Cost Unit Leader

Duties

• Obtains local administrative guidelines; e.g., cost reporting procedures, copy of
  Wildland Fire Situation Analysis (WFSA), cost share agreements, standard component costs, availability of incident agency personnel, incident finance package requirements, other special teams or personnel (Comptroller).
• Identifies need for or provides advice on cost apportionment and cost share.
• Interacts and coordinates with finance/administration unit leaders and other section/unit leaders to obtain and calculate incident costs, provide cost analysis, and recommend cost savings.
• Interacts and coordinates with incident agency to obtain off-incident support costs.
• Provides daily/operational period briefing on problems and recommendations for solutions.
• Provides costs analysis and costs saving recommendations.
• Responsible for collecting all cost date, performing cost effectiveness analysis, provide cost estimates, and cost saving recommendations for the incident.
• Coordinates with agency on cost reporting procedures.
• Works with Planning Section to ensure IAP is in line with cost share agreement(s) so fire costs can be split and tracked according to signed agreement.
• Analyzes costs to ensure accuracy and completeness.
• Runs obligation report from ICARS data base for federal agencies.
• Ability to manage a data base program, run reports and chart depicting costs.
• Ability to work with others from outside the federal agencies to explain costs.
• Prepares incident cost summaries and work with Planning Section to reconcile numbers of people and equipment.
• Ensures cost information is current, accurate and fall in line with WFSA and average day costs.
• Tracks costs on a daily basis to ensure no unexplainable variances occur.
• Briefs FSC, IC, AC and other officials on cost estimates.
• Works with FEMA and State officials on information needs to produce documents used for billing purposes.
• Recommends cost savings to FSC.
• Completes all records prior to demobilization and briefs incident agency for billing purposes.

Position Knowledge and/or Requirements

• Satisfactory position performance as a COST.
• Satisfactory performance as an EQTR and PTRC.
• Recommend “ISUITE” and “ICARS” knowledge.