in three hours. Can you send somebody? And if you can be the person that makes that call, you are a hero in my book. But a lot of things that are missing when we roll into a wildland fire or even into a festival that's been running forever is like, oh, yeah, who did we contact about ice? You know, the, the frozen stuff? Uh, and who did we, you know, who'd be used for, like, for those barricades? I don't remember. Who was that guy? And so like having that stuff in your back pocket for any emergency manager. And in all honesty, when I was working in with volunteer groups, the first person that we would ask was not the mayor, was not the governor, was not like some politician. It was their wives or the bartender, one of those two. The person that knows everybody and knows all the tea and knows how to get all these things. And it's usually like the women at the church who plan these events who have to kind of deal with this all the time. They are m. My biggest heroes and my biggest advocates and also the people that I ping the most. Yeah.

Speaker B: Surprising to me how much crossover there is between events management and emergency management. Right. When we think about it. And uh, this has been said by many people many times is, you know, ah, and I'm quoting a colleague of, of mine who you may know, Andrew Davis, who says it's just events management. It's just happening on the worst day of pretty much anyone's life. You know, it's, it's, it's a critical incident, emergency, disaster, what have you. And we've got to bring together a lot of resources fairly quickly. To your point, that's not something you do overnight. You have to really plan for that. I do want for our younger listeners, Rolodex is actually a, it's. Think of it as your contacts list in, in an older form, there was a product called a Rolodex that was a card system where you literally. It was like a little wheel that you would just twist around and it had all those cards in one place. Uh, we use it, uh, people of our generation, because that's what we were familiar with. So, uh, it's. I think it's used so often people just assume they know what the Rolodex is.

Speaker A: What are some of what's that to that point. I love that you explained that because I too, I forget. I'm like, oh, I'm, um, I'm not that old, am I? But a pro tip. And this is. I don't know if this is widely used, but you know, when you're putting somebody's contact into your phone, I utilize emojis like crazy. And so if they were a tent company or they can make yurts or whatever, then they get a tent icon. If they are something dealing with food, they get a taco. If they are somebody who deals with supply, they get an ax and so on and so forth. And I wish. And it's very easy just to pull up instead of like looking up, oh, is doctor spelled out or is it doctor and then you get all these people with, you know, whatever. It's much easier to sort using emojis. Pro tip.

Speaker B: Ah, dare I ask what the company that does Porta Johnny, Porta Potties or Johnny on the Spot provides? What do they get as an emoji?

Speaker A: Yeah, there's actually like a little man, woman, you know, like a placard or whatever emoji. Um, so that's what they get.

Speaker B: I see. Okay. Not a poop emoji.

Speaker A: Those are the people. I clean them out.

Speaker B: What are some of the strategic issues, uh, with access to resources that you see, given, you know, our world where we've got supply chain issues, tariffs that are happening, uh, so many other potential disruptions that will happen in a supply chain.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's really. I hate to sound like a broken record, but it's just like how. How big is that Rolodex contacts list of whatever it is. And so I find myself collecting from lots of different sources and being part of lots of different groups. And, uh, depending on what the disaster is, uh, depends on, like which, I guess, which group or which like little field are you going to be part of? So an example is like, if you're doing again, like parade slash event for your city festival, whatever it is, maybe you contact the nonprofits, the churches and that sort of thing. If you're doing a hurricane, Wildland fire has their own Vast, huge role Rolodex like checklist. And they also have pre, pre existing condition contracts, preseason contracts they set up. And so when I'm out in the field, I'll talk about Wildland for a second. When I'm in the field and I need Porta Potties that uh, it goes to dispatch, uh, it goes to ordering and ordering goes to dispatch and dispatch goes to whoever the local, like whatever their rules are. And for Porta potties it's usually 99% of the time it is a local contract and that is a buying team person sets up that contract and blah blah, blah. But if it's a shower, they have showers on that are staged that are waiting that are like, and caterers and potable water tenders and all these things that we use a lot of. In Wildlands, they have them staged in a certain geographical area that then dispatch just calls and they say who's ever next on the list and then they get the call and then they get deployed or dispatched and then they arrive onto the scene. Uh, for Hurricanes, it's a totally different ball game. It depends on the day whether I enjoy Hurricanes or Wildland better. Hurricanes are more fly by the seat of your pants, very cowboy. But at the same time, which is exciting. But at the same time, if you're expecting, oh, I'm going to show up and I'm going to get a bag of ice and a pallet of water and a da da da da, like all this stuff, you might be disappointed because some things just might not be there yet. But also their playbooks are very different and their resources of where they get their things are very different. I have heard a rumor and I don't doubt that it's true, but that Walmart, when hurricanes are also slow. And so they know that they're coming like for days and days and days. And so Walmart will just stash like, will store semi trucks someplace kind of close, like within 200 miles or something of where it's supposed to be projected and then, and then they'll just like unload the door, you know, once, once they know what Walmart has been really affected. Um, and all of that is really, is fantastic. In Wildland, we're literally out in the fields, in forest, in no man's land. Sometimes no cell phone land, lots of times no cell phone land. So it's a little bit different. And then when you go international it's even different, you know, an even different ball of wax. But it's really, really about like how many people can you ping to say, I need this thing. Where can I get it? And, uh, and even just not stopping until you get the thing that you need or somehow MacGyvering it, which to your younger audience is a way of putting three things together that normally wouldn't go together and making it work so people can.

Speaker B: People can go watch YouTube episodes of MacGyver if they. There is actually there was an updated version of MacGyver. So, um, I think there was an update. Well, and also SNL did their take. Saturday Night Live for. Again, I say snl, Saturday Night Live. Help us stop using the acronyms just to keep in compliance here. Um, just one question regarding that, I would imagine, and maybe I'm wrong here, but that access to something like Starlink and other communications has been a game changer for certain coverage areas that have been, you know, sort of dead zones for cell phone communications and data links and so forth. Does that correct?

Speaker A: Correct. Yep, for sure. Um, and there's still like, it improves every single day. The more rockets that there or satellites that there are in the sky. I was working on the Iditarod and I did notice. I was working the night shift, I was in charge of communications, and I noticed that, like, between the hours of 3:30 and 4:45am um, there was like a, a drop in coverage. And it was just like, well, you're that far north and hardly anybody lives that far north. But it actually, that was 2024. And then last year, no problems. So like, it just. It drastically improves, but it's also a little scary because it's. Oh, you're relying on one piece of technology that if it does go down or if, if the person that is in charge of that decides on a whim, I don't want you using this. Which happened to us when we were supplying Ukraine back in the early parts of that war. Uh, I was working with an organization that supplied Ukraine with our links and then they got there and they just didn't. They stopped working.

Speaker B: Oh, right. Yeah, because they. I think they cut off access at some point to it, but I think they turned it back on at some point. They shut off Russia's. I'm not going to get into the details of that. International conflicts. We'll leave that aside for now.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so just to give our listeners an idea of the vision of this when it happens, can you describe the largest sort of deployment that you've been involved in in terms of its size and in terms of the different assets that might be deployed for a basecamp? What that Looks like. Because I think most, I mean, for our listeners or viewers, I mean, I know some folks will watch this when they think about California wildfires or wildfires out west. They always imagine just the wildfire folks, the wildland firefighters. It's great, heroic. Thousands of folks on the line doing their work, et cetera. But as you mentioned, there's a whole group of people, there's a whole base camp of support. And it's not just, you know, one wildland fight or a group or, uh, team, it's thousands of them. There's a rotation there, and that may happen over days. Again, those are lifelines that are set up. So if you could just describe what that might look like.

Speaker A: Sure. Is, um, a question first. Is your audience familiar with ics, the Incident Command System?

Speaker B: Most are. And you know what, if you are not familiar with Incident Command System, folks, please go and look that up. I think most of my listening audience are. They are emergency managers. So we'll leave that one aside so we can assume that they know what it is. And if you don't, please look it up. And if you don't, if you're still not sure, you can ping me. And I'm happy to, uh, reach out to you and to steer you in the right direction.

Speaker A: Perfect. I'm a huge proponent and I actually, I learned ics, I guess a slight background and maybe Andrew, you don't even know this, that I got started in disaster response because I was a, I was literally on the beach in the Philippines drinking rum as you do, and Typhoon Haiyan hit. And I was like, oh, I don't have many skills, but I have the want and the desire to help. And that was, and I was kind of strong at the time. Like I could lift a 50 kilo sack of rice. And so they said, hey, you're hired. And I'm like, cool, what do you need me to do? And they're like, and the translation is like, do damage assessments. Like go to these areas and see how bad they are and see like how, uh, the NGOs that come in, the non government organizations, having them come in and to know this is our, our priority and blah, blah, blah. I would say that was the most complex, at least for me, because I had no idea what was going on. I was very, I was a team of one and figuring out all the things. But so back to a wildland fire, which is ics. I got into ICS because of that. Uh, somebody suggested it there and then somebody was like, wildland really created this system which if you talk to people in the Coast Guard, they would argue this and blah, blah, blah. You can go back and forth all day. But I, I will say that wildland is very, they're purists in this way and then. But to quote Pirates of the Caribbean, they're more like guidelines than rules. You know, it really depends on the team, it depends on the vibe, it depends on the situation, you know, like who reports to who and which lane you're in and blah, blah, blah. But, um, for a wildland fire, it is very. Because they've been doing it literally for a hundred years or over a hundred years. And I will get a call, I will probably get a text first or it'll be in the news or something like, hey, this, this fire happened and it's this many miles, you know, it's this many acres so far. They tried using the locals know the local fire departments to put it out, but they very quickly got overran and now they're sending in an incident management team. Now with an, with a team, it goes from being just a bunch of firefighters with trucks. And I'm not diminishing this at all, but just like people that are specialists in putting wet stuff on hot stuff. And then you need to have, as soon as it goes beyond like, I think it's like 30 something hours, you need to start thinking about food. And again, this goes into logistics, like where are people gonna go to the bathroom? Because people have to go to the bathroom within 30 something hours. And you know, bags and outside can only do so much. Uh, you're gonna have to start thinking about food, you're gonna have to start thinking about where are you gonna get more water from. Like, you can only come with so much and then also pay. And because we pay these people, like, even if they are a volunteer firefighter, uh, which is what I am actually, I'm a volunteer firefighter. And then when I get called onto a wildland fire, then that wildland fire starts paying me. And so with that, although, like, you get that structure, you get logistics, you get pay, you get finance, uh, um, you get plans, like, okay, cool, we're doing this right now, but what are we going to do tomorrow? What are we going to do the next day? What are we going to do the next day? And then you have all these like underneath plans, you have gis and analysis and blah, blah, blah, that like, look at what is the overall picture, what is the meteorology telling us? Like, is this fire going to blow up? Is it going to become 150 degrees tomorrow. Oh, gosh. Like, what's that going to do for the fire? And how is that going to predict? And that goes into your plan. And you could. You can. And a lot of people do just have operations and then they have, like, another person that deals with all of it, but not on a complex incident. Once you have more than, like 10 people, you should have more the. What's it called? How many people? The span of control and how many you can have under you. Yeah. So with a wildland fire, usually when I show up, I'm not. We're not the first team. I did. I was on a fire in March, weirdly in Nebraska, weirdly, where a bunch of sand and grass was burning and it burned over a million acres. And we were the first team. And it very quickly overran the. The local team. And we had. And this is common where we had. I think it was like 2,000 people on scene. And we had one major ICP, or Incident Command post. Not a terrible ban from Detroit and not a fob, which is different. A Forward Operating base, which is a, um, military term. And sometimes we use that in fire, and it means different things to different people. But basically you have one main camp, which is where if you, Andrew, were called onto this fire to say, hey, come on here. And he. Here's your job. Here's your statement of work. Here's your job. Here's your reporting, you know, location, and here's. Here's what you're gonna do for this amount of time. You get into your plane, you get into the airport, you get m. You know, your rental car, you drive out to the thing, you show up at that main camp, usually nine times out of 10, they might spike you to a different camp. Maybe the fire is so big that they're trying to circle around it to make driving time less. Because driving time currently, that is the number one thing that kills firefighters is driving accidents because of fatigue. And we work 16 hours a day. And if you are driving four hours of that day and then fighting fire for 12 hours, it's just exhausting. And so we want to limit how much driving everybody's doing all the time. So you show up, there's a big camp, there's probably. If it's in the middle of the day, there's probably. There's probably about 300 people, you know, like, not standing around, but so many people in finance, a lot of people in logistics. So we have supply, we have communications, which was a big problem in Nebraska, because try putting a tower. Try putting a Cell phone radio or a radio beacon antenna on, um, the highest point in Nebraska. And guess where the highest point was? The top of the chapel on the church, because there's no mountains. Um, and so we couldn't get a lot of radio signal. That was, it was still one of the biggest problems and one of our biggest lessons learned. Uh, we also have medical for the people that are responding. Not necessarily medical for the civilians or for the survivors, but for our people. Um, we have to feed them somehow, so food for everybody. And we do that so we don't necessarily overrun the town. Like we were located in a town, but not all the time facilities, which is to make sure that we have our driving. Like our transportation plan is, do we have to cut off roads because the public is just congesting everything? Do we want to have better access to here or there? Um, but also like, do we need land use agreements? Because we're using and utilizing land, we want to make sure that we have permission and that, uh, we have a contract in place and that people are being fairly compensated. I'm forgetting some ground support because everybody's driving. They're all going to get flats. They're all going to need something. So we have lots of ground support people. There's also air, but that's mostly in operations because they deal with the planes and filling them up with water. But the water rights is part of logistics. And then on my team, and this is part of the different teams do different things, we do it. So all of the IT communications is underneath logistics. I think there's, there's more in there and I'm forgetting some.

Speaker B: But that's quite all right. I think you covered quite a lot. I'm m not, you know, it's, it's uh, just to give people an idea. It is not small that footprint and that support resource is, is vital. And it's pretty extensive. I mean, you know, the, the sort of ratio is usually multiples three, four, five folks to one on the front line, three to four to five or more in the background. Supporting one person in the military has sort of that idea as like 10 to 1, uh, of folks in the background supporting one. What they call warf, fighter, whatever, you know, whether that's Navy, Air Force, what have you, uh, that's in the field. And I, I think one of the things I just want to pivot a little bit on is that, is that need for coordination between the different incident command, you know, what we call the flop, right. Finance, logistics, operations and planning. You know, of course there's the general staff and command or command element and so on and so forth. But that coordination aspect that's happening between those sections as we had when we were responding to, you know, Covid, you know, and that's. It's not a small task in doing that. I mean, in a way, your logistics has its own planning that has to happen, right?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And this team, the team that I'm currently on, we usually roll with three logs, chiefs and I'm a trainee. And so there's one that's just doing meetings because there are literally six or seven meetings a day. There's one that does field, field logistics. So like, oh, we have a camp here, we have a camp here. Do we need to have more stuff or less stuff? Should I start mobilized? Should I start thinking about 72 hours down the road, who's going to be taking this over? How do we set everybody up for success? And then we also have the long term strategic logs. Person who works very hand in hand with planning, but. And they have their own separate meetings which also the meeting logs person goes to. But it's starting to think about, we've had this supply chain problem. We're not able to get this thing. Should we think about moving camp? Like, if we move camp, what are the pros, cons? What are, what's the cost benefit analysis of that? We get less driving time, but we're going to be spending $3,000 more a day because we're going to be renting out this field instead of this field or whatever it is. Um, but also moving costs because every contractor has their own costs associated with that. So there's a lot of, a lot of these little nuance things. Again, not sexy. Nobody really wants to deal with this. Most operation people are like, that's for camp. I just want a place to crash. It's like, cool. We also want you to have a place to crash that is like, that's quiet, that doesn't have a lot of bugs, that doesn't have alligators, bears, like any of that stuff that we can, you know, make sure that when you throw your trash away that it's not going to be littered with a bunch of other things that are going to cause problems, um, so on and so forth. And then like keeping sickness out, keeping the hygiene up. We have to think about all of that and when we make our decisions.

Speaker B: One thing that I wanted to bring up that's probably even less sexier when I say is two aspects. One is in many institutions or many agencies, organizations, what have you, uh, it seems like there's always a need for a, uh, type of field operation guide when it comes to logistics. We talked a little bit about this before this call. So let me ask that question first, last. The second question, which is even more wonky and less sexier than that one. So you talk about the need for that, and is that something that you're working on or looking at?

Speaker A: Yeah. So in. I usually called it a playbook. Uh, different teams call it different things, but it's basically a logistical playbook or a service and support plan. Um, it is something that. When the. When my team rolls in, uh, and we rolled into Nebraska and we were there summoned by the governor, so it was a state fire, it wasn't feds. This is different. And there's different rules for different jurisdictions and blah, blah, blah. But we said, hey, do you have a service and support plan? Do you have that Rolodex? Do you have that playbook, like whatever you want to call it? Do you have a list of names and numbers and people that do stuff that you can call on that you already have in your. Essentially in your. Not your payroll per se, but, like, you have all their details. So when we need to contact them, they already have. You've set them up for invoices or however you're going to work that system and contracting, right? Yeah, exactly. Have you set that up yet? And we just kind of got blank stares. And, uh, the result of that is, okay, we can do it. And we had a team and it took. I mean, they. We had five or six logs, chiefs on that fire, just to kind of help the locals with. In doing this, which is like, here's the guy that can do porta potties. He can do it every single day except for Sunday, because he takes Sunday off. And then here's the guy for the dumpsters. They can do it Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Because the other days they are out in a different part of the state and they can't do this. Having those restrict or knowing what those restrictions are saves you tons of time and tons. And I mean, like days of time and no frustration because then you can just make a plan and you just execute the plan and it's. It's flawless. And every incident you're going to have a little bit of like, I don't know where we are, I don't know what we're doing. I don't know my way around. I don't know this, I don't know this. And if you can eliminate those unknowns, beautiful. It's just beautiful when it works. But, uh, the thing that we're currently doing that I would love to push more is to help emergency managers in getting that support plan. And it's just. And it needs to be updated yearly, annually. It can be used for parades, festivals. Like, again, it could be used for all of these things, and I think you started to use them as well. But it has to be used, and it has to be tried and tested. And it's those things. And a lot of people, um, I don't want to say that they become complacent, but if you're in a place that, like, never gets hit by a disaster, I can see why you're like, I don't need to update this. I know where Joe is. I know where Denise is. Like, I know where these people are. But then what happens when you go away and then. Or you bring in a team that needs to do the work or whatever, to scale? So, uh, it's those things that I wish. I wish more people had. I kind of wish we also had, like, a good, solid template, which I think we're getting there slowly but surely, like, as a nation. Because if you Google something like Porta Potty Vendors, little dots will show up everywhere on maps, but doesn't necessarily give you all the other details.

Speaker B: So to know what all the requirements are, in other words, to make that happen, it's not just, like, snap your fingers and suddenly that happens even if you have a contract or procurement.

Speaker A: Exactly.

Speaker B: And also those are, uh, requirements that would go into a procurement. Which leads me to my next, less engaging question, which is the need for, uh, Warehouse Management System or wms. So this is, uh, something that I have seen quite a lot is ask questions. What kind of WMS do you use? And also, sometimes I receive blank stares. Or, okay, I kind of know what we use or think I know what we use. But sometimes there's sort of a vague answer, or they really haven't used it much, or they don't use all of it. So I know you have a lot more to say on this, so.

Speaker A: Yeah. And, um, I love and hate this question because it's like, okay, what? What wms? And they stare blankly. And I'm like, warehouse Management system. And they're like, we don't have a warehouse. We just have this room. And I look in the room, and it's like pallets, floor to ceiling. And I'm like, how do you know when things are running out? And they're like, well, when the pile goes from the ceiling, down to like, the floor, then we know that we're out. And I'm like, cool. Which is a direct quote from somebody that you and I worked with. Uh, but. But it's. It's like, okay, but we can do better. And so at wms, it's really. I like asking the question going backwards, which is what report do you need? Like, what reports are, uh, your bosses asking for, like, how much money we spent on this thing or how much inventory we currently have. And then you have to break that down by each is by pallets, by weight, by blah, blah, blah, how much that we gave, you know, did we give out, how much came in. Like, all of that can be captured by a warehouse management system as well as it depends on are you doing active ordering. And so I hate to say this, but on Wildland Fire, they do not use a warehouse management system at camp. Uh, we, like, redistribute it, and then they literally use paper and pen because it's a system that has worked and it still works. And it's easy and it's easy to train on. And a lot of people that work there, uh, they don't come with the. Their licenses and technology and all that other stuff. It hasn't caught up. And you know, what? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you go there and you need to bar, you know, to borrow or to. To check out a bunch of pants and shirts and helmets and, you know, whatever else, ppe personal protective equipment, then you can. And they'll just write it all down. And then when you go to check out, they will call supply and say, hey, does Andrew still have stuff checked out? And they're like, oh, yeah, he does. And it's literally a radio call. But for bigger organizations, like, if we had to say how many pairs of pants were checked out? They can say, they can go back and they. On a fire, on an incident, they can say, well, we received 100 pairs of pants in this size, and we're turning back in 97 pairs. So three pairs are still out there somewhere. And then they have to do a bunch of work and so on and so forth that I hate doing. That's why we have somebody else do it. But, um, going through all those sheets and all the binders and all the things that try to track down these three pairs of pants. So that's an example. But some, it really depends on. Good, fast, cheap, pick two. Who's going to be using your system and what are the reports that you absolutely need to make Your system work. And yeah, still, like, I have a friend who just makes soap and she's great at it and she loves it. And I'm like, do you have an inventory system? And she was like, no. And she still like, just goes. And she looks behind her and she's like, I still have this many barrels of whatever, right? Of like coconut oil or something. And when I'm on my last one, then I put an Amazon order in or whatever she does. So it's, it's kind of again, good, fast, cheap pick too. Like if it's not going to solve a problem, but it's just going to create more time and money. M. It's a really hard sell. But if you're like, wait, I can make this system easier for you because it's all right here and there's a dashboard and like multiple people can use it and it's whatever it is. And yeah, you and I have worked. Like I built a warehouse management system from scratch. Uh, you can do it in Google, like Excel. You could also get an out of the box system, but every system has to be tailored to your warehouse. Like there is no such perfect system that's like, oh yeah, we do this and it's perfect. That does not exist. So yeah.

Speaker B: And also the other aspect with warehouse management systems, there's a little, that's different, a little bit different with emergency management. And the work that we do is there's reverse logistics, a lot more reverse logistics as far as equipment and some supplies, rugged supplies, materials, uh, are concerned, not necessarily the kinds of products that are burned through, but you know, whatever gets returned has to be logged back in, has to have some sort of maintenance, support and remediation, sort of schedule for demobilization. Um, one last thing, and I think you are the first, if I, if my memory serves me correctly, uh, of my guest that I've had on my podcast who is actually someone who is a logistician or logs person. So, and for the folks out there who are our younger listeners who are looking at careers, what's the, what is the glory and excitement of working in logistics versus planning or operations or some other aspects of emergency management?

Speaker A: Oh man. In my opinion, we make the party plans the party and they send out the invites. But uh, like you want to make sure that the clown is there and that the pool is filled and at a perfect temperature and that, that there are pink sprinkles on the cupcakes and that, you know, like all of that is logistics. I know it's not very sexy but it is always needed. It is always needed. And also what I really like about it is that it's still kind of a new thing. And it's usually especially in Wildland, but also in a lot of emergency managers. It's a lot of the people that used to do operations but now can't for whatever reason. And they're like, man, I remember when I was working with a chainsaw and I never had this bit or I never had this thing and I want to make sure that that never happens to somebody else again. And so I get a lot of that type of like those types of logs, people, logisticians. I come from a software, uh, development background. So first of all like a very, very different background. And then I was literally like I was thrown into emergency management or disaster response and I said, okay, how can I make this work? And it was such a. Everybody was asking for so many things that I needed a way to organize the chaos. And that is my true happy place. Like once I start doing that, I wear enough electronic fit fit devices that I can see my heart rate goes immediately down once I am solving the problem and I am like, cool. We are like, we're taking orders and we're just kind of like uh, being a waitress. Like I'm taking orders and I'm figuring out where I'm going to source that thing and then I give the person their item that they asked for and their whole lives just like light up like I'm a magician somehow. Which if that's what they want to think, that's great because to me vlogs is a little bit of magic. You have to be incredibly resourceful, incredibly problem crazy problem solving. Uh, and it can be a mix of if you're really good with your hands and you can like fix a fence by MacGyvering. Again old reference, but like you can fix a fence with this thing and this bib or whatever. Or if you can create an ordering management system that will give you reports every day at 1pm so you can be prepared for your meeting and you want to build that out of code. Both are there and available and acceptable and so on. So I don't. I think that logistics has also to this point is that logistics to which I've said a lot in during this interview, which is like, I could do stuff for Wildland Fire, I can do stuff for a five year old's birthday party. I ran logistics for my brother's wedding and I had a whole org chart and everything else. And so it's like it's not just a disaster, but it's also event planning. And it's the same job. It's almost exactly the same. You're just dealing with different people, different time frames, different money, different like, ways of how things work. But it's really the same job. So. Yeah.

Speaker B: Well, thank you. Ellen Lurie is a logistics and operations leader known for turning complex labor intensive operations to efficient scalable systems. She's known as Logistics Ninja and um, proud to have worked with her alongside her during the COVID response. Ellen, I want to thank you very much again for coming on the podcast.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you.

Speaker B: You've got mitigation projects, grant applications, training and exercises to deliver, but keeping all of it moving on time on budget with the team you have. That's where good intentions stall. Project Management for Emergency Managers Workshop gives you the practical tools to manage, scope, schedule, budget and deliver. Built specifically for how you work. Walk in with your real projects, walk out with a real plan. Taught by practitioners who've led responses from 911 to Sandy to Covid workshop options from one to four days in person or online. Uh, it's time to move from planning to done. Visit pm4emm.com to learn more. You've been listening to Rock Riding the Wave, hosted by Andrew Boyarski, President of uh, Pinnacle Performance Management and Clinical Associate professor in Emergency and Project Management at NYU and John Jay College.