Is a SAR Commander JUST a SAR Commander?

One of the challenges in training our future USAR leaders is to be able to provide credible, challenging training scenarios – to meet the need train ‘at the edge of chaos’ - as Cynthia Renaud suggests we should. International SAR deployments don’t happen every day and this low frequency of events creates challenges for developing capability, particularly in leadership positions. Our paper explores this issue through the analysis of the set of decisions a USAR commander made across a full deployment to Fukushima, Japan, during the recent tsunami and radiological event. The USAR Commander was initially interviewed using the Critical Decision Method, and the interview transcribed. Subsequently his senior team members were interviewed, and the commander was re-interviewed to provide a detailed analysis of the decisions made during the deployment. This resulted in a summary of 10 discrete decisions made during the deployment. We explore these in the context of the types of knowledge and skills required to manage a deployment and reflect on the implications for training, exercising and continuing professional development into the future. We link this with a perspective on the ‘lessons learnt’ approach to continual improvement.