Exercise, Lockdown and Simulation

We customize, design, plan, facilitate and conduct exercises locally, regionally, and at the provincial and/or national level for all sectors.

By working with us, you can be assured they will have a valid exercise program that will identify strengths and weaknesses in plans and strategies, while also providing opportunity to utilize response resources and rehearse their roles during an emergency situation.

To help you develop an exercise program, we can provide the following services from:

• Discussion-based orientation tabletop exercise or workshop to basic or more advance tabletop exercises
• Hospital Emergency Codes Exercises
• Lockdown and Shelter in Place Drills
• Mass Casualty Exercises
• Functional Exercises
• Full-Scale Simulation

ORIENTATION EXERCISE IS A GOOD WAY TO END A WORKSHOP/ TRAINING SESSION

Orientation exercise characteristics:

• Introduces the participants to plans and procedures
• Introduces a new plan or a revised old one
• Requires no previous experience
• Helps orient new staff or leadership
• Planning cycle about one month; exercise time one to two hours

Orientation exercises are known for their simplicity and ease of time in preparation.  It should take you less than a month to plan this style of exercise.  It is a great ways to introduce a new team to a plan or a new plan to a team.  It uses a simple narrative and is delivered in a PowerPoint or other visual slide format in a conversational, non-threatening manner. This style is useful to orient:

• A new IMS Team to their role
•  A Senior Leadership Team or members to their role
• A business unit or a future response/ recovery team to familiarize with their Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
• A facilities and security team to their company responder’s role
• A disaster recovery (DR) team (technology team) to their plan in preparation for a full-scale DR exercises

TABLETOP EXERCISE

• Provides a more realistic and more stressful atmosphere than previously mentioned exercises
• Presents a simple narrative
• Includes injects to the exercise
• Planning cycle about one to two months (at the most); at least three hours.

Basic tabletop: starts with a simple exercise plan and straightforward narrative; the team responds to the challenge in a discussion format; in other words, they tell the Facilitator “this is what I would do to solve the problem.”  It is a step up from an Orientation exercise but remains conversational.

Advance tabletop: The idea of an Advanced Tabletop came about in the late 1990’s when we were doing the Y2K prep and exercises. You bring key stakeholders to the table “Media”, “Contractors/Vendors”, Suppliers’ etc as applicable to the organization.  About 2 to four…. We can refer as Simulation Team.

A small Simulation Team of two to four people portray various members of the “outside world”

FUNCTIONAL EXERCISE

• Simulates a more complex narrative
• Requires participants to perform the activities
• Involves more participants including Simulators (key stakeholders), controllers, evaluators, observers and bigger design team
• Introduces sophisticated inputs and other media

Functional exercises are fully simulated and feel very realistic.  To be fully simulated means that participants perform all activities (within the confines of the EOC) and all exercise injects are delivered by a Simulator or an audio-visual tool.  In a Functional exercise the team would order a resource, but wouldn’t deploy them.  During a Functional exercise, you could walk into an EOC and within a few moments swear that this event was really happening.

In this type of exercise, the exercise players are presented with a full exercise plan and a detailed narrative.  There are significant number of injects delivered by the Simulation Team to provide that realistic give-and-take that makes the event seem real.  This exercise has a larger cast of characters on the day of the event: more Simulators, Controllers/Evaluators, Observers and a bigger Design Team, and key stakeholders.  Could have equipment-intense, injects delivered by phone or using technological means.

FULL-SCALE EXERCISE

The final exercise is a Full-scale exercise; this has all of the complexity of the Functional exercise, with the added layer of an actual field response on top. In a Full-scale exercise, you order a resource AND you deploy it.  These exercises are more commonly done in the public sector, such as an airport exercise that simulates a crash with actual “victims” or a chemical spills affecting the community, or a terrorist exercise. 

These exercises are expensive to plan and deliver, and are very time-consuming.  Those organizations likely to do a Full-scale exercise are those with major regional risks, such as hurricanes and earthquakes.