Search Management

NDSART Search Managers attend a Mountain Rescue England & Wales (MREW) Search Management training course, to qualify. Those who undergo this training are selected by the Team Management Committee and have years of experience, as callout members of the Team.

The Search Manager has the overall responsibility for liaising with the Police, Ambulance and other agencies directly involved in an incident, that the Team are attending. They also co-ordinate the entire search activity and all the resources made available to them, not just necessarily NDSART Team Members. They also have responsibility for the safety and welfare of the team members.

They will determine a strategy for the search and therefore the areas that need to be searched. These areas will then be allocated as search tasks to the various search teams at their disposal. This will involve the search manager giving each Hill-Party Leader a briefing of a missing person and the tasking for the Hill-Party.

In the Incident Control Unit (ICU), there are a number of ICT systems to enable more efficient planning and management of operations. As well as radio communications, there are computer mapping systems which allows Search Managers to mark up search areas, routes and also track the location of the team with GPS, as they move through an area. The Search Managers also have the capability to locate co-operative missing persons by the use of linking to their mobile phone and sharing location data.