CEM Corner: The Essay Body

By Daryl Lee Spiewak, CEM, TEM, CFM, CEM® Commissioner and ASPEP President Emergency Action Coordinator, Brazos River Authority, Waco, TX

Last month's tips article dealt with developing your problem statement. This month's tips will describe how to develop the body of your essay. The body, or middle, is the main portion of your essay. It comes after you've introduced your topic and established your problem statement. The body contains all the discussion, supporting facts and evidence demonstrating your grasp and application of as many of the knowledge, skills and abilities applicable to the problem you will solve.

A properly developed body must adequately address five sections. These are the objective, necessary actions, intended outcomes, human resources, and material and financial resources necessary to solve your stated problem. Each section will contain at least one paragraph, while most will have multiple paragraphs.

In the first section, you need to identify the objective you expect to achieve. An objective is the goal or end result related to your problem statement. For example, your problem statement says, "The emergency management community cannot coordinate communications adequately during the response phase." One objective may be to automate communications on a standardized frequency and time schedule. Alternate objectives may be to integrate RACES volunteers into the EOC and ICS systems, or implement new communications protocols. You are not limited on what objective to chose. Use your experiences and make the essay personal.

In the second section, you need to describe the necessary actions you will take to achieve your objective and solve your problem. In my example, this section will describe actions such as researching communication equipment specifications, radio frequencies, licenses, SOPs and regulations; determining security requirements; coordinating with response agencies and technical support departments; developing a proposal, budget, training program and exercises; and updating the emergency plan and SOPs to reflect the new procedures.

The third section is where you describe the intended outcome as a result of the actions you described above. These outcomes need to be concrete and measurable so that we will know when they are achieved. Some outcomes from my example could be obtaining new radios and FCC licenses, installing the radios, completing a full-scale exercise, and updating the SOPs and emergency plans, resulting in the emergency management community adequately communicating together during the response phase of an emergency.

The fourth section describes the human resources you expect to use to achieve your objective and solve your problem. Using the same example, these could be the radio operators and technicians, the incident (fire, police and HAZMAT) commanders, selected EOC staff, emergency management staff, county/city financial staff, engineers, lawyers and planners. Tailor the list to your particular situation.

In the final section, describe all the material and financial resources you plan to use. For my example, the material resources could be the radios, power supplies, antennas, FCC licenses, SOPs, communications checklists and response equipment. The financial resources could be the money for new radio equipment, the installation costs and the full-scale exercise. The FCC licenses are free because we are a government agency.

Now that you have the basic information, you still need to apply the knowledge, skills and abilities criteria throughout the essay. Integrate your knowledge of the four phases of emergency management, human behavior, and laws, regulations, codes, etc., that affect your problem. Discuss how you would lead people and build and maintain alliances while solving your problem. Finally, explain how you will manage your organization to meet your stated goals and objectives; what you have to do to acquire and manage the human, material and financial resources you said you need; and how you plan to manage multiple priorities using creative problem-solving techniques.

Remember, your essay doesn't have to follow this exact format but it does have to include all the requirements. Many CEMs have adequately addressed the problem statement and five body sections using other formats. Their essay construction allowed them to combine different sections into the same paragraph. Choose a format that is comfortable and allows you to adequately address all the essay requirements.

February 2001, IAEM Bulletin