How the Situational Awareness and Problem Solving test works
Each of the 30 scenarios describes a situation a firefighter could meet: a road traffic collision, a fire in a block of flats, a parent locked out of a house with a child inside, or a clash between two jobs on station. You are asked what you would do and pick one of four responses.
Unlike a personality questionnaire, this paper is marked right or wrong. The practice booklet gives one correct answer for each question with the reasoning, and it asks you to answer every question even when the choice feels close.
No training or knowledge is needed. You decide using only what the scenario tells you.
How to pick the best response
The booklet’s answers follow a clear order of priorities. Apply them in turn:
- People before property, and the people most at risk first.
- Your own safety and your team’s matter too. Avoid answers that take a needless risk.
- Report hazards, such as signs a building may collapse, to your line manager straight away.
- When conditions change fast, use your initiative to make the situation safe.
- Prefer prevention: deal with a risk now rather than leave it for later.
- When two routine tasks clash, the line manager’s request comes first.
Worked example
On a home fire safety visit, an older resident shows you the hall smoke alarm, which chirps every minute. She mentions she took the battery out of the kitchen alarm because it went off whenever she cooked. What do you do?
(a) Tell her to buy new batteries next time she goes shopping. (b) Leave her a smoke alarm leaflet and go on to your next visit. (c) Replace the hall alarm’s battery now, explain why the kitchen alarm needs its battery back, and suggest moving it further from the cooker. (d) Mention it to your line manager at the end of the shift.
The best answer is c. It removes both risks during the visit, while a, b and d leave her without working alarms for days.
Tips for the real Situational Awareness and Problem Solving test
- Read the full scenario before the options. One detail, such as who else is at the scene, often decides the answer.
- Be wary of extreme options, like breaking down a door at once or doing nothing at all.
- Think as a team member: the best answer often uses other people at the scene, such as a police officer.
- Keep moving. At just over a minute per scenario, there is no time to agonise.
- Read the booklet’s answer explanations. They show the reasoning the markers reward.
Practise Situational Awareness and Problem Solving on CogniPrep
Our version gives you 30 firefighter scenarios with four options each and a 35-minute clock on screen. You can step back to change an answer, and nothing is taken off for a wrong choice. Your result shows the number you got right and a T-score from the official 2005 norm table, with a band rather than a pass or fail.