Tag HSEEP

Revisiting POETE

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

One of my most popular posts has been my original post on POETE from July 2014. In the 11+ years has passed since that post, I continue leveraging the concept in every way I can. In case you’ve not heard of the concept, I certainly urge you to click the link above and read my original post. Briefly, POETE stands for Planning, Organizing, Equipping, Training, and Exercises. These are collectively known as the elements of preparedness. POETE is more than a checklist to me. It’s a strategic lens for realistically building and sustaining capabilities. Whether you are building a new emergency operations plan, launching a new public health preparedness initiative, or refining multiagency coordination activities, POETE offers a structured way to think through what takes to help ensure these endeavors are implementation-ready.

While I’ve written on these in the past, my continued and diverse application of POETE has broadened my perspective on application, so here are some fresh thoughts.

Assessing – On occasion, I throw an A in front of the acronym for Assessing. While assessments are an early activity of Planning, there are also plenty of stand-alone assessment activities which should be regarded of their own accord. Assessments can and should inform everything else we do in preparedness. Good assessments can provide us with justification for certain activities and investments and can often give us a data-driven approach. Along with many of the risk assessments common across emergency management, like the Threat, Hazard Identification, and Risk Assessment (THIRA), I’d also suggest that (well written) after-action reports (AARs) can also do the job. A well-developed AAR for an incident, event, or exercise can provide objective analysis of observed activities or discussions. When writing an AAR, we should always keep in mind that part of achieving the goal of improvement may involve requests and justifications for funding.

Planning – I’ve written a lot on the topic of emergency planning through the years. Overall, my take on most emergency plans is that they suck. Horribly. They aren’t worth the time, money, or effort invested in writing them. So many people go about it wrong. A true plan needs to be a blueprint for action. Good plans are operationally-focused, guiding decisions and actions. They should not just be theory and policy, as so many are. At best, I’d call something like that a framework, but it’s certainly not a plan.

Organizing – Organizing is largely about structure, roles, and responsibilities, but you can’t even get there without first building relationships and partnerships. Everything we do in emergency management is about relationships. It’s about knowing who has the thing you need – be it a physical resource, specialized knowledge, or specific authority. Last week I wrote a new piece on Community Lifelines. The central activity of doing anything with Community Lifelines is building relationships. Once those relationships are in place, then other activities will follow.

Equipping – I’ve always been very big on tools matching the mission. Equipment in this context means any and all resources available to us. The key aspect of this is alignment. Are the tools we use matching up to our threats, our people, and our procedures? While it’s understandable to have to update procedures to match a new resource, we should be very cautious about the resource dictating procedure. Our resources need to work for us, not the other way around.

Training – I feel like we have been gradually moving away from compliance being the center of the training universe. Yes, there is still plenty of training that is required for various purposes – there should be and there will always be. But I’ve been getting more requests from clients to develop custom training because they realize that little to no training exists to meet their needs. More people are realizing, for example, that ICS training is absolutely not the fit for EOC staff. Similarly, they are realizing that existing EOC training might begin to approach their needs, but the implementation of their specific EOC model really requires customized training. Overall, training needs to be role-based. We need to be training people what we want them to do. We need to give them the knowledge to succeed, not just generalized training for a broad group hoping that people will be able to ascertain what pertains to them and what does not. We also need to realize that, since most training in emergency management is response-oriented, the things they are being trained to do are things they don’t do often and/or don’t do them under pressure. So frequency of training and job aids are essential to their success.

Exercises – The thing I do the highest volume of. Luckily, I love to do them! Exercises are about testing our plans and capabilities before they are tested for real. Pay attention to good exercise design and never forget that the end product is a worthwhile AAR. I still see so many softball AARs out there. AARs that pat people on the back for a job well done while only acknowledging the superficial opportunities to improve – often times because they don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I don’t ever write an AAR for the purpose of offending anyone, but if we don’t expose what doesn’t work, the chances of it ever being addressed are so much lower than if we had documented it.

While we have the acronym of (A)POETE, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not intended to be a linear process. It’s iterative and constantly in need of attention. Each component is informed by the others. While I generally believe that Planning is still the foundation of preparedness and it should heavily influence all other elements, those other elements can still influence Planning. POETE activities should be used to build our capabilities. These activities help us prepare with purpose, focus, and intent.

© 2025 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Taking the Reins

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 4 Comments

Through the past several years of my blog, the central theme of my posts has really been to ask ‘why?’. Why do we do the things we do in emergency management? Why do we accept things as they are? Why haven’t we endeavored to change, update, or improve upon some of these things that range, at best, from mediocracy to, at worst, absolute crap?

A boss of mine many (so many) years ago taught me the concept of ‘ask why five times’ if you want to get to the root of anything. Of course, you need to seek the proper people to ask or sources to conduct your research, but the concept still stands – often we can’t just ask ‘why’ once and expect that one answer to explain everything for us.

Our field of practice is filled with so many things which can be considered standards. They may be true standards, such as NFPA 1660, or simply a de facto standard – something that has become widely accepted in practice, such as CPG 101.

Standards are a double-edged sword. On the better side, they give us commonality. We can expect that, if reasonably applied, the outputs will have substantial similarity and will, at minimum, meet a base-line expectation. Consistency is generally viewed as good and beneficial in largely any application. On the other hand, standards can stifle innovation. They can encourage laziness. They often promote shortcuts like templates, which, while there are benefits, largely remove the inclination of critical thinking from the work that is done and assume that all applications can fit within someone else’s concept of how things should be.

As we face a significant possibility of a number of de facto standards from FEMA no longer being maintained due to changes in focus and reduction in force – things like the homeland security exercise and evaluation program (HSEEP), CPG 101, and even the National Incident Management System (NIMS) – how will things be done in what may become a new era of emergency management?

There are some that are shilling the downfall of emergency management. While I don’t think this extreme is quite realistic, there will most certainly be some significant changes and impacts to which we must adapt. In the realm of standards (and likely other gaps created), I feel the profession will realize the need to take care of itself, taking a path of self-determination and filling a role that has been, most successfully, done by FEMA. Early on, in the absence of a central coordinating entity (FEMA) maintaining these de facto standards, we will see several disparate efforts of upkeep, with results likely following a bell curve of quality – most will be deemed reasonable, though outliers will exist on both ends of the spectrum, with one side being garbage and the other fairly inspired and progressive. Here enters opportunity. Opportunity for improvement, innovation, different perspectives, and simply seeking better ways of doing things. Though this process begs some questions – Whose version will reign supreme? And what authority does the author have to publish any given standard? Is some measure of authority even required for such a thing for it to be, even unofficially, adopted by the profession?

I feel that regardless of this circumstance, we must periodically examine our standards of practice. Ask ‘why?’ five times (or really however many times is necessary). This can range from asking the same question over and over until you get to some foundational answer you are seeking, or asking a chain of related questions to poke at different sides of the standard. Consider questions like ‘Why does the standard exist?’, ‘Why does the standard exist as it is?’, ‘How did this standard evolve?’, ‘What are the strengths of the current standard?’, ‘What are the weaknesses of the current standard?’, ‘What can we do better and how?’.

There has been some effort lately (also spearheaded by FEMA) toward the concept and implementation of continuous improvement. Standards should also fit within this movement. Standards need to evolve and change and support the practice, though they should be constructed in such a fashion that does not limit a range of application (i.e. can it be used by states as well as small towns? Does it need to be?) or stifle innovation. And while evolution is necessary, I’ll also caution against wholesale change – unless a truly better way is developed and validated. Standards should not change based simply on someone’s good idea, a different perspective, or political influence. Standards (true or de facto) or any part thereof and in any industry should be peer developed and peer reviewed. Changes need to be carefully considered, but also not feared. While I feel FEMA has been a good steward of our standards of practice, that time may be coming to an end, at least for a while. The standards of practice across emergency management must be maintained if this disruption comes to fruition. This is a challenge. This is an opportunity. This is a necessity. We must rise to the occasion.

© 2025 – Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Mixing Exercise Types

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

As with many things, we are taught exercises in a rather siloed fashion. First by category: discussion-based and operations-based. Then by type. That kind of compartmentalization is generally a necessity in adult education methodology. Individually, each exercise type has its own pros and cons. Rarely, however, do we ever seen or heard of combining exercise types within one initiative.

The first time I did this was several years ago. My company was designing a series of functional exercises to be used for locations around the country. While the exercises were focused on response, one goal of our client was to include some aspects of recovery in the exercise. At about six hours, the exercises weren’t long. Time jumps can be awkward, and for the small amount of time dedicated to recovery in the exercise, the impact of the disruption from the time jump within the exercise may not net a positive result. Add to that the time it would take to provide a quantity of new information that would be needed to make a recovery-oriented functional exercise component viable.

Instead of trying to shoe-horn this in, we opted to stop the functional component of the exercise at an established time and introduce a discussion on disaster recovery. With the proper introduction and just a bit of information to provide context in addition to what they had already been working on, the discussion went smoothly and accomplished everything with which we were charged. The participants were also able to draw on information and actions from the response-focused functional component of the exercise.

We’re recently developed another exercise that begins with a tabletop exercise to establish context and premise then splits the participants into two groups which are each challenged with some operations-based activity: one deploying to a COOP location to test functionality (a drill), the other charged with developing plans to address the evolving implications of the initial incident (a functional exercise). Following the operations-based exercises, the two groups will reconvene to debrief on their activities and lessons learned before going into a hotwash.

Making this happen is easy enough. Obviously we need to ensure that objectives align with the expected activities. You also want to make sure that the dual exercise modalities are appropriate for the same participants. While I try not to be hung up on the nuances of documentation, though documentation is important, especially when it comes to grant compliance and ensuring that everyone understands the structure and expectations of the exercise. If we are mixing a discussion-based exercise and an operations-based exercise, one of the biggest questions is likely what foundational document to use – a SitMan or ExPlan. Generally, since the operations-based exercises can have greater consequences regarding safety and miscommunication, I’d suggest defaulting to an ExPlan, though be sure to include information that addresses the needs of the discussion-based exercise component in your ExPlan as well as the player briefing.

In running the exercise, be sure to have a clear transition from one exercise type to the other, especially if there are multiple locations and/or players are spread out. Players should be given information that prepares them for the transition in the player briefing. Having exercise staff (controllers/facilitators and evaluators) properly prepared for this through clearly communicating expectations at the C/E briefing and in C/E documentation is obviously important, as well as ensuring they are ready for the transition.

I’d love to hear other success stories from those who may have done something similar.

© 2024 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Developing Incident After-Action Reports

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Incident and event after action reports (AARs) are extremely important for identifying the successes and challenges we faced in our efforts. Just like our evaluation efforts in exercises, many valuable lessons can be learned and effective practices identified from incidents and events. Yet for as much as incident and event AARs are encouraged, there are often problems with how these are developed.

While the quality of exercise after action reports is often not up to par, a defined process of exercise evaluation along with a suggested AAR format has been available to us and engrained in emergency management practice for a long time via the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP). While some concepts of exercise evaluation can be utilized for incident and event evaluation, we need to have a very different approach to be most effective.

FEMA has been promoting a Continuous Improvement concept for emergency management for several years. Incident and event evaluation is part of continuous improvement, though continuous improvement is intended to permeate much more of our daily and incident operations. While FEMA’s program has some good information that applies to incident and event evaluation, there are some important things I feel are missing.

Perhaps the most significant difference in our approach to incident and event evaluation vs exercise evaluation is the evaluation focus. Exercises, right from our very first steps of design, are designed explicitly for evaluation. The identification of capabilities and exercise objectives gives direction to our design and directly informs our evaluation of the exercise. Essentially, the intent and focus of evaluation is baked in from the start. For incidents and events, however, it is not.

Because evaluation is not a primary intent of incidents and events, we generally need to determine our evaluation strategy afterwards. The development of our evaluation strategy absolutely must begin with the identification of what we want to evaluate. This is a critical element not included in FEMA’s Continuous Improvement guidance. Without determining the focus of the evaluation, the discovery process lacks direction and may likely explore areas of incident/event operations that are lower priority to stakeholders. Determining what the evaluation effort will focus on can be considered similar to developing objectives, and as such should be specific enough to give proper direction to the evaluation effort. For example, having done numerous COVID-19 AARs, it’s not enough to say that we will evaluate ‘vaccination’. Vaccination is a very broad activity so we should determine specific aspects of vaccination to focus on, such as equity of distribution or vaccine point of dispensing (POD) operations. Obviously multiple focus areas can be identified based upon what is most important to stakeholders. And no, incident objectives should not serve as your focal points. These are operational objectives that have nothing to do with evaluation, though your evaluation itself may likely take the incident objectives (and associated actions) into consideration.

FEMA’s Continuous Improvement guidance provides a lot of great insight for the discovery process. The most common tools I use are focus groups, interviews, document reviews, and surveys. Focus groups and interviews allow people to tell their experiences from their perspectives. These offer a lot of insight and include facts as well as opinions, both of which are valid in the AAR process, as long as they are handled properly in the process, as discerning between the two is important.

Document reviews are also important. Typically I look at documents developed before the incident (mostly plans) and those developed during the incident (such as press releases, incident action plans, situation reports, and operational plans). While documents developed during the incident typically tell me what was done or what was intended to be done, the documents developed prior to the incident typically provide me with a standard from which to work.

There are a couple of important caveats with this:

1) Many plans are operationally inadequate, so they may not have been able to be followed.

2) Many organizations don’t reference their plans, regardless of quality.

As such, a big part of my document review is also determining the quality of the documents and if they were referenced during the incident or event. It may very well be that the actions taken were better than what was in the plans.

Surveys… so much to say about surveys that probably deserves its own blog post. Surveys can be great tools, but most tend to design poor surveys. They should be succinct and to the point. You will want to ask a lot of questions, but resist the urge to do so. The more questions you ask, the lower the rate of return on surveys. So focus on a few questions that will give you great data.

We then go to writing, which involves the organization of our information, formation of key observations (by focus area), a narrative analysis for each observation, and development of one or more recommendations for each observation. The analysis is an aspect that many AARs, including those for exercises, miss the mark. The analysis needs to contextualize the observation and justify the recommendations. It should provide sufficient detail for someone not knowledgeable in that observation (or of the incident) to have a reasonable understanding of the associated issues. Remember that an AAR may be referenced for years to come and can also be used to support budgets, grant applications, and obviously the corrective actions that are identified. A good analysis is necessary and should certainly be more than a couple of sentences. Be sure to identify strengths and effective practices, not just lessons learned and challenges.

I do not advocate using the HSEEP AAR template for incident and event evaluations. Beyond an awkward fit for some of the ‘fill-in-the-box’ information, the overall structure is not supportive of what an incident or event AAR needs to include. I suggest writing the AAR like a professional report. I’d include an executive summary, table of contents, research methodology, observations/analysis/recommendations, an incident or event timeline, and summary of recommendations (I do still like to use the traditional HSEEP improvement plan matrix for this). I tend to have a lot of citations throughout the document (typically I footnote these). Citations can include standards, such as NIMS, references (plans), media articles, and more.

A couple of notes: 1 – When planning our management of an event, we can be more proactive in evaluation by including it as a deliberate component of our efforts. 2 – Incident evaluation can begin during the incident by tasking an incident evaluator.

Incident and event evaluation can be daunting to approach. It requires endorsement from the highest levels to ensure cooperation and access to information. Honesty is what is needed, not sugar coating. Far too many AARs I’ve seen for exercises, incidents, and events are very soft and empty. Remember that we aren’t evaluating people, rather we are evaluating plans, processes, systems, and decisions. The final AAR should be shared with stakeholders so they can learn and apply corrective actions that may be relevant to them. Given most state public information laws, the AAR may need to be made available to the public, which is more reason to ensure that it is professionally written and that observations have quality analysis as members of the public may require context. I’ve also seen many elected and appointed officials (and legal counsels) be reluctant to have written reports or written reports with much detail because of freedom of information laws. While I understand that accountability and transparency can create challenges, we must remember that governments works on behalf of the people, and the acknowledgement of mistakes and shortcomings (as well as successes) is important to continuous improvement of the services we provide.

What is your approach with incident and event AARs? Where do you see that we need to improve this important process?

© 2024 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Stop Exercising Bad Plans

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 9 Comments

We know that the purpose of most exercises in emergency management (ref HSEEP) and related fields is to validate plans. That concept, though, is built on a fragile premise: that the plans are good.

Over the years, the more plans I see from various jurisdictions, the more disappointed I am practically to the extent of losing near-total faith in our profession’s ability to develop quality plans. Most emergency plans out there are crap. Garbage. Not worth the effort that has been put into them. Typically, they don’t have enough detail. Not that they need to have procedure-level detail (but those procedures should be found somewhere), but they are often written so high level that they are merely conceptual or policy-esque.

The premise that exercises are intended to validate plans would indicate a belief that the plans themselves serve as quality standards of practice for the organization(s) they are built for. The sad truth is that they are not. So, what are our exercises proving?

Gaps in exercise evaluation are a significant hurdle which are often based upon poor evaluation practices, poor AAR writing, and/or the assumption of quality plans. I find many AARs to be very superficial. They provide observations and recommendations, but no analysis. Without analysis we have no context for the observation and no examination of root cause or other contributing factors. Absent this analysis, the AARs aren’t able to truly identify what needs to be addressed. So, with the superficial, come the obvious statements and recommendations that communication needs to be improved, more ICS training is needed, etc.

What I don’t see enough of are observations, ANALYSIS, and recommendations that indicate:

  1. Plans need to be drastically improved (updated and/or developed)
  2. Responders need to actually be trained in their roles to support implementation of the plans (ICS does NOT teach us how to implement plans… in fact ICS training largely ignores the importance of existing plans)

What of the AARs that are better and actually do recommend improved plans? This leads us to the next potential point of failure: implementation of corrective actions. I see so many organizations are simply bad at this. They seem content to exercise over and over again (typically at the expense of taxpayer dollars) and come up with the same results. They largely aren’t fixing anything, or perhaps just the proverbial low-hanging fruit (i.e. more ICS training), but they aren’t tackling the harder-to-do, yet more impactful development of quality plans.

We need to stop assuming our plans are good. Exercising bad plans has little value to us and is typically more wasteful than beneficial.

Just like the potential causes identified above, there are numerous issues to be addressed. First of all, we need to recognize that not every emergency manager has the acumen for writing plans. The development of emergency plans is a hybrid of art and science. It includes hard and soft skillsets such as technical writing, systems thinking, organization, research, collaboration, and creativity. We have standards for developing plans, such as CPG101, which overall is a good standard (though it could be improved to help people use it). We have some training available in how to develop emergency plans, but there are some issues.

  • The G-235 Emergency Planning course (now IS-235) was a great course, but the big push 15-20 years ago to put so many classroom courses online to make them more accessible and to save costs largely resulted in decreased learning outcomes.
  • The classroom training in emergency planning has largely been replaced by the E103 Planning: Emergency Operations course, which is part of the Emergency Management Basic Academy. This is a pretty good course but being part of the Basic Academy (which is a great concept) also limits access to some people as the general practice is (understandably) to give registration preference to those who are taking the entire academy. Sure, the entire academy makes for more well-rounded EMs, but if someone wants to focus on emergency planning, some of the other courses, while complimentary, constitute a larger investment of time and possibly money.
  • Finally, FEMA has the Planning Practitioner Program, which is a more intensive experience and certainly provides some improved learning outcomes, but with the expectation of a huge percentage of emergency managers (and those in related professions) to be proficient in emergency planning, this program simply isn’t available enough. (Note re training: yes, there are an abundance of other planning-related courses out there… I just highlighted these as examples).

I’ll also say that simply taking some classes does not make you a proficient emergency planner. Because there is art and science to it, it can’t simply be taught. It needs to be learned and experienced. Practice and mentorship are key – which is something else most EMs don’t have access to or even seek out. Training is not the only solution.

So, while this article started out with identifying the fallacy often seen in our exercise practices, I end up, once again, pointing out what I think is the biggest gap in the entirety of emergency management – bad plans. Plans are the foundation of our practice, yet we can’t seem to get it right. We are too dismissive of the necessity and process of plan development and upkeep. We are too accepting of inadequate plans that are not implementation ready. We don’t do enough to build personnel capability in plan development. So many of those who are writing plans, be they civil servants, consultants, or others, are simply bad at it. And while some have potential that is underdeveloped, others simply don’t have the acumen for it.

And the worst part about it all… we, as a practice and professional culture, are accepting it!

Many of my posts through the years have ended with a similar statement… we are treating emergency management like a game of beer league hockey. We aren’t taking it seriously enough. We need to do better and demand better. So what are you doing to support improved emergency planning practices?

© 2024 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Certificates and Certifications

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 4 Comments

There seem to be regular misunderstandings between words and their meanings. The words ‘certified’, ‘certificate’, and ‘certification’ are words I see regularly misused, especially in requests for proposals, LinkedIn profiles, and resumes.  Unfortunately, as with so much in the English language, there are no easy boxes to put these in, but the differences are really important.

One of the things I regularly see is in reference to something like the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP). Far too often, RFPs request personnel who are ‘HSEEP certified’. There is no certification for HSEEP. To be certified, according to Oxford, means that someone is ‘officially recognized as possessing certain qualifications or meeting certain standards’. People who complete HSEEP training are provided with a certificate of completion. A certificate of completion is simply documentation given by a training provider indicating that someone has completed the requirements of a course (attendance, participation, maybe an exam), but is not intended to speak to their qualifications, therefore it is not a certification.

Certifications are credentials that should be provided by independent bodies indicating that someone has met a certain slate of standards. To be certified in something digs deeper. I am a Certified Emergency Disaster Professional (CEDP), which is a credential provided by the International Board for Certification Services and Management (IBFCSM). To become certified I had to demonstrate experience, education, and competence; and I must affirm continued competence through continuing education.

Colleges also have certificate programs, such as the one I’ve helped develop and have recently started teaching for Herkimer College. A certificate program is a specific type of academic program with a more concise set of requirements compared to a degree program.

If you are writing RFPs, developing your LinkedIn profile, or updating your resume, please be sure to properly represent credentials and qualifications.

© 2022 Tim Riecker, CEDP

Climate Change Exercise Resource Guide

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Aside from the significant challenge of educating climate change deniers, climate change provides us with challenges of adaptation and resilience now and into the future. To meet this challenge, we need to meld various aspects of emergency management, science, engineering, theory, and some educated guesses to our applications. We are further challenged with certain preparedness activities which have always been difficult for us because of the less tangible and more dynamic nature of what we are dealing with. I wrote a few years ago on the difficulties we have in designing exercises for long-term recovery. That difficulty, along with the fact that recovery isn’t deemed as sexy as response, are why we rarely have exercises in set in the recovery phase of disaster. But how about exercises in the mitigation mission area?

Exercises focused on the mitigation mission area are also not commonplace, yet the application absolutely makes sense. Yes, we have science, engineering models, and historical data that help support hazard mitigation planning and other related tasks, but in emergency management we don’t seem to take the time to actually talk through some of the scenarios we may be faced with. Exercises help us not only to validate plans, but also help us to identify viable approaches for our plans.

Most people know climate change as an ethereal concept, something they hear about with increasing frequency, but don’t really understand what could happen in their own communities. They also likely view climate change as something too big for them to deal with. Climate change is no longer a theory of what may happen hundreds of years from now, rather it’s happening right now and we will see those impacts increase exponentially even within our own lifetimes. We need to make these discussions as commonplace as any other hazard (and actually WITH other hazards since climate change tends to exacerbate the frequency and impact of other hazards), and exercises offer an ideal structure for those discussions, helping to maintain focus and document outcomes in a consistent fashion.

To help support these efforts, FEMA has released the Long-Term Community Resilience Exercise Guide, along with a packet of reference documents from exercises around the nation which give some ideas on how this can be applied. These are available on the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) website and are another important tool available to us. From the HSEEP website, the Guide is intended to provide:

  • A dictionary with common terms to ensure a shared understanding of climate-related terminology and principles before an exercise
  • Tools and template for planning and conducting climate-focused exercises
  • Resources including funding opportunities, risk assessments, and training programs

Now that the federal government is again allowed to use the term ‘climate change’, I’m hopeful we will see more resources made available. I also appreciate that FEMA is asking users to submit their best practices for using this new guide; which they will hopefully use to continue improvements and share with others.

© 2021 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Integrating Emergency Management in Local Government

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

I think we’re all pretty familiar with and confident in the ability of typical emergency services organizations to properly and appropriately address ‘routine’ responses – that is, those that last a few minutes to a few hours. It’s the extended operations, those that last many hours, or even into days, weeks, and months that traditional response organizations have difficulty with.

The incidents – generally categorized as Type 3 or higher – have very different dynamics. The requirements of these incidents are different. We can’t just roll our usual response, or even throw everything we have at it at one time. We need to rotate resources. We often need resources which are not used to using. We need to provide close support to our resources. Typical emergency services are practically all Command and Operations. Planning and Logistics, much less Finance, are virtually non-existent in the first responder world. Of course, this applies to not just response, but emergency management activities comprehensively.

A true integration of emergency management is absolutely necessary at the local level. Every jurisdiction should identify, and with the approval of the chief executive, how this will happen. What will the triggers be for this? There should be a recognition that this isn’t about taking anything away from the fire chief or police chief – in fact this is about giving them access to greater resources. These chief officers and the leaders beneath them are expected to be experts at the things they deal with 97% of the time. It needs to be accepted that someone else can help guide them through the other three percent.

Again, this is just within the realm of response. Most agencies have little to no active role in mitigation, recovery, or other emergency management tasks – much less the knowledge to take them on. Granted, some don’t explicitly have those activities as part of their agency’s charter, but all do go beyond response to some extent. Emergency management needs to permeate the activities of every agency. Someone should be thinking about it, coordinating with the jurisdiction’s emergency manager, and advising their own agency’s leadership. Of course, this transcends response; it applies to all phases and mission areas of emergency management, with focal points appropriate to the mission of each respective agency.

Planning

This is one of our biggest gaps in preparedness at the local government level. Sure, some first responder organizations have plans for extended and complex incidents – but how well are the plans written? Are they up to date with contemporary practices? Are leaders at every level familiar with them and ready to implement them? Are these activities exercised? The answers to these questions tend to lean toward the negative.

Organizing

<This point is really the crux of my thoughts on this topic. Properly staffing emergency management functions is a considerable path to success.>

Deliberate planning efforts need to include emergency managers, who must be given proper authority by the chief executive to take action and access needed resources. This also means that to be most effective, an emergency manager should absolutely not be placed within another organization. Absent good and confident leadership from that organization, their actions will almost always result in bias filtered through the leadership of the home organization. The emergency manager, during an extended response, becomes a considerable asset to Command and to the jurisdiction as a whole. While they are not there to assume Command, they are there to coordinate internal and external resources to support Command, as well as being familiar with the plans to an extent Command may not be and to support thinking beyond the initial response.

As mentioned earlier, I also believe that most government agencies should have someone responsible for emergency management in their own agency. For smaller jurisdictions this is likely not going to be a full time job, but with an individual tasked and responsible for emergency management at the agency or department level, that helps ensure proper attention to the matter – across all phases and mission areas. Certainly, mid-sized towns and larger should have less difficulty with this, beyond establishing protocol and incentivizing. We already have common practice in various agencies for personnel that hold certain qualifications, such as fire department personnel becoming paramedics. This is often incentivized with a stipend or an altogether higher rate of pay, along with time being given for maintaining the certification and other related professional development. Think about how effective agencies would be if each had someone responsible for emergency management. As well as benefits to the jurisdiction. And yes, even volunteer EMS and fire departments can do this (I served as the designated ‘crisis and emergency manager’ for a volunteer EMS organization for a period of time).

Training

This needs to cover a broad span of things we might consider training. The softest is more at an awareness level – socializing the plan. Making sure that people are familiar with it to the extent necessary. This isn’t just chief officers and department heads, either. Often, they aren’t the ones who need to have early recognition of a situation’s applicability to plan. This socialization needs to take place all levels of leadership.

Being familiar with a plan isn’t enough, though. Being able to implement the plan is largely contingent on targeted, effective, and persistent training – and certainly beyond the awareness level. What training is needed to implement the plan? Who needs to be trained? To what extent of proficiency?

Exercises

If you follow my blog, you know I’ve written on the benefits, ways, and means of exercising to a considerable extent. ‘nuff said. If not: lots of information here.

Let’s be honest, nothing here is a novel approach. A good number of local jurisdictions (I’ll also include counties and parishes in this definition) already implement some version of this. It certainly is a best practice that a lot of jurisdictions are missing out on. Sure, it takes some work, and proper authority, and meetings, and buy in, and training, and more meetings… but what in our world doesn’t require these things?  I think one disaster should clearly show the benefits of this to any jurisdiction.  It’s interesting though, that despite being aware of other practices, so many jurisdictions are stuck doing the same thing they’ve always done. In many ways we are hurt by tradition, apathy, and indifference as much as any disaster. If jurisdictions aren’t prepared to effectively deal with disasters, how well do you think they will do? This doesn’t even require that much structure change or direct cost – just deliberate action.

© 2020 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Build a Smart Exercise and Respond to the Unexpected

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

A few days ago I caught a documentary on NatGeo called Inside: 21st Century Warship. The documentary was produced in 2013 and told of the cutting-edge design of the USS Freedom and USS Independence. One segment of the documentary captured an exercise the USS Freedom engaged in, with the objective of testing the ship’s firepower to destroy several remote-controlled fast attack boats in open seas. The Captain, well experienced in my opinion, was able to neutralize the boats through the massive wake created by the ship’s sizeable turbines. EndEx.

The lead controller was clearly upset with this. The objective of the exercise, after all, was to test the ship’s guns, which were not fired in this exercise. The controller vented his frustration with the Captain, needing to reemphasize the parameters of the exercise.

Who was at fault in this? Was the objective of the exercise communicated to the Captain? That wasn’t made clear in the documentary. If it was, perhaps it wasn’t made clear that use of the ship’s guns was the only means by which the Captain could engage the attacking boats. I do applaud the Captain’s initial defensive methods, which is perhaps what he was trained to do, though that obviously circumvented the intent of the exercise. Either way, there was a miscommunication or misunderstanding as to the intent and parameters of the exercise.

While this is a military example, the portability to emergency management and homeland security is pretty direct. How do we mitigate against this type of miscommunication or misunderstanding? It starts with a well-defined concept and objectives for our exercise. Those build the foundation from which the rest of the exercise is constructed. Part of exercise design is anticipating how players may respond to the information they are provided and the situations which they will face. This constant analysis helps us to ensure a well-designed exercise, especially in regard to reducing any and all ambiguity, particularly as information relates to the objectives of the exercise and the ‘rules of the game’. It helps us to craft clear injects and even contingency injects in the event players don’t respond the way in which we expect them. Finally, when it comes to deployment of the exercise, an effective player briefing is very important.

Can things still go wrong? Sure they can. That’s why it helps to have a well experienced Exercise Director and/or Lead Controller, and a proficient SimCell Manager (if you are using a SimCell). They can help get the exercise out of a rut. I’ve seen and performed all manner of intervention… most often it’s some ad-hoc development of contingency injects to help steer them down the right path. I’ve also engaged chief executives, who sometimes weren’t expected to participate in the exercise, to make a call, functioning in their own capacity but working for me as an actor, with clear direction to poke, prod, inquire, or otherwise re-direct to get players back into my sandbox. If necessary, it’s a conversation directly with the ‘leader’ of the players, pulling them out of the exercise for a moment and letting them know what they can or can’t be doing. If you have to call a time out and reset something, do it, but do it quickly.

It may be cliché but expect the unexpected. Sometimes players will do something you don’t anticipate. While this may be the circumstance, however, it could very well be on you. Either you didn’t communicate the rules or communicate them well enough. Ensure understanding in this communication. Certainly, ensure that during the exercise, there is good communication between controllers and the SimCell to identify when, if, and how players might be straying a bit. If it’s caught early enough, it will usually just take a gentle nudge to get them back on track. It’s important to recognize and address it as soon as possible – otherwise you will quickly lose your exercise, wasting time and money, and certainly frustrating the players.

Have you had an exercise go off the rails? How did you correct it?

©2020 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC®

Preparedness in the Pandemic Age

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Planning, training, and exercises, as the foundational activities of preparedness, shouldn’t be stopping because of the pandemic. Preparedness is an ongoing activity which needs to forge ahead with little disruption – and there is always plenty to do! What must we do, though, to accommodate necessary precautions in the age of the Pandemic?

Let’s talk about planning first. The biggest relevant issue for planning is the conduct of stakeholder meetings. These may be larger group meetings to discuss and get buy-in on broader topics, or detailed small-group meetings to discuss very specific topics. Information, sometimes sensitive, is exchanged, presentations are given, and documents are reviewed. I’ve mentioned in various posts through the years the importance of properly preparing for meetings. Even for traditional in-person meetings, there are important things to consider, such as:

  1. Do you really need a meeting?
  2. Developing an agenda
  3. Having the right people in attendance
  4. Ensuring that all speakers and presenters are prepared
  5. Ensuring that all attendees are prepared to discuss the subject matter
  6. An adequate meeting space and support (technology, dry erase boards, etc)

All of these rules still apply in a virtual world, perhaps with even more emphasis. While we’ve obviously had video meeting technology for a long time, we’ve discovered this year that many people haven’t used it much or at all until earlier this year. The surge in use has also brought attention to the plethora of tools which can be facilitated through video conference platforms. While the simple sharing of video supports most of our meeting needs, we can share screens, conduct presentations, and use collaborative tools such as whiteboards and shared documents. Pretty much everything we do in an in-person meeting can be accomplished through video conference platforms – but those who arrange the calls need to take the time to become familiar with the tools and functionality; and if there is anything that needs to be done by participants (some of which are likely to be less tech-savvy) you need to be able to coach them through it. Some of these tools require integrations of other technology, such as cloud document storage or various apps. Remember that meetings should be interactive, so encourage people to use chatrooms to help queue up questions for presenters. If any documents or information are sensitive, be sure you are taking the appropriate precautions with how the meeting is set up, how participants are invited, and how documents are shared.

My tip… read reviews to determine which platform will best suit your needs and watch some tutorials on YouTube.

When it comes to remote training, so much of what I mentioned for stakeholder meetings will apply here. Being interactive is still incredibly important, as is the ability to integrate other technologies, such as videos, PowerPoint, and shared documents. When designing training that will be delivered remotely, if it helps, don’t think about the platform first – think about how you would do the training in person. Would you have breakout sessions for group work? That can be easily accomplished on video conference platforms, but it takes some preparation. Would you put things on a white board or chart paper? That can also be accomplished. Giving an exam? Having participants complete a survey or feedback form? Yes and yes. It can all be done, but preparation is key. Some instructors, especially in public safety, have gotten too used to simply showing up and delivering their material – not because they are lazy, but because they have done it dozens or hundreds of times. They have a routine. If you want participants to get a similar, or perhaps even better learning experience, some deliberate thought and preparation is required. Also, make sure you simply don’t become a talking head. Break things up and be dynamic. It’s easy for our own demeanor to elevate disinterest. I often stand (using a variable height standing desk) when giving presentations and conducting training. Being on my feet helps me push more energy into what I’m doing.

Tip… remember to give people breaks, just as you would in face-to-face training.

Lastly, exercises. A lot of this is a combination of the information I gave for planning and training. Exercise planning meetings need to be conducted, and every exercise has some extent of presentations, with discussion-based exercises having more emphasis on this obviously. To answer the big question – yes, most exercise can be conducted remotely! Obviously, discussion-based exercises are generally the lower-hanging fruit, so they can and should be happening remotely. Remember that exercises are supposed to be interactive experiences, so your exercise design absolutely must account for identifying the means and methods of engagement in the virtual environment. All the things I’ve mentioned already are prime options for this, such as breakout groups, shared documents, live polling, etc. Facilitators and evaluators can be assigned to specific breakout rooms or have access to all of them, allowing them to float from room to room.

What about operations-based exercises? Yes, there are options for conducting operations-based exercises remotely. First, we do need to acknowledge the obvious challenges associated with conducting drills and full-scale exercises via remote environments. Is it impossible? No, but it depends on what the focus of the exercise is. Something like a cyber-security or intelligence exercise may be more naturally brought into a virtual environment, depending on the exercise objectives or tasks. Games may be fully integrated into digital platforms already, which helps, but if they aren’t, these may need to be re-imagined and developed in a virtual environment. This can get expensive, so it really needs to be a properly thought through. Functional exercises, such as the typical command post exercise or emergency operations center (EOC) exercise, can absolutely be performed virtually. Many jurisdictions successfully ran their EOCs virtually during the height of the pandemic (many still are). If the actual activity can be performed virtually, it can (and should!) be exercised virtually. Again, preparation is key to ensuring that participants can do what they would normally do, while controllers and evaluators still have full access and visibility. Simulation Cells can be virtually integrated and most EOC management platforms are web-based. With some thought, we can bring most exercises into a virtual environment and still make them effective experiences while also meeting all HSEEP requirements.

Tip… For a virtual functional exercise, unless the time period of your exercise is set after the initial response, consider including an objective for the participants (and the tech support of their agencies, as needed) to set up everything that is needed in real time during the exercise – just like they would in real life. This would include all their video, file share, data tracking, etc. That set up is a considerable challenge of running a virtual EOC. If you didn’t want that activity to distract from your exercise, it’s also a great drill. Don’t let it just be tech support personnel, though, as EOC personnel should be expressing their needs.

Remote work environments have helped many organizations overcome challenges associated with the pandemic. Some organizations were better prepared than others to make it happen, but most seem to have achieved effective operational continuity. Hopefully your preparedness programs haven’t stalled out because people feel these activities can’t be done in a virtual environment. We also can’t use the excuse that we’re too busy because of the pandemic to not be preparing. While some niche organizations might still be quite busy, the pandemic response, for most, has become an integrated job duty for the medium term. We can’t let things fall to the wayside or we will never get back on track. The time is now!

I’d love to hear how you are using tech platforms to support preparedness efforts.

©2020 Timothy Riecker, CEDP

Emergency Preparedness Solutions, LLC