Appendix F: Hiring and Team Composition
A productive radiological response capability needs more than instruments. The right team composition matters.
F.1 Roles a Program Needs
- Radiological lead. A senior operator who owns the program: maintenance, training, instrument inventory, after-action capture. Often a HazMat captain or specialist.
- Field operators. Cross-trained HazMat technicians, fire/rescue, or law enforcement officers with current CTOS or equivalent certification. Plan two to four operators per shift.
- Reachback liaison. A point of contact who handles the reachback packet during a live event. May be the radiological lead during business hours, the on-duty supervisor at night.
- Health physicist (in-house or contracted). Available for spectrum review on ambiguous cases. Some agencies retain a state RCP physicist on call. Others contract through BNC reachback or a regional radiological assistance team.
F.2 Hiring Signals Worth Weighting
- Prior radiological work in any context: nuclear medicine, industrial radiography, oilfield logging, military.
- Demonstrated comfort with checklists under pressure (HazMat, EOD, paramedicine).
- Curiosity about the spectrum, not just the screen result. The operators who ask 'why did it say Cs-137' are the ones who do not miss the masked source.
F.3 Team Rotation and Dose Discipline
Operators carry personal dose meters during real events and during high-fidelity drills. Track lifetime dose in the agency's records system. Rotate operators away from radiological work as their lifetime dose approaches program-defined thresholds.
F.4 Budget Signals
- One SAM 940+ per shift on a HazMat truck. Two units per truck for redundancy in larger programs.
- One RD-120 backpack per zone or per protective detail.
- One RD-150 vehicle system per regional response unit.
- A check source per agency licensing.
- Annual training budget of at least one CTOS course per operator.