DEFRA TEAM COMMANDER

DEFRA team commander

The Emergency services in the UK respond to an ever increasing frequency of water related events. emergency team leaders need to understand how specialist and non-specialist teams can be managed in order to contribute to the safe and effective resolution of the incident.

During these incidents, effective and safe operational decision-making depends upon a thorough understanding of existing water rescue procedures and an ability to work closely with partner agencies. Specialist team commanders need a broad set of skills to meet these challenges to ensure a high degree of operational assurance.

The Team Commander course meets the requirements of the DEFRA Team Commander training competence. Using a combination of teaching methods delegates are provided with an extensive framework of knowledge to safely and effectively manage water rescue teams.

The course is delivered by experienced flood and water incident managers and is heavily focused on delegates demonstrating key skills and knowledge across all learning outcomes. Indicative content includes:

Specialist risk assessment,
Operational level safety management,
Effective decision-making,
Effective communication including verbal and written briefings,
Command and control of resources,
Interoperability through JESIP,
Local flood rescue coordination,
Interpretation of data and intelligence reports,
Providing advice to senior colleagues and to those from other organisations, and
Operational level search management.

Extensive use is made of case studies to add realism to the training and table-top exercises recreate real-life operating conditions for operational level water incident management.

The course is based upon the DEFRA FRCO, JESIP, UKFRS and Police guidance, Civil Contingency legislation and guidance, medical care guidance and international standards such as ISO31000 Risk Management. Delegates are guided towards key documents as pre-reading and their knowledge is tested at the beginning and the end of the course.

The focus on joint working at operational level means that there a number of additional benefits to delegates.

The benefits include:

Improved ability to work with partners
Improved interoperability during flood emergencies
Improved ability to develop effective response plans for severe weather events.
Improved command decision making leading to safer, more effective incident management.

This training is ideally suited for delivery at your own premises. However, courses are delivered at Outreach.