The Operations Room is hidden away at the top of the charity’s Headquarters building, but it is the nerve centre of the whole RNLI

Until refurbishment in 2008, the walls of this unusual office were lined with whiteboards covered in magnetic letters and numbers which staff laboriously updated several times a day. Now Paul Fisher, Operations Room Manager, and his team are using a computer based system to keep track of every lifeboat in the fleet.

A huge screen details which lifeboats are at which station, on passage or under repair. This sits alongside live feeds from the Met Office (weather), Environment Agency (flooding) and TV news channels (live coverage of incidents). Here too, the RNLI’s Satellite based safety system; MOB Guardian is constantly monitored for alerts from fishing boats that may be in trouble.

The Operations Room operates around the clock, 365 days a year with a rota of personnel taking turns to work overnight and weekends – a small bedroom and kitchen are provided so they can be self-sufficient, even within a locked and alarmed building. The Duty Officers field ‘out-of-hours’ telephone calls, dealing with requests for urgent dispatch of relief lifeboats and spares. They regularly liaise with the lifeboat stations as well as external agencies such as HM Coastguard and it here that request to deploy the Flood Rescue Team are received from the Fire and Rescue Service local to the incident.