Customer Background

Rossendale & Pendle Mountain Rescue team, situated in the Northwestern region of England, United Kingdom, oversees an expansive territory covering approximately 350 square miles across East Lancashire, Pendle, the Rossendale Valley, and segments of Greater Manchester. The team's main base is situated in Burnley, strategically positioned just off a major motorway/highway, ensuring that the response time to any incident remains under one hour for the team.

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The team consists entirely of volunteers, currently numbering about 40 to 50 members, all of whom maintain full-time employment. Upon completion of basic training, they advance to become operational trainees, participating in callouts for incidents. Subsequently, as they develop their skills to meet the rigorous standards, they transition to full team membership. This progression is deliberate and meticulous, ensuring that high standards are maintained throughout the process.

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When an incident occurs the leadership of the team will receive a text message from the emergency services who will then forward that communication out to the wider team. A member of the team will then call the emergency services back to clarify the details of the incident. An example of the types of  incidents the team responds to include situations such as accidents, where the terrain is too difficult for an ambulance to access. The team refers to incidents like these as ‘spot pickups’.

In the Lancashire area, the terrain has many morelands and quarries with rural farmlands creating difficulties of access, and also opportunities for unauthorized access by the public to restricted areas. The rescue team builds its relationship with the community to ensure they can  collaborate with landowners to secure necessary access in case of incidents.

The team also has a water rescue team that is a local asset as well as a national asset that allows them to respond anywhere in the UK during flooding-related emergencies. Training and responding locally, while also remaining available for inter-operational assistance to other teams during larger incidents.

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The Challenge

Rossendale & Pendle MRT sought a solution to streamline event management by reducing their dependency on multiple calendars. The team oversees a variety of events, including first-aid training sessions and safety talks in schools.

The team also required D4H's technology to enhance their on-call availability system. The aim was for the members to be able to select ‘on-call’ when available, and their default would be ‘off-call’. 

The Solution

Rossendale & Pendle MRT became a user of D4H in 2015. Rossendale & Pendle MRT benefits from the D4H volunteer grant. All of their events are now efficiently managed through D4H's Personnel & Training product.

“D4H brings a lot of data together to one place, rather than it being different calendars, or notes written in different journals and places”
— Dan McFarlane Rossendale and Pendle MRT

D4H offers a smarter solution for the team to manage their team’s availability, using the communication tool for booking members who are on call. 

“There were potential times when we would have callouts mid-week and we didn’t know how many people were responding. You could be waiting for up to 10 minutes before you know exactly how many people you have got responding to a job. Now I can look at it this second and say if we got a job this instant I know there are 6 people immediately available to respond”
— Dan McFarlane Rossendale and Pendle MRT

D4H has supported the team's communication allowing them to to message the team when an incident occurs to those on-call. They can communicate quickly and efficiently with one another, saving valuable time in responding to incidents.

“The ease of being able to send the initial call-out messages with D4H is so important. It keeps things as seamless as possible.”
— Dan McFarlane Rossendale and Pendle MRT

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Products Used

D4H Incident Reporting

Automatically generate insightful incident reports with charts, visualizations, and statistics. Access game-changing data to re-evaluate operations, make better decisions, and evidence the true value of your organization.

D4H Equipment Management

Smart equipment and consumable readiness software for easy inventory administration. Ensure all of your equipment is ready-to-respond with proactive inspections, repairs, expiry dates, and service history logs.

D4H Personnel & Training

A highly proactive system designed to allow organizations to easily manage the administration of personnel, qualifications, training, attendance, and availability. It enables performance measurement and allows the collaboration to engage personnel to reach the highest standard of professionalism. 

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