Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel announced a tender procedure for diving services in duration of 1 year, and with 3 options to extend the contract for further periods of up to 1 year each.
In 2006, as a result of a strategic review of the underwater search provision within PSNI, it was decided by senior command to ‘outsource’ the diving and Working in Confined Spaces (WICS) capability to civilian service providers.
Such an approach is in accordance with “Workforce Modernisation”, a policy driven by the Home Office, which aims to have police officers returned to front line duties.
Historical figures would suggest that approximately a deployment figure of 57 operational dives per year could be anticipated.
These operational deployments would range from recovery of human remains, security searches regarding VIP visits, searches for small items of evidence in murder and other serious crime investigations and searches in relation to missing persons.
An individual task may take anything from an hour to an entire day, and occasionally complex operations may be extended to a number of days.
The submission day for the tenders is 30 March.
[mappress] Subsea World News Staff , February 24, 2012