A well-designed exercise is the definitive test of your planning and training efforts. We use the guidelines established by FEMA and the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) which provides standard capabilities and a methodology for exercise design, evaluation, and improvement planning. The All Clear’s team of Master Exercise Practitioners (MEPs) works with you to creates custom exercises to test your plans and capabilities.
Our Exercise Design Services
Discussion-Based Exercises
Discussion-Based Exercises are often designed around a hypothetical scenario with discussion and conversation about actions, response steps, and communication. Normally, these are low-stress and low cost exercises that still provide a great benefit to participants. There are several types of Discussion-Based Exercises:
- Seminars - Typically formatted like a lecture, seminars are a perfect way to orient your staff on a specific plan or procedure.
- Workshops - A workshop is a facilitated, interactive session (usually conducted in small groups) that focuses on the development of a product or plan. Workshops are a great way to engage and involve your employees in the creation of a procedure.
- Tabletop Exercises (TTX) - Tabletop exercises are facilitated discussion based around a scenario. Within the framework of the scenario, TTX participants discuss their response, share answers, and evaluate plans.
Operations-Based Exercises
Operations-Based Exercises usually involve players physically responding to a simulated event in real time and with real equipment. These exercises are great to test roles and responsibilities and identify resource gaps, however they are also more stressful and costly to conduct. Each different type of Operations-Based Exercise varies in scale and complexity.
- Drill - Drills are the most common type of operations-based exercises. Like a fire drill, a drill is a coordinated activity to test a single, specific operation within a single agency.
- Functional Exercises (FE) - Functional Exercises (FE) include more participants in an increasingly stressful environment. In these exercises, players respond within a function to a scenario and a series of unfolding events injected into the exercise.
- Full-Scale Exercises (FSE) - The biggest and most complex of the Operations-Based exercises, a full-scale exercise aims to mimic a real response. These include multiple agencies, the actual mobilization of resources, and potentially more than one location.
How Our Exercises Are Different
The Master Exercise Practitioners (MEPs) on the All Clear team are experts in the Homeland Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) and they are also experts in creating exercises that work for your facility – large or small, discussion-based or operations-based. We guide you through the exercise design process, from concept to execution and evaluation. Let our team work with you to design your exercise.
Full-Scale Exercises test your plan in the most comprehensive way. All Clear can help you plan any type of exercise.
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Strong evaluators are the key to a successful exercise. All Clear can assist with recruiting and training your exercise evaluators.
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Project
Regional Ebola Functional Exercise
As part of Ebola funding requirements, All Clear was hired to conduct a functional Ebola response exercise that incorporated five hospitals, six local health departments, two regional coordination centers, and the state department of health. Other players included Emergency Management and EMS agencies. The four-hour exercise included pre-exercise injects for local public health and exercise injects for a simulated Ebola patient.