At 3pm on Sunday, September 7, chances are that your mobile phone bleeped and so did any others in earshot. That was a test of the UK official emergency alert, as sent to warn a locality in the event of, for example, life-threatening extreme weather such as a flood.
As the alert stated, phone users didn’t have to do a thing. The July edition of Professional Security Magazine featured table-top exercises, as carried out in London’s West End; and how much you can lean on artificial intelligence (AI) to help you with an exercise, if you’re unfamiliar with a scenario or the exercising process. (See a free webinar on AI tools, on September 22 by BC Training with planner David Hutcheson.)
An exercise might cover the evacuating of a building (for whatever reason), response to a crisis event such as a terrorist attack (whether against your premises or a neighbour) or a power outage (what to do if your usual means of communication aren’t available?). An exercise could be a ‘table top’ or acted out for real (each with pros and cons).
What if the car park that you tell people to use, is locked or full; or the projector that was meant to be available, for presenting slides, isn’t on hand? Dr David Rubens of the ISRM (Institute of Strategic Risk Management) has gone over the unglamorous basics of training and exercising in a paper that accompanied a recent free webinar for ISRM members and others interested. The 30-page paper goes over the time pressure element of an exercise (to test how people make decisions in a crisis and at a pace other than normal), what objectives to set, how and whether ‘observers’ ought to witness the exercise (‘who can maintain a certain critical distance’), how information gets fed into the exercise, how to debrief those taking part afterwards (‘hot’, ‘when everyone is still in the room’, and ’cold’, later, after the ‘adrenaline high’ of the event) and how to write up and present a report.
As David writes, it might sound obvious, to tell those taking part in an exercise where they need to be, what time to be where, what they need to bring (pen and paper, besides the smartphone that we can take for granted everyone carries?) and what sort of clothes they need to wear (a coat in case of rain – will the exercise involve an evacuation, taking people outdoors?). David notes, ‘I must say that out of all the exercises I have observed or been involved with, up to and including multi-national crisis-management exercises that have been two years in the preparation, there have been very few that have started as planned, on time, without the need for last minute adjustments’.
Before any exercise starts, David advises also to let those taking part know what the working environment would be, and who they would be working with (namely, other teams that they would not normally interact with), as well as the overall structure of the exercise and the way in which the exercise itself will be run. He advises on the difference between learning, training and exercising, (‘the exercise room is not a place where people should be learning new skills’).
David says more generally: “For any organisation that wants to develop effective capability, training and exercising is a critical component in that process. Training and exercising becomes more important as the skills being learned become more complex. That is true within any operational environment, and is especially true when dealing with the shock, confusion and chaos associated with emergency and crisis management. However, it is also true that when we speak about training and exercising, that is only one link in a long chain of the capability development process, and if an organisation is to develop a truly effective training and exercising programme, then they will need to have a clear understanding of what exactly it is that they wish to achieve, as well as have an understanding of what is required to achieve it.
“Training and exercising can range from the simplest of functions, associated with basic organisational activities, and up to the most complex, that test the capabilities of every aspect of the organisation in the face of the highest level of existential threats. As one would expect, the more complex the training and exercising becomes the more players are involved, the higher up the authority ladder the chain of command needs to go, and the more preparation that is needed in terms of time, personnel and resources to create effective and realistic training and exercising programmes.”
David sums up: “If training and exercising are to have any significance, then they should be able to clearly demonstrate what impact they have in terms of identifying and mitigating potential vulnerabilities, developing effective capabilities and creating an organisation that is more effective in all aspects of its operation, not just when a crisis event arises. All of these objectives are achievable, however complex the organisation or imagined scenarios.”
West End
To recap from July’s magazine, the West End or any busy place may have its share of extreme events – a marauder with a knife or other weapon (or, as crucially, reports of such a threat, possibly spread by social media and causing uncertainty that could lead to problems as much as if the marauder were real), or power cuts. Even if security and other staff have experience of response, given turnover of staff, some may lack experience; or the authorities may wish to test team working and information-sharing with outside bodies such as the 999 services and public transport.
About the ISRM
Hear also David’s talk of August 13 on ‘sense making and risk management in unprecedented times’, on the ISRM website. The ISRM with PA Consulting are hosting the ISRM-PA Consulting Conference 2025 at PA Consulting’s London office on September 24.
David runs a Level 5 Award in Terrorism Prevention and Management, a course designed for security and risk managers who are tasked with the modelling, planning and management of security programmes to protect their communities not just from accidents and disasters, but from wilful attack.
