Fire brigade in Gerlingen and Feuerbach: New training at the plant fire brigade - Ludwigsburg - Stuttgarter Nachrichten

Gerlingen/Feuerbach - This year the fire brigade of Robert Bosch GmbH celebrated its 100th anniversary at the Feuerbach location. The anniversary was celebrated in mid-October. Steffen Schilling, head of the Feuerbach fire brigade, was presented with a picture of two emergency vehicles by the Bosch site manager Franz Hauber. "From December, they are to strengthen the fleet in Feuerbach, which comprises 13 vehicles," says Schilling.

The head of Stuttgart's professional fire brigade, Frank Knödler, also emphasized at the celebration that the plant fire brigade is a "strong security partner for the city". In the anniversary year, a new training course will also start, which the Feuerbach-based technology company helped promote. Since the beginning of September, there has been a three-year vocational training course in Baden-Württemberg called “Werkfeuerwehrmann/-frau IHK”.

A new job

Six prospective plant firefighters started their training at the Bosch locations in Feuerbach, Reutlingen, Schwieberdingen and Schillerhöhe at the beginning of last month, and another four candidates are learning the job profile at the Stuttgart airport fire brigade. The vocational school is located in Freising near Munich. In other federal states, such as Hesse and Bavaria, the degree has existed for some time. "Due to the good experience, the training course has also been offered by the professional fire brigades in Frankfurt and Hamburg since this year," says Schilling.

The basis for the new profession is the nationwide training regulation that has been in force since 2015 for training as a "plant firefighter" or "plant firefighter" with acceptance of the examination by the Chamber of Commerce. The training enables you to join a plant fire brigade even without a previous vocational qualification. So far, the basis for starting with the works fire brigade was a craft trade. In addition, many are involved in one of the voluntary fire brigades (FFW) in the state and then – as an additional qualification, so to speak – do professional fire brigade training with courses at the state fire brigade school.

This is how Steffen Schilling came to the Bosch fire brigade. The 42-year-old has been a volunteer with the Gerlingen volunteer fire brigade since 1992 and is part of the management team there. In 2000 he started at Bosch. Schilling has been the new commander of the Bosch plant fire brigade in Feuerbach since April 1. Before that, he spent three years as commander of the plant fire brigade at the Bosch campus in Renningen. His temporary successor there is his previous deputy Dennis Blos. Both know each other well - not only from the workplace: Schilling is the deputy commander of the Gerlingen fire brigade, Blos the second deputy.

Almost 2,000 plant firefighters worldwide

"We have set up plant fire brigades at a total of 35 Bosch locations throughout Germany, which ensure fire protection with around 1,100 part-time and 350 full-time employees at the locations," says Dietrich Bank, the head of the Bosch central office for fire protection and emergency response in Gerlingen. Bank reports that around 1,900 to 2,000 Bosch associates are involved in plant fire departments around the world.

For this reason alone there is a corresponding need for professionally trained young people. The profile of requirements for the applicants is correspondingly high. Ingo Gießler, who is responsible for the new training course at the Bosch plant fire brigade, shows the blocks, subjects and training content marked in different colors on an A3 sheet of paper: "I just call it the colorful training plan," says Gießler.

The training is divided into a manual and a fire-fighting part. The technical skills relevant for firefighters come from the fields of metal, sanitary, heating, air conditioning and electrical engineering. But woodworking, control technology, pneumatics and hydraulics are also part of it and are mainly taught in the first 18 months of training. A welding course is also part of the basic technical training.

Full training in the company

There are also specialist courses for fire alarm technology, fire extinguishers, gas extinguishing systems and regular internships in the everyday work of the company fire station on the Bosch site. This one-and-a-half-year phase ends with a first intermediate examination. After that it continues seamlessly. The second part of the training focuses on fire-fighting qualifications and practical and theoretical training to become a paramedic. "Furthermore, the future plant firefighters can also get the truck fireman's license as part of their training," says Schilling. The care and maintenance of the equipment and vehicles is also part of the tasks. In addition, the participants also earn the German Sports and Lifeguard Badge, to name just a few of the training contents.

Since 1973, the full-time Bosch plant firefighters have also been training colleagues from the volunteer fire departments or from other companies. The modern respiratory protection training facility in the Feuerbach plant, which opened in 2016, offers the best conditions for this: Firefighters learn about their physical and mental stress limits there. With a breathing air bottle and heavy gear, they crawl through smoky, dark lattice walkways that are filled with noise up to the pain threshold. They squeeze their way through narrow openings and pipes on different levels, trying to free very heavy dolls from the maze. A real torture. The Bosch training course was recognized as a supra-local training facility.