Drills & Exercises
Implementing and evaluating capabilities to safeguard people, protect property, and continue business.
Drills and exercises are two of the best methods for implementing and evaluating your emergency management and business continuity program. Drills practice basic skills and allow instructors to evaluate competencies and the effectiveness of training and education programs. Participants learn by doing and develop self-confidence in their ability to fulfill their roles.
- Evacuation ("run"), lockdown ("hide"), shelter-in-place, and other protective action drills
- Orientation, tabletop, functional, and full-scale exercises
- Plan, facilitate, control, and evaluate drills and exercises
- Exercises for emergency response, business continuity, and crisis management teams
Basic orientation exercises are designed to familiarize team members with the organization; their roles and responsibilities; and the plan. Tabletop exercises familiarize team members with plans by challenging them to assess hypothetical situations and determine how to safeguard people and protect property and the environment. Functional exercises require team members acting in their assigned roles to manage a simulated incident. Full-scale exercises are the most extensive and costly type of exercise and involve the physical movement of people and equipment in response to a staged emergency incident.
Preparedness, LLC has extensive experience designing, facilitating, and evaluating all types of drills and exercises. Our experience enables us to customize drills and exercises to meet your specific needs and to help you comply with regulatory requirements.
Tabletop (discussion-based) Exercise
Stress-free environment to review plans, procedures, and capabilities.
Photograph by Preparedness, LLC
Functional Exercise
Personnel involved in management, direction, command, and control functions operating in a realistic, real-time environment. No movement of personnel and equipment is simulated. Photograph by Preparedness, LLC at the Massachusetts State Emergency Operations Center
Full-Scale Exercise
Complex, resource-intensive exercise involving multiple organizations operating in a real-time, stressful environment intended to mirror a real incident.
Photograph by Preparedness, LLC
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Drills
Every occupant of every building should practice evacuation drills. Fire and life safety codes require evacuation drills for most buildings. Fire codes and homeland security regulations in some jurisdictions also require shelter-in-place drills. The frequency of acts of violence dictates the need for "run, hide, fight" drills. Members of emergency response teams must practice skills such as operating systems and equipment to ensure they can fulfill their responsibilities during an emergency.
Preparedness, LLC can customize a drill program to comply with regulatory requirements. We can develop procedures for conducting drills and prepare user-friendly forms that will enable efficient, yet effective evaluation of drill performance. We can facilitate drills, so your personnel can learn by doing.
Exercises
Tabletop exercises provide an opportunity for participants to learn about the fundamentals of emergency management, business continuity, and crisis management programs. Participants learn how to manage hypothetical but realistic emergency scenarios. Exercises enable participants to:
- Better understand how to follow the concept of operations and use the Incident Command System to manage an incident. This includes assigning personnel; conducting a situation analysis; conducting an incident briefing, and developing an incident action plan.
- Identify the means for reporting incidents, alerting responders and team members, warning persons in danger, and communicating during the incident.
- Understand the roles of internal team members and outside agencies.
- Apply prescribed procedures from emergency response plans, continuity strategies from business continuity plans, and communications strategies from crisis management plans to realistic scenarios.
- Identify gaps in procedures, resources, knowledge, or capabilities.
Preparedness, LLC follows national standards and exercise guidance from the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation program to design, facilitate, and evaluate exercises. We conduct a needs assessment to help you determine the scope of your exercise program. We prepare situation manuals for use and reference by participants and tools to facilitate and evaluate each exercise. At the end of each exercise we conduct a “hot wash” to capture important recommendations and action items. Using the hot wash, participant evaluations, and exercise evaluators forms, we prepare a detailed after-action report that summarizes each exercise and presents recommendations for program improvement.
