Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue / RTC
I have been an operational fire fighter for 29 years for Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service. Although I primarily carried out my duties at stations throughout my service, I was Training centre manager for a period of 6 years at Tyne and Wear’s training school. There, although carrying out managerial duties for the day to day running of a very busy training establishment, I took a full and active part in training both emergency services and civilian personnel. These to include RTCi, HRTCi, Fire behaviour, PPV, First Aid, chainsaw, BA training and all other general firefighting training including recruit selection and training.
I took part in the UKRO challenges as team captain for a period of 8 years and joined the UKRO assessing team approximately 10 years ago. I developed through the UKRO to become a WRO assessor 6 years ago. I have assessed at 2 WRO challenges. I have carried out various training both with the UKRO nationally and the WRO internationally. I was part of one of the first IDP projects, which took part in Ghana West Africa both at a strategic and operational level. I worked as part of a team training their operational officers from a very basic level to a level which allowed them to develop regional and national competitions, this allowed them to participate at a world level at WRO competitions, the only nation from the African continent other than South Africa to participate at an international level. The project was one of the longest so far by the WRO/IDP working from 2003 and is still ongoing. I have also carried out scoping missions for the IDP in Nigeria.
I bring my knowledge and experience to the ‘Serbian project’. However as in all projects of this nature, I usually find whatever I can bring to the host nation in my capacity as a trainer is always repaid many times over in friendship, and the sharing of knowledge and experiences from other rescue professionals.Whilst out there I will be delivering training in both aspects of Technical, Command and how it all fits together to make a successful team.
