# Presentation: 487021

## The Middlesex CountyPublic Health Department

- Medical Reserve Corps Program

## The Design and Deliveryof Drills and Exercises

## Excellent Sources of Information

- US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Domestic Preparedness (HSEEP Series)
- 	_[www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp](http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/odp)_
- Federal Emergency Management Agency – Home Study Courses
- Your County or Local EMA
- Your Police Chief

## Back To The Basics...

- Drills and exercises are tools to test policies, plans, and procedures.
- Drills and exercises provide your staff with opportunities for hands-on experience and to clarify  their skill levels with those anticipated for emergency response roles and tasks.
- Drills and Exercises reinforce training completed.

## Drills and Exercises....

- Improve teamwork within your workforce.
- Improve interagency coordination and communication.
- Identify gaps in planning, resources, and training.
- Improve individual performance.
- Provide the environment for improvement of skills and services.

## Stages of Exercise Design

- _Exercise Planning_
- What Are Your Goals?
-      Clear & Concise?
- 	  Achievable?
- Appropriate to levels of training completed?
- Within your resource capabilities?
- Responder Safety?
- Buy-In from response agency partners?

## More on Planning.....

- What Elements of Which Plans Are To Be Tested?
- Is your exercise scenario realistic and based on your local situation.
- Which Groups are going to be players?

## Prescription For Success

- Seminars and Workshops
- Table-Top Exercise
- War Gaming Activities
- Drills
- Functional Exercise
- Full-Scale Exercise.
- START SMALL AND SCALE UP FOR SUCCESS – NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!

## Seminars and Workshops

- Great for new team members to get their feet wet and to work with more experienced personnel.
- Low stress levels allow for good informal learning and reinforcement.
- Not constrained by “real time” portrayal of scenario events.
- Allows for success-based concept development and skill improvement.

## Table-Top Exercises

- Stimulates policy maker and management discussions to achieve desired outcomes to pre-determined problems and timed-sequential activities.
- Great for case studies, collective problem solving, contingency planning, testing communications modalities, assessing inter agency coordination.
- Achievement of a limited number of related goals or objectives.
- Evolving complexity and sophistication of scenarios is possible.

## War Gaming Activity

- Simulated operations with closely defined and clearly identified goals and tasks
- Can be used as inter-team competition.
- Progressive event skill utilization and team planning/communications
- Stress is on players’ understanding of progressive and inter-related skills.
- Use of external evaluators as referees and skills and teamwork is scored against a standardized checklist of performance.

## Drills

- A coordinated, supervised, activity employed to test a specific operation or function within a single agency.
- Narrow focus measured against a set of established standards.
- Instant Feedback
- Realistic environment
- Performance of focal task in isolation
- Reproducible.

## Functional Exercises

- Larger scale operation than drill where multiple tasks are evaluated and/or multiple groups perform inter-related tasks for uniform and smooth task integration.
- Includes Command Post Exercises
- Unified/Joint Command Operations within the Incident Command System.
- Cognitive exercise where nothing is moved in the outside world.

## Full Scale Exercises

- Prevention and response elements are required to mobilize and deploy to a designated, controlled, field site and address observed emergency requirements on a “real-time” basis.
- Incident Command, Operational Roles, and responder task groups are tested with available resources, under realistic field conditions.
- PARTICIPANT SAFETY IS A CRITICAL FUNCTION THAT EVALUATORS MUST KEEP AS A PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY.

## Full-Scale Exercises

**Well-specified goals**
**Organizational roles are well defined in ICS**
**Specific tasks to be accomplished are identified and standards of practice checklists are used by evaluators.**
**Inter Agency coordination, cooperation, and communication are critical evaluation elements.**

## We Will Be Looking At:

- Assessing individual and organizational performance
- Demonstrating interagency cooperation and coordination
-  Allocation of personnel and resources to accomplish the goals.
- Assessing communications methods and procedure/use.
- Exercising Public Information and Risk Communications within the Community.
- Effectiveness of plans, SOP’s, policies, and mutual aid programs.

## How Do I Start???

- Assemble an Exercise Planning Team appropriate to the roles and tasks to be tested and evaluated.
- Conduct a Concept Development meeting with the Team.  Develop your list of specific goals and objectives.
- Follow-up meetings with Planning Team clarifies goals and objectives and identifies skills to be evaluated and performance standards.
- Continue to “flesh it out” over time (at least 90 days).

## Participant Safety is OurHighest Priority!

**Must be built into all field activities right from the 1****st**** planning meeting**
_**Exercise Controllers**_** maintain safe operations.**
**Pace of exercise progress may be controlled to ensure positive practice behaviors.**
**All participants must have completed their safety training.**
**All personal protective procedures and equipment use are part of debriefing and evaluation.**

## Written Concept & Objectives

- Type of Exercise
- Date of Exercise
- Purpose
- Overall Scenario
- Exercise Objectives
- Exercise Timing
- Assumptions
- Artificialities

- Participating Agency/Group Lists
- Exercise Leadership
- Task Evaluators
- Role Assessors
- Safety Officers
- Registrars & Recorders.
- Measurable Goals

## Exercise Planning is a Long Term Process That Must Be Completed.

- Improper, sloppy, and incomplete exercise planning ensures the failure of the process and the exercise.
- Take Your Time and Do It Right.
- Tie in participant training into the preparation for the exercise.
- A clearly defined flow of activities must be agreed upon by the Evaluation Team.

## A Week Before.....

- Final Evaluation Team Meeting.
- Review goals, roles, and tasks.
- Ensure that performance standards are written for evaluator use.
- Scenario information and event timing is known.
- Everyone knows what’s going to happen and who is doing what.
- Good Exercises Are Choreographed.

## Pre Exercise Briefing

- A general meeting is conducted for ALL participants which provides them with the scenario and information they need to begin the exercise play.
- Allow groups time to plan and work before play begins.
- Rules of Play must be given and how they will be enforced.
- How can you identify evaluators and observers?
- Final Questions Can Be Asked By the Participants.

## During the Exercise

- Evaluators/Facilitators keep the group on target and introduce progressive timeline elements.
- Evaluators/Facilitators are responsible for assessing performance and achievement of exercise goals.
- Observers are responsible for SAFETY and Site Security.

## After The Exercise Has Ended:

- Debriefing for all participants by full Exercise Control Team.
- Allow participants to critique their own actions – not those of others.
- Participants will be more critical of their own actions than they would permit from others.
- Exercise leadership gives everyone the chance to express their experience.
- No fights, arguments, or “bad vibes” permitted of other participants.

## Exercise Leadership Will Then

- Accentuate the positive things that were seen – especially for creative and effective problem solving.
- Present a general summary of what we need to work on for the next one.
- Provide a positive perspective from which the participants can build.
- Put the “Ribbons and Bows” in the Exercise and Open the Soda!
- When it’s over – Its OVER.  No need to re-hash who did what to whom.  The Process is the important thing by which we learn.

## Let’s Construct A Public Health Example:

**The Centers For Disease Control has informed you that there has been an increase of **_**Nasty-bug-itis**_** that will require immunization of every person under the age of 21 beginning in three days.**

## Okay, There’s More

- The Strategic National Stockpile for immunizing your target population will be deployed to you in two days.
- You have _45,000 _children to immunize in a _48 hour period._

## Here’s What You’ve Already Done:

- You have identified buildings in each town for prophylaxis operations.
- You have MRC Physicians, Nurses, and Pharmacists to support your public health staff to run six clinic sites, covering two 8 hour shifts – with 8 lines each.
- Your Local EMA’s will provide the CERT personnel to help you set up and maintain the clinics.
- Local police, fire, and EMS support is available through the EMA.

## Okay,  Let’s Start Designing:

- Now, Let’s Not Get All Nervous!!!!!
- Let’s Take This One Step At A Time!!!