Today, team members Mike Marsh and Elaine Gilliland attended a refresher course on SARMAN – a Search & Rescue Management Solution developed by Mapyx Limited in conjunction with Mountain Rescue England & Wales (MREW).

The event was hosted by Bowland and Pennine Mountain Rescue Team at their Garstang Base, organised by Iain Nicholson and facilitated by Ewan Thomas, one of the original SARMAN development team.

Team members from Bowland & Pennine, Llanberis, Rossendale & Pendle, Kendal and Bolton MRT’s and North East Wales SAR and SARDA Wales were in attendance
The objectives of the day were to provide an understanding of the SARMAN toolset in search management situations, to get to know the functions of SARMAN in search scenarios, to provide a level of training to attendees to train other team members, to gauge future training requirements and to allow discussion and feedback on the use and effectiveness of the tool.

The first half of the morning was taken up by working through the different functions of SARMAN – after bacon butties and coffee, of course – and then we progressed onto a ‘factual’ scenario using the tools that we had learnt whilst continuing to learn about new functions and before we knew it, it was time for lunch.

The afternoon was taken up with probability (area, detection and success), and then the application of this to the scenario we had been working on.

Both Mike and Elaine came away fully informed and enthusiastic to try this out within Bolton Mountain Rescue Team.

We would like to thank Iain Nicholson for organising this excellent training session and Ewan Thomas for his patient and consistent facilitation style, we would not have taken in so much had it not been for this, and look forward to participating in future sessions.