Objectives

Objective I - Be solvable for a majority of the business functions participating, using existing plans and backup resources.

Except under very unusual political conditions, a major failure during a simulation test is not a suitable motivator for improvement in disaster planning, or for acquiring additional funding for backup resources. A primarily positive experience however, appears to be a powerful motivator to obtain additional funding to complete planning and backup resource acquisition. In fact, the scheduling of a simulation is often the easiest way to motivate organizations to update their staffing and contact lists.

Proper planning of a scenario includes the review of each participating organization's BRP to determine if they can perform emergency operations at an acceptable level. If they cannot, a discussion with top management is appropriate, and warnings to the deficient organization's management is always proper (e.g., there should be no major surprises or disappointments).

Objective II - Represent a realistic risk.

A fire, flood, earthquake (in California), or bomb is normally the basis for a scenario. A detailed knowledge of the buildings, area, and emergency services involved is always necessary. The disaster and its effects over several days or weeks has to be described, so that the participation of facility and security personnel is required.

Objective III - Capable of being partitioned into practical time steps.

Simulation exercises with four to six time steps are the most practical. Each time step must meet the following criteria:

a) The external and internal environment should change in terms of both the evolution of the events causing the disaster, and in terms of emergency and recovery efforts (e.g., new information given to participants and new actions required).

b) Each team should have some significant action they must accomplish (e.g., a decision, announcement, report to management).

c) Time allowed for the time step should be sufficient but not generous (normally 30-60 minutes).

The period simulated becomes longer with each time step in the simulation. The simulations performed to date indicate that the initial period simulated is often one to four hours, while the final period simulated is often several days to a week.

Objective IV - Be self documenting

Messages and plans produced during the simulation exercise should be rigidly formatted and documented, so that there is a detailed record of all events and actions. This documentation, together with the umpires and evaluators check lists, is necessary for later analysis.

Most simulation exercises are very successful in that they force personnel to learn the BRP while working together, and find flaws and inconsistencies in emergency operations and recovery policies and plans.