The Health and Safety Reform Bill is due to be adopted next year and while its professed aim is to reduce workplace injury and death by 25% by 2020, the New Zealand Search and Rescue organisation and its 3500 volunteers are not exempt.
Chief executive Harry Maher, who was attending a search and rescue competition near Wanaka at the weekend, told the Otago Daily Times the organisation was already doing much of what was required by the law.
''We've spent pretty much a couple of years ... working up a full system of procedures and policies and forms we launched in December last year.''
Mr Maher said people were getting used to safety regulations in their work places and the procedures for search and rescue would be just ''streamlined'' versions.
''[Volunteers] are in risky situations, crossing rivers, getting in and out of helicopters, they do risky things all day long.''
Mr Maher said the organisation took the safety of its volunteers seriously and ''we just want to make sure these rescuers don't become the rescued''.
Wanaka search and rescue co ordinator Sergeant Aaron Nicholson said field teams had processes to go through to keep themselves safe and identify hazards.
''It's something we've been doing informally for a long time, but now there's a greater push and urgency on trying to make that a standard part of what we do.
''It needs to be written down as opposed to just done in our heads.''
Sergeant Nicholson said that it would take time to get used to the paperwork.
''The priority is: the searchers have to be safe. That's our number one priority, before we go and do anything else.''
And, as Dunedin search and rescue co ordinator Senior Sergeant Brian Benn put it, while assessing a group of volunteers crossing a river as part of the competition, ''it is not acceptable to bring back 80% of the team''.
• The Tautuku Cup competition, initiated by retired search and rescue volunteer Trevor Pullar, of Dunedin, in 2007, was won by the Wanaka team, followed by Dunedin and Stewart Island.
