Emergency Response Plans for Oil and Gas

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In the last blog, I discussed how constructive simulation might be used to improve the quality of safety briefings.  This time I am going to discuss Emergency Response Plans (ERPs) and how constructive simulation can potentially revolutionize how these are prepared and used.

First of all, let's discuss WHY the industry creates Emergency Response Plans.  "Because we have to" is probably the wrong response.  "Because it helps create the conditions for success, mitigate loss and improve response when something goes wrong" is probably closer to the correct answer.  So stepping back, we can see that there is a need to make the potential response "successful" and that we need to limit losses when something goes wrong - this is the root of "why".

But what has happened?  People get focused on the "wrong answer" and create a 1000 page tome that no one reads (or can read) that checks all the boxes but in the end achieves absolutely nothing.  The problems with a long, text-based Emergency Response Plan are:

  a. they are hard to understand;
  b. the information is not readily accessible in an emergency;
  c. information is scattered in different places;
  d. it is hard to get an overview of "what is supposed to happen" in an emergency;
  e. it is difficult to translate text into "action" when it comes time to practice or when the real event occurs

So the current state is that we have (possibly) fully compliant Emergency Response Plans that are (mostly) useless.  How can we fix the problem?

Anyone remember back before GIS systems such as ESRI existed?  There were thousands of drawings with information in various formats which were difficult to overlay and cross reference, difficult to share and difficult to understand.  Sound familiar?

The same way that GIS has transformed the way the geo-information is stored, Constructive Simulation has the ability to transform Emergency Response Plan information from STATIC, difficult to use and understand to a simple and DYNAMIC tool that can be re-used in dozens of ways.

Here is an example of how a Constructive Simulation could assist in the creation of an Emergency Response Plan:

1.  Emergency Response Plan creator gathers relevant data from the existing GIS system and loads these into the constructive simulation.  Much of this information can be automatically or semi-automatically loaded into the simulation and this would usually only need to be done one time for all the emergency response plans in the area.  Nothing new is required - this is the same information that is needed for the paper-based ERP, except that it is in digital format. The information loaded would include:

  a.  Oil and Gas infrastructure
  b.  Surrounding municipal infrastructure
  c.  Terrain information
  d.  Local response equipment locations and catalog
  e.  Distant/on-call response equipment locations and catalog

2.  Emergency Response Plan creator then plans out a number of disasters using the constructive simulation. For a pipeline or wide area infrastructure this could be breaks, fires or explosions in different sectors (wherever a different response is needed).  For fixed infrastructure such as a gas well, it might be varying wind directions to show the differences in response.  With a modern constructive simulation, each disaster should not take a long time to prepare and place within the simulation - maybe one or two hours per disaster location.

3.  Emergency Response Plan creator finally lays out the actual emergency response by giving orders to the simulated entities within the simulation (the ones loaded during step 1).  Of course the response is done in accordance with municipal and mutual aid agreements that are in place.  This is done for each "disaster" that was created in step 2.  Depending on the size, duration and danger, each of the responses can be created in a couple of hours (the start state is usually the same).  Usually each disaster and response are saved as a single scenario.

That's it! Once the Digital Emergency Response Plan is created in the constructive simulation, the electronic file can be shared with consultants and government agencies with the same ease that a GIS shape file can be shared.  What you have at this point is a terrific digital product that has the following advantages over its poor cousin, the paper-based ERP:

• Fewer chances for errors - the resources (simulation entities) are placed on a visual map.  It is easy to see if there is something missing or out of place
• Easier to Use - the product, once created, can be used in multiple ways without each user having to re-visualize and recreate the data.
• Time and Space - the real world is taken into account when running the simulated ERP.  A truck can't drive faster than a truck can drive, and the simulated truck burns gas the same way a real truck does.  It is far easier to spot planning shortfalls in a simulation that uses time and space as opposed to a paper plan.
• Reuse, reuse, reuse - plot the data once and re-use it for multiple purposes, multiple times (more on this in a minute)
• Faster and less effort to create the plan

REUSE, REDUCE, RECYCLE

As was stated above, once you have the data in the simulation format, you can use it for multiple purposes.  Here are some examples:

1. Internal company policies and procedures - visualize the problem using the simulation and work together to solve the issues with the ERP and wide-area/long-term response
2. Safety briefings (as discussed in the last blog)
3. Internal Training - run mini-exercises to provide better training than a briefing in about the same amount of time
4. Provide government agencies with an easy to understand ERP document that they can visualize and approve faster and easier.  If a picture tells a thousand words, a dynamic simulation must be worth a million words.  Of course some text-based information will always be required.
5. Conduct Town Hall Meetings with a tool that lets landowners see and understand the ERP and get a level of comfort that you know what you are doing. Also it will be easier for them to understand what they must do in an emergency
6. Yearly Training - using a simulation is much more effective and realistic than a tabletop exercise, and it costs much, much less than a live exercise.  Live exercises will always be required, but this provides better training in the interim for a lot lower cost.

In summary a Digital ERP can provide significant value to all parties. Government approval agencies can approve plans faster because they understand it better and don't need to wade through a miry document to get the information they need.  Companies can produce better ERPs faster than before and at a greatly reduced cost due to the data reuse and less waste generation of words that no-one reads.  Landowners benefit because they have an easier to understand ERP that can be shown and validated with a simple to use tool.  Finally the public benefits because they have a better system that takes advantage of the recent advances in simulation technology to produce better ERPs that are being properly approved, diligently tested and exercised and efficiently approved with less bureaucracy.  

I hope that this has generated some interest and discussion.  I will discuss the validation of Emergency Response Plans in my next blog.

Keep Training!

Bruce

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How to Plan a Public Safety Exercise in 5 Easy Steps – Part 2/2

In the last blog, I covered the first three steps of planning a Public Safety Exercise:

1. Establish Training Goals
2. Determine the Training Audience
3. Hold an Initial Planning Meeting (at least two months before the event)!

Now it is time to finish off this article with the remaining two steps:

    4. Mid-Term/Master Scenario Events List Meeting

    5. Final Planning Meeting

Step Four – The Mid-Term/Master Scenario Events List Meeting

This meeting takes place around 45 days prior to the exercise and should involve representatives from all of the working groups that you set up two weeks earlier.   Just after your Initial Planning Meeting, you should have sent out meeting minutes and solicited milestones and a work plan from each of your working groups.

With this information under your arm, you should publish an agenda to the attendees.  

As a minimum, this is what you should try to accomplish during this meeting:

• Finalize the overall plan for the exercise
• Have a detailed exercise timeline completed
• Have  all of the Master Scenario Injects planned (but perhaps not fully completed)
• Finalize the exercise documentation, or at least have a concrete idea when the documentation will be done and by whom
• Agree on the physical exercise location and have a very clear idea of the internal layout (who will work where)
• Set a date, time and location for the Final Planning Meeting

Despite occurring only two weeks after the initial planning conference, the bulk of the planning and the vast majority of the exercise design should be done by the Mid Term Planning Meeting.  If your work groups are motivated and the work was planned out well, it should have gone quickly and according to plan.  If you had the forethought to set good milestones and check up early on the progress of the working groups, you would now have a very good idea about the exercise status and have a high degree of comfort. 

Often you will find out that things have not gone according to plan and some key work has been left undone.  This is the reason for holding the Mid-Term Planning Meeting so closely following the Initial Planning Meeting – you have only lost a couple of weeks and you have at least a month to go before the exercise.  You can re-assign the work and still recover without breaking a sweat.

Who should attend this meeting? Definitely the Exercise Control Working Group needs to attend, as well as key representatives from the Personnel Working Group and the Administration Working Group.  Depending on the state of the exercise design, you may have to a smaller or larger number from the Scenario Design working Group.   Remember that minor participants can connect with the meeting via WebEx/GoToMeeting or teleconference during key discussions.  There is no need to bring everyone together again.

Here are some key documents that need to be put together, or at least designed during the meeting:

• Exercise Background – the read-in for the exercise that describes the background situation, the resources available,
• Simulation Cell Plan – who will do what during the simulation?  Who are the role players and what are they doing?  What is the constructive simulation component to the exercise?  What are the master scenario events list groupings,  who is delivering them, and how are they being delivered? What is the communications plan for the simulation cell to communicate with the participants?
• Exercise Plan – Objectives for the exercise, plan for achieving the objectives, linking between the simulation cell plan and the objectives, the plan for Observer/Mentors – how will they observe and interact and how will they record what they see?  What is the security plan?  How will the exercise be laid out at the facility?   Where will key events take place?  What about name tags?  Feeding?  Coffee?  The exercise plan should manage all of these key details and more.

By the end of the meeting, you should have nearly all of the details coordinated finely enough and written down in enough detail that anyone could run the exercise in your place.  Remember that an exercise that requires Herculean effort to pull off at the last minute is not a success – it is simply a sign of poor planning.  The more sweat that goes into the upfront preparations, the fewer tears that occur during the actual event (and after).

Toward the end of the meeting, you should probably do a verbal walk-through of the event from start to finish so that everyone shares your vision as to how the exercise will take place.  The last thing you should do is make sure that the action items are covered and that everyone knows what they need to do, when they need to do it and what is next.

If all has gone well, you will have the following in hand:

1. A detailed Exercise Plan that completely describes how the event will take place, how it meets the training objectives, how the objectives are tracked and met and who does what
2. A complete and detailed timeline for the exercise and key events
3. The Master Scenario List Events entirely planned out (when/how/what/who) and a plan for completing the writing details
4. A detailed Simulation Cell Plan so that describes what information and events will be portrayed by the Simulation Cell and how they will be passed to the participants.
5. The Exercise Background Document in enough detail that it can be passed to participants

Within a day or so following the meeting, ensure you send out the minutes and finished products to everyone who needs it.  As a minimum, this is everyone who participated in the Initial Planning Meeting and anyone who you think should get it.  The only documents that should be “close hold” are the Master Scenario Events List and the Simulation Cell Plan, as these will spoil the surprise for the participants.  Everything else should be distributed as far and wide as possible to anyone who will read them.

STEP 5 – Final Planning Meeting

The Final Planning Meeting should take place about two weeks prior to the actual event.  It is a good idea to send out the agenda a week in advance so that you can collect any comments and make any desired modifications ahead of time.

By now, all of the heavy lifting has been done and ALL information has been completed and documents are done in for review.  The entire exercise is basically “done” and everything is coming together nicely.

Here is what you want to confirm during the meeting:

• All of the writing is done
• All of the logistics are prepared
• The participants are ready
• There are no issues
• Everything is ready to go to print

There should be no adjustments to the plan – just smoothing out wrinkles.  

Here are some specific tasks that you should ensure happen during the meeting:

1. Approve any documents that have not been approved.  People need to get on with using these documents right away, so you can’t hang on to them any longer.
2. Review the logistics in fine detail and ensure everything is in place.  What about name tags?  Do we have enough flip charts?  Pens and paper?  Do we need whiteboards?
3. Review and approve the simulation portion of the exercise.  Is the scenario fully designed?  Are all the resources that are needed programmed in?  Is the MSEL complete and ready to go?  Ensure that the simulation portion is fully developed and ready to go.
4. Go thought the exercise conduct step by step to ensure that everything is ready and in place and someone is in charge of it.  Take time to brainstorm and make sure nothing is forgotten – who will meet the bigwig at the door and show her around?  This is “now or never” for the event.
5. Final Check – the whole reason for holding this event is to achieve the training objectives.  Take a last look and make sure that you are, in fact, meeting the training objectives you have set out to meet.  Has your exercise grown too large and complex, or is it just the right size?  Is the focus properly on the Primary Training Audience and have all the distractions been eliminated?  Do you have a foolproof plan for capturing post exercise points with experienced observer/mentors?  How are they briefed?  How are they controlled?

With a final sigh of relief, you can push your chair away from the table, having planned an effective and well-focused exercise. 

Congratulations…And keep training!

Bruce

How to Plan a Public Safety Exercise in 5 Easy Steps – Part 1/2

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One of the biggest failures in the actual execution of training for public safety managers (or for anyone, for that matter) can be traced back to the lack of a plan.  Everyone’s time is valuable, so why waste it?  A little bit of planning can alleviate most of the issues and produce a positive training event and an experience that will gain you esteem and compliments from your peers.  Fortunately this is no secret and the steps are easy:

Step 1 – Establish Training Goals

What are you trying to teach?  Often people hold exercises for the simple reason that “it was scheduled” and then improvise the exercise design and content.  Mistake!  If you haven’t checked, first why not see if your organization has some training goals.  If you are fortunate, there will be clear training goals set out, complete with measureable objectives.  For instance, you may be working up toward next year’s TOPOFF exercise and your organization (or your superior organization) may have a plan to that end.  Work with it!  If there is no plan, then it is up to you.  Why not do a little research and find out what your organization is bad at doing and design an exercise to improve that.  Even if your organization works great together, why not stretch things and make the goal to work better with other organizations.  This leads in to the next point – establishing your training audience.

Step 2 – Determine the Training Audience

Who needs the training?  Everyone should undergo training, but you need to focus your training to a particular audience to provide the best benefit.  What I often do is divide the group of people to be trained into two groups – the Primary Training Audience, which is the small group that we are designing the training SPECIFICALLY for, and the Secondary Training Audience, who is everyone else who is attending the training event, but who are not the specific focus of the training.  What this does is add laser-sharp focus to your goals and objectives.  It either improves training for the Primary Training Audience, in which case it is necessary, or it improves training for the Secondary Training Audience, in which case it is non-essential and would ONLY be included if it DOES NOT impact the training or resources going toward the Primary Training Audience.  This seems harsh, but trust me, it is the ONLY way to separate the wheat from the chaff.  The good ideas (the ones that support the Primary Training Audience) get included and the well-intentioned, last minute, good but not great ideas don’t end up impacting the event.  If you are Draconian in disallowing stuff that detracts from or does not add to the Primary Training Audience’s training, then you WILL have a good training event. 

Step 3 – Hold an Initial Planning Meeting (at least two months before the event!)

The best training is a group effort with well-motivated and involved people who believe in what they are doing.  You need to invite the right group to the Initial Planning Meeting, and this means doing some research.  Who can you rely upon to complete tasks?  You need some “do-ers”.   Who needs “buy-in”?  In many cases you are going to have to forge together a number of working groups of people who, in the worst case, don’t want to work with you and are too busy.  The best case is that they want to help you and have some time to help you.  Plan for the worst, and hope for the best and you will do well. 

In preparation for the meeting, you should publish an agenda ahead of time to the agencies or groups who will be attending, monitoring and assisting with the exercise.  You need buy-in from everyone, so you might as well state it up front.  You also need to be clear that it is going to be a working meeting, so people who come should be prepared to make decisions on behalf of their department or group and that they will be participating in the planning.  You should publish with your agenda a tentative date or a few dates for the exercise event, as well as the planned participants - the groups, agencies, departments – as well as the overall training goals and objectives.  Solicit feedback prior to the event and try to iron any issues with the basic plan out prior to the planning conference – or else you will waste the whole session deciding what that training objective is or whether or not you are having an exercise at all.  

You should try to get the following out of the Initial Planning Meeting:

• Exercise Concept and Training Objectives - How long is the exercise?  Where will it be held?  Do the dates work? Break down the training objectives to at least one more level of detail.  You need to know more detail about your goals in order to design the exercise properly.  This is so important that for large exercises this portion is often conducted as its own meeting.
• Initial Groups of Master Scenario List Injects – what types of informational problems are going to be provided?  These should link directly to training objectives.
• Basic Scenario Overview – What is the constructive (time and space) side of the exercise going to look like?  What is the emergency (or emergencies) that the participants need to interact with in order to accomplish the training objectives
•  Outcomes – what is the training going to achieve?  After the training is over can we draw a line directly between the outcomes and the training objectives?
•  Goals for the Exercise – Perhaps there are one or more goals that the exercise is trying to achieve (over and above the training objectives).  “Establish a working relationship with Department X” or “Involve Agency Y” in training are examples of this.

After you have hammered all of these items out and have some good agreement amongst the participants, you will now see that what lies in front of you is a bunch of work. You probably need or organize the work either as formal committees (with a formal schedule of meetings) or as informal working groups (with a formal schedule of meetings and milestones). The point is that unless it is a very simple exercise or you are a tireless worker with nothing else to do, there is probably more work here than one person can accomplish.  Here are some examples of the working groups needed:

·         Administrative Working Group – working out the details of the venue, feeding, travel, accommodations, administrative instruction, contracting, work parties for setup and teardown (if required), bookings, etc.

·         Scenario Writing Board – the group of people who are going to create the exercise.  What types of subject matter experts are needed?  Where will they come from?  Who will create the Master Scenario List injects?  How will the constructive side of the exercise come together?  Where is the scenario?  How do we find out about which assets will be involved?  All of these details (and more) need to be discussed.

·         Exercise Control Working Group – The exercise control working group is in charge of the overall exercise.  How it all works out in the end is dependent on this group and how they create the overall exercise – Their aim is to ensure the exercise meets the training objectives.  This group is usually small and members sit in on the other working groups.  This group will also be instrumental in choosing the tools to be used and the contractor(s) to be hired for the exercise.

·         Personnel Group – someone needs to coordinate the invitations for other departments and agencies, managing the big wigs who will be attending and their interaction with the exercise, the invitations to the subject matter experts, finding suitable observer/mentors to work with the training audience, and so on.

These groups should set objectives, schedule and milestones and meet as frequently as required to ensure the work is being done.  Often the meeting can be a simple teleconference where the products are shared beforehand and the meeting focuses on any issues with the products and what needs to be done next. 

In the next blog in this series I will focus on the two remaining steps – the Mid Term/Master Scenario Events List Meeting and the Final Planning Meeting.

Keep Training!

Bruce  

Constructive Simulation for Public Safety - How it Works

In my last blog I talked about what is wrong with training for Emergency Responders, EOCs and Public Safety officials.  The basic problems are too much scripting in the training (not enough flexibility), too costly to provide good training, and not enough feedback on decisions.  This is where a constructive simulation comes in.

What is a constructive simulation?  It is basically an "arena" where free play can take place, participants can make items in the simulation (entities) do things and respond to things, and people make decisions which are implemented within the simulation. Basically Constructive Simulation is a cause-effect tool that provides feedback to participants. Unlike 3D (virtual) simulations, constructive simulations typically show a map and a participant operating the computer can control many (10s, 100s, 1000s of entities) to accomplish their task.

Simulation is not a game. For instance, a game may or may not have realistic responses for player actions.  No simulation is perfect, but if the actions and reactions are "way off" then bad lessons result.  In other words, participants will take the bad lessons (that won't really work) and try to apply these in real life - disaster results. Obviously then, for a simulation to be effective it has to be somewhat realistic in order to teach good lessons.

The other difference between a game and a simulation is the post-exercise review. Games usually don't allow you to go back and review what went right and what went wrong. This is an essential point to learning, since you seldom have time to learn during the actual simulation. A good simulation will allow you and your team to review what happened, discuss a better way forward and to replay the simulation again in order to cement these lessons. There are many other differences, but sometimes, with the correct supervision and the right focus, a game can be used as a learning tool - these are what people sometimes call "Serious Games".

So how do you actually "run" a simulation?  There are many different ways. Some purists would say that the only way is from within a heavily controlled environment where every activity is planned and scripted, but I personally think that this removes some of the "fun " element to training (which is very important) and also limits potential training opportunities.

The opposite is wrong, too, where everyone gets together to train and no-one has any objectives and there is no aim to the training - this is game playing and is a waste of time. Probably a happy medium is best, where there are learning objectives and someone is in charge of ensuring the training is meeting the learning objectives. Constructive simulation doesn't always have to always be a group training tool - there is also room for using it as an individual training tool. The software has to be the right type in order to allow effective training, but this type of training scenario is ideal for training people up on how to use electronic Command and Control software such as eTeam, WebEOC and SoftRisk.  In these cases the simulation is appended to the C2 system to provide input "as if" it was coming from the field.

What about the physical layout?  Some simulations can be run on a single computer and others require a server, an Internet connection or a bank of computers. Often the simplest solution that meets your needs is the best. Typically a constructive simulation exercise has a few "cells" that are in charge of different things, and these are increased, decreased or eliminated depending on the size, scope and aim of the exercise:

• Exercise Control - ensures that the exercise is "on track" and meets the training objectives, timings and aims. They are in charge of the overall event.
• Participants (players) - these are the people undergoing training, and their setup, communications equipment, tools, techniques and procedures should be as close as possible to what they would use in real life.  
• Simulation Cell - this is the group that provides the simulation training to the participants or players.  This cell contains computers, role players and communications equipment to communicate directly with the participants. Often the simulation cell can be subdivided into additional cells for larger simulation, but this can be discussed in greater detail later on.
• Observers and Mentors - this group is typically composed of subject matter experts or similarly trained people and they shadow the participants and takes notes of what is going right or wrong for the Post Exercise Review.

The actual exercise has several components as well:

• Welcome brief - participants are given introductions to the facility and other participants, administrative instructions and timings for the exercise.
• Exercise Brief - participants are given an overview of the exercise aims and objectives (what the participants should get out of the exercise)
• Exercise Scenario Briefing - as required, participants are given an introduction to the scenario so that the exercise can start smoothly. The scenario may also be published to the participants ahead of time via email or regular mail.
• Exercise Start - The Exercise Control Cell globally announces the start of the exercise. Simultaneously (usually) the simulation software is started at this point.
• Exercise Conduct -The Simulation Cell personnel communicate with the participants as frequently as necessary and with the level of detail required to provide a realistic training environment. Much more on this in a later blog.
• End Exercise - The Exercise Control Cell globally announces the end of the exercise and the simulation software stops at this point. There is frequently a pause for up to an hour before the Post Exercise Review brief.
• Post Exercise Review - this brief is conducted interactively with the participants. Again, much more on this later on, as it is a vital component of simulation training.

As always, the various components are expanded, reduced or deleted depending on the aim of the exercise.   In a future blog, I will detail more about the exercise conduct and post exercise review portions.

Keep training!

Bruce

Why Simulation is Important for Emergency Responders

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Calling all Emergency Operations Center (EOC) staff...

When was the last time you had a good exercise that tested your abilities? Was the exercise realistic? What did you learn?

I have seen a number of "bad" exercises. Some of the worst have been tabletop exercises where the participants drink their own "bathwater". Everyone gathers around a table, discusses a scenario, nods their heads for a while and goes home...what does that have to do with reality? I think everyone knows that emergency events fall into two categories - the "USUAL" where it happens every day and people are quite comfortable about dealing with them and "UNUSUAL" where the "fit hits the sham".

Unusual events seem to have these characteristics:

• Multi-agency response
• Large risk to life
• Cross-jurisdictional
• High potential for loss
• Outside of "normal" response

So how do we train for these types of events? Everyone is busy, time is at a premium and the "day job" simply gets in the way. So we set aside time to conduct an exercise. As discussed above, an exercise needs to be easy to run, not cost a lot, bring REAL value to the training and not take a lot of time.

Live exercises are good, but they cost a lot, take a lot of time and you can't run them realistically because there are limits to what you can do in training. I think that live exercises alway need to be run, but perhaps only occasionally (once every other year) to PROVE that everyone knows their job during unusual events.

Tabletop exercises are cheap and easy to run, but provide poor training. Sure it is better than nothing, but no-one is ever certain that the decisions that are agreed upon around the table are the right decisions. We rely on subject matter experts who attend the tabletop to tell us that the decisions we made were right...but they don't really know, other than through their experience, which won't cover every situation.

If we look next door at the military, they train all the time with simulation tools and have been doing so for years. Here is why they use simulation:

• Live exercises cost too much and are hard to run
• Tabletop exercises don't provide quality training
• Simulation gives training flexibility to practice nearly any eventuality
• Good simulation tools teach good lessons

Any of this sound familiar? So why is it that the Emergency Response/Public Safety is slow to embrace these technologies. I think we believe we are too busy doing the "USUAL" to worry about the "UNUSUAL", and that if we talk about the "UNUSUAL" once a year or so at a tabletop, that is "good enough".

The problem is that the UNUSUAL always comes back to bite you, and the bite may include loss of life, loss of property, slow response or ineffective response. Look at the hatred that British Petroleum (BP) has garnered in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. They were just doing the USUAL - they had a cut and paste emergency response plan, they went through the motions, attended the safety briefings, etc.. The problem is that the public demands better...for the same price...without spending any extra time.

How do we do more with the same resources? CONSTRUCTIVE SIMULATION may be part of that solution.

Constructive Simulation is different from first person simulators where you look at the computer screen and see the world in 3D. Instead, you typically see a top-down map of the area and vehicles and persons responding to the event, just like a 911 operator with a map.

Constructive simulations usually allow you to run events that are much more complex and difficult than a live event...AND they provide feedback for decision makers. If someone wants to move fire trucks from a mutual aid partner to the disaster location, these trucks take the same amount of time to move from X to Y as the real trucks. Miracles don't happen. Responses get tested and feedback is provided so that everyone can learn from their mistakes.

Constructive simulations aren't perfect - a computer program is not going to solve all of your emergency response issues. All constructive simulation will do is take a group of effective individuals and their equipment and teach them to work more effectively as a team.

In the next bog, I will describe how a constructive exercise works...

Look forward to your comments!

Bruce

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