Emergency preparedness: the importance of exercising

By Head of Resilience, Simon Lewis

Last month I was privileged to take part in an online emergency simulation exercise at the National Emergencies Trust. All of the staff and trustees were included. This is vital as both staff and trustees are equally essential in preparing to launch an appeal, navigating the immediate aftermath and the equality and scrutiny of the distribution of any funds raised. It is refreshing to work within a small, dynamic team with a flat structure, where everyone is included and has a say.

Why are these exercises important? Why do we do them?

Training and exercising is especially important given that (hopefully) the Trust won’t be launching an appeal too regularly. We need to keep walking through our plans together so that roles and responsibilities aren’t just known but are learnt almost by rote. In exercising we can also modify these roles and responsibilities from the learnings we identify. Exercising helps us to stay sharp, to test our processes, hone our communication and coordination skills and our decision-making. It also allows us to practice and make mistakes and take proactive steps to address gaps before a real emergency occurs.

On average, looking back over the last 50 years, the Trust would look to launch an appeal every 2.4 years; for disasters like Aberfan, Hillsborough, the 7/7 bombings and the Grenfell Tower fire, if we had existed then. It’s important we test regularly, so that when the next disaster strikes, we’re ready to launch a fundraising appeal as soon as possible.

What are the key steps to responding to emergencies?

I see it a bit like an iceberg, where all you can see is the tip with the vast majority happening below the surface - the unseen planning, training and exercising is the key, number one step to responding well to an emergency. This planning, training, and exercising must be inclusive. Inclusive of staff, trustees, volunteers, and partners. Partners will include our donors, patrons, government agencies, ministers, and resilience forum memberships across the UK. When an emergency occurs, it is crucial that we are communicating extremely clearly with some or all of this network, depending on circumstances. Transparent roles and responsibilities are vital as well as clear decision-making and intelligence-gathering. We need to make decisions at speed to launch an appeal, taking into account a wide range of information from various trusted sources, (appreciating that it’s often a fluid context we’re operating in).

What are the key things to consider when planning an exercise?

There will always be an element of exercise artificiality. What we must always try to do is to reduce this to a minimum and make it feel as realistic as it can possibly be. The team that takes part in the exercise, are as much if not more a part of this ‘reality’ in an exercise, as the exercise planners. It's like anything else – you get out what you put in. What I found last week is that everyone was in role and the post-exercise feedback session produced real learnings born out of some difficulties that were felt by the role players in the exercise. This is what it is all about! It helps us to refine response plans, policies, and procedures, making them more effective for future emergencies.

Are there any risks associated with exercising?

No – so long as there is an openness to learning and a no-blame culture. Exercising is about identifying any deficiencies or lessons and then actually learning from them. The idea is to create a safe environment to allow all the players to fulfil their role to the best of their abilities as the exercise unfolds. Most importantly, to learn from the lessons identified.

What can we learn from doing the exercises?

It’s a chance to practice our roles and responsibilities so we can work better as a team and foster collaboration. It’s important that we practice how these responsibilities interact with colleagues and partners. We can test our preparedness. This exercise was focussed on pre activation, which is the period from when an emergency arises to the moment we decide to launch an appeal (we aim to launch within as little as four hours). Next week, we are exercising an emergency response 1 month from launch, and, in the not-too-distant future we plan to exercise our immediate actions following an appeal launch. We plan, in the future, to do more cross-sector exercising, so that we can test and better understand how we work together with other agencies. This includes Government, other charities, businesses and first responders.