Safety in SAR Seminar unites global SAR community to strengthen safety culture

As part of the IMRF’s ongoing #SaferSAR initiative, the Safety in SAR Seminar took place on 11 November at the RNLI College in Poole, bringing together members of the global search and rescue (SAR) community for a day of learning, collaboration and open discussion.

The event began with an insightful session on global safety reporting, featuring case studies from the Finnish Lifeboat Institution and the Royal Netherlands Sea Rescue Institution. Participants then engaged in group workshops tackling real-world challenges in safety reporting, from “blame and fear” to “paper forms that go nowhere,” identifying practical solutions and shared experiences to improve systems and encourage trust.

The afternoon sessions focused on how safety data can be transformed into safer actions and stronger organisational practices. Speakers from the RNLI, Inmarsat Maritime and Cranfield University highlighted the importance of fostering an internal safety narrative, learning from performance variations, and using data to drive meaningful change across the sector.

The final session explored how safety can be embedded at every level of an organisation, with insights from the Maritime Search and Rescue Service in Poland and the RNLI’s mental health and wellbeing team. The discussions reinforced that operational safety, psychological safety, and mental health are deeply interconnected, all essential to keeping SAR personnel safe and resilient.

IMRF International Programme Manager, Jaakko Heikkilä, closed the day by underlining the importance of continuing collaboration and shared learning through the #SaferSAR initiative.

The IMRF extends its thanks to all speakers, facilitators and participants for contributing to such an engaging and thought-provoking day, one that truly embodied the event’s theme: Keeping Our People Safe - Together.

The presentations from the Safety in SAR Seminar will be available in the Members-Only area of the IMRF website.

The IMRF is grateful for the use of images supplied by the RNLI.

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