This document presents a practical “how to” guide on
preparing, hosting, and running crisis exercises.
  


 


 





 

 
 • Great exercises engage players and prepare them to deal
Š with uncertainity, information scarcity, and with the
•• politics and personalities in and around the crisis
management and incident response teams.
Nobody knows what the future holds but we can develop
the skills, knowledge and attitudes that ensure a resilient
response. A response that protects all stakeholders and
the long-term viability of the business.

Great exercises give careful consideration to three core

•• components:
– –
players must believe the scenario to be relevant. Without
 relevance, there will be no engagement
the exercise is a statement of what players must achieve
over a fixed perdiod of time
the training environment must support the realistic
delivery of the scenario and and the exercise.

SCENARIO EXERCISE

ENVIRONMENT

 —“”




 There are a range of colloquial and industry-specific terms


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used to define different exercise types so it’s not always
easy to understand what anyone really means. The
definitions we use in this document merge those used by
the World Health Organisation, UK Government Cabinet
Office Lexicon and previous good practice tools such as
the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games
document ‘Local Authority Olympic Resilience Testing and
Exercising Handbook’.
And just in case you’re unsure what an Exercise is, we’re
using the definition from the Cabinet Office Civil
Contingencies Secretariat which states:
“[An exercise is a] simulation designed to validate
organisations’ capability to manage incidents and
emergencies. Specifically, exercises will seek to validate
training undertaken and the procedures and systems
within emergency or business continuity plans.”


 

 


Seminar Table-top Functional/ Command Live exercise/full-

post exercise scale exercise

Key Emphasis on Emphasis on Emphasis on readiness Emphasis on

Characteristic discussion. decision-making. but without movement rehearsal & practice
of people in physical and includes
space. movement of people
in real-world
locations.

Conducttr solution: Conducttr solution: Conducttr solution: Conducttr solution:

Presenter Presenter or Virtual Virtual Desktop with Virtual Desktop with
Desktop with Dove Raven licence and above Hawk licence and
licence and above. above.

 ’“”


 ™ SEMINAR/ DISCUSSION-BASED exercises are usually

š
 delivered early in the planning process to explore options,
identify challenges and to define solutions. Hence these
 exercises are conducted before a response plan is known.

 Sometimes when people refer to table-top exercises they
…­
‚Š

‚Š€ may mean this discussion-based exercise but in our
definition, we distinguish discussion-based from table-top

€ 
›‡
‚ˆ by adding a plan or expected course of action.



 


š TABLE-TOP exercises (TTX) focus on decision-making
during a simulated scenario and familiarity with the

 response plan. Hence they differ from a purely
discussion-based exercise in that they are a managed
…­
‚Š

‚Š€ walk-through where a response plan is available. The pace

€ 
›‡
‚ˆ and format of the exercise depends on the readiness of
the team and designed to build familiarity and confidence
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 ˜“”


 FUNCTIONAL EXERCISE/DRILL/ COMMAND POST exercises

™™





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–
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are designed to test the readiness of the training audience
to a simulated scenario in a more stressful, realistic,
time-pressured way. The scope of the exercise might be a
specific function (drill) or multiple functions across the
organisation (functional exercise).
The term “command post exercise” refers to the idea that
the training audience are responding from the location
they would respond from, using relevant communications
systems.

–™ LIVE EXERCISE/ FULL-SCALE/FIELDexercises are different

š™ from the functional/command post exercises in that they
 involve interaction with the physical space in some way
meaning they are practical, involving on the ground
deployment of resources, often with greater numbers of

 personnel, usually at multiple levels of the response

 
Š ›Š structure. They might involve staff evacuating an office,
œ 
ƒŠ the crisis team convening in a dedicated operations room,
€­  
‚Š passengers/customers/the public rescued in some way
and so on.
… 

‚ˆ

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–
 Œ ­…‹
 Ž
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 ”“”
 – 

Seminar Table-top Functional/ Live exercise/full-scale

Command post exercise
exercise

Location (travel, If the location is not the normal place of work, then need to consider how participants will
accommodation, get to the exercise location, where they’ll stay and how they’ll be fed. Rest breaks and
and site safety) meals need to be considered and factored into the exercise.

Layout (people and Not required As the number of participants increases and/or the diversity of player
places) roles and responsibilities increases, it becomes necessary to produce a
diagram of the physical location of each participants – even if working
remotely.

The layout diagram ensures no practical reality of running the exercise is

overlooked.

Communications Not required A solution must be found to allow participants to step outside the exercise
(out-of-world) to raise a hand (physically or virtually) and discuss logistical, technical or
other issues unrelated to the scenario.

Conducttr’s TeamChat Plus is a collaborative instant messaging solution like

Teams or Slack (but integrated with the simulation environment) that can provide
this communications channel.

Remote delivery Videoconferen One or more videoconferencing accounts will be needed.

cing required The exercise will almost certainly start on a videoconference call to
orientate everyone, but then thought needs to be given to if, when and
how players are to leave and join conference groups.

Conducttr offers integration with Zoom videoconferencing and supports MS Teams and Webex.
Conference notifications and links can be sent within the simulation environment to minimise
inconvenience to players and ensure the smooth, timely running of the exercise.

On-premise Meeting room Meeting room or Meeting room or Meeting room or rooms for
delivery with large rooms for different rooms for different different syndicates; rooms
screen syndicates; rooms syndicates; rooms can be geographically
required can be can be geographically distributed. May use
geographically distributed. May use dedicated operations room.
distributed. dedicated operations
room.

Devices Only single Participants need Participants need Participants need internet-
screen internet-connected internet-connected connected device (laptop or
required device (laptop or device (laptop or tablet preferred).
tablet preferred) tablet preferred) Due to increased
complexity, exercise control
will benefit from additional
monitor to keep track of
unfolding exercise.

 ž“”
 
In the pages that follow we look at these considerations
across the four exercise types and highlight what we
believe is important. Figure 3 provides an overview of the
considerations when planning and delivering an exercise.

—


 Ÿ“”
 “—
Consideration Seminar Table-top Functional/ Command post Live exercise/full-
exercise scale exercise

Registration No registration Unless using one-click anonymous registration, player details such as name
required. & email will need to be known in advance. In most cases a substitute
(perhaps temporary) email address can be used while the exercise is
designed and tested.

For convenience, exercise designers may pre-register their players in

advance of the exercise, although this will not be possible if using 2FA.

It is advisable to allow a pre-exercise period for participants to register or log

in and familiarise themselves with the exercise environment before the
exercise starts.

Conducttr offers a range of registration options depending on the level of security

needed from one-click anonymous login to 2FA with SMS or email with whitelisting.

Participants may be anonymous or identified.

Participants are initially made known to Conducttr by uploading with the Teams Table
via the Scenario Editor.

Organisation of The defining The organisation of players into teams, roles and positions is fundamental to
players characteristic the design of the exercise and will be likely determined by the training
of the seminar objectives and exercise scope. For example, the development of
is that communications, collaboration and trust may require different players to
participants receive different content & instructions.
are led by a
facilitator who It can be useful to create a diagram of the team structures and each player’s
presents from role and position.
the single
exercise Conducttr provides a wide range of options for sending specific content to specific
screen. players. Remember that a “role” is common to all teams whereas a “position” is unique.

Exercises should be designed with roles, teams and positions in mind from the
beginning even if player details are unknown.

During or just before an exercise, Exercise Control can move players to different roles
and positions.

Player No special Participants may need certain permissions to perform their job in the exercise
permissions permissions environment as they would in real life.
required
Exercise Control and red teams will almost certainly need special permissions
to affect the exercise while it unfolds.

Participants should be informed of the permissions they have been granted

so that they can fulfill expectations of them during the exercise.

Permissions in Conducttr are determined by the participant’s position and what

permissions are granted by a persona. (“Personas” are the digital entities performing as
stakeholders). E.g. the permission to post news articles as a particular media
organisation is determined by the permissions granted by the persona organisation and
how that permission is assigned to players.

So-called “special permissions” are predominantly intended for those working in some
way related to exercise control or exercise execution such as those in the red team or
adjudication.

 ¡“”
 —
Consideration Seminar
Information As a seminar, everyone receives the
Asymmetry same information.
(Roles and
Positions)
Conducttr’s Presenter screen
provides a 3-column display with
each column independently
addressable: this makes a seminar
more engaging by seeing the
scenario unfold at different times
across the columns.
When conducted in the same
physical location, a single dedicated
device for participant responses
might be used in addition and in
conjunction with the Presenter
screen.
Collaboration Collaboration usually takes the form
of a group discussion or a group
activity at each inject. While helpful to
have these open conversations, it
doesn’t compare to collaboration on
the job.

Table-top Functional/ Live exercise/
Command full-scale
post exercise exercise
Players are likely to receive information determined by
their job and the stakeholders they commonly interact
with.
Managing information asymmetry for anything other
than a table-top exercise can be complicated and
typically requires a master events list on a large
spreadsheet detailing how information should be
delivered to specific players at specific times
Conducttr replaces paper-based systems with an
automated Master Events List (MEL) that tracks the
exercise and ensures content is delivered to the right
people at the right time according to their role,
position, and team (see Organisation of players
above)
Social media feeds can be configured to present
different realities to different teams so that each feed
reflects the consequences of that team’s decisions (or
indecision).
Figure 1 offers a convenient way to review player
activities – all of which should relate to one or more
training objectives.
Having decided what the players must do, the
exercise designer must then create the environment
to support the collaboration required.
If running a remote exercise, two communications
channels are recommended – instant messaging and
videoconferencing.
Conducttr offers many ways to support collaboration
including TeamChat Plus (instant messaging), integration
with Zoom and support for MS Teams, closed email with
predictive addressing, collaborative publishing of articles and
embedded Google Docs.
“¢“”
 ——
Consideration Seminar Table-top
Location & When run face-to- When run on location, a
Remote face, all that’s needed large presentation screen
is a PowerPoint in a single meeting room
presentation; online is might be augmented by
easily facilitated with player devices or
screenshare of the additional break-out
same presentation rooms.
over videoconference.
When run online,
videoconferencing is a
key requirement but also
required is the ability for
exercise control to see or
detect player actions and
hence best conducted in
a simulated environment.
Conducttr’s Presenter Conducttr’s Virtual Desktop
screen can be shared allows participants to log in
via videoconference and via a browser on any device.
can be augmented with Player actions are
player devices to allow communicated in real-time
more participatory to exercise control so that it
engagement which can always has visibility of the
be especially important exercise.
when working remotely Conducttr offers integration
via videoconference. with Zoom
videoconferencing and
supports MS Teams and
Webex.
It’s recommended to use
Backchannel or TeamChat
Plus to allow players to
communicate with Exercise
Control to ask for assistance
or clarification.

Functional/ Live exercise/
Command post full-scale
exercise exercise
For Command Post & Live/Full-scale
exercises where there is movement in or
through a physical space, a site visit is
likely necessary to check for mobile &
WIFI signal availability, transport
connections, accommodation, parking
and to conduct a safety assessment.
These exercises are best run in a
dedicated simulation environment so that
training content and actions doesn’t get
mistaken for the real thing. A closed
simulated environment also has the
benefit that players don’t get distracted
by their job when they should be training.
For live/full-scale exercises, it may be
desirable to integrate or augment the
simulated environment with live systems
where no simulation of the live system is
available.
When running exercises remotely,
videoconferencing will need to support
breakout rooms and/or multiple
conference channels.
Conducttr offers a complete simulation
environment that supports constructive (player
vs computer) and virtual (player vs player)
simulation.
As its name implies, Conducttr can conduct
the whole exercise – telling human role-
players when and how to act as well as
publishing content for scheduled injects.
The system has a deep information & social
media environment for simulating strategic
communications, media operations and
intelligence operations.
Conducttr can connect anyone with a web
browser to the simulated environment and can
also connect with external systems to
synchronise their activity during an exercise.
“““”
’

–

 ““”
 
Consideration Seminar Table-top Functional/ Live exercise/full-
Command post scale exercise
exercise

Communication Communication methods refers to how players receive information about the world and to
methods do their job. For example, email, phone calls, social media and so on. Hence methods
should be chosen based on those encountered by players during normal business and
those during a crisis.

All communication methods (channels) offered by Conducttr are optional and only those needed for
any particular exercise need to be used.
Some channels might be chosen to provide feedback to players on their actions – for example using
the graph channel to communicate the company share price or pattern of life to communicate public
sentiment.

Realism The degree of realism that is desirable depends on the experience of the players (training
audience) with more experienced players expecting a greater freedom of action and a
higher fidelity of replication of the real environment.
With greater freedom of action, greater emphasis is placed on exercise control to
adjudicate actions and inactions and communicate the consequences to players. This is
where a dedicated simulation environment is worthwhile because everything can be
managed and manipulated.
A red team and role-players can be used to increase the realism of consequences
experienced by players as a result of their actions or inaction.

Ultimately, realism will be dictated by the training objectives but delivering higher levels of
realism safely requires a simulation environment.

How the scenario evolves will be influenced by the realism desired.

Conducttr allows exercise designers to dial up or dial down the level of realism depending on
objectives and budget. Adding an expansive media environment and social graphs for key
stakeholders may take longer to prepare than having just the basics. However, Conducttr allows
designers to save libraries at various levels of granularity and detail which hence makes it quicker to
build deep worlds faster.

Red teams and role-players can be sent information specific to them to help improve their meaningful
interaction with players.

Cooperation vs Given the Some exercises can have
competition nature of this teams playing in parallel
exercise format, and hence in competition
all players are with each other for which
using discussing team can achieve the best
actions outcome. Such competition
together. can be instructive or
illuminating during after
action review when team
actions are compared and
evaluated.
In command post and live exercises,
teams typically collaborate across
departments to achieve a common aim.
The exception to this is the use of a red
team to thwart the training audience
ambitions or simply to add a higher
degree of realism.

Competing teams will need

their own breakout rooms –
physical or virtual.

Conducttr allows participants to be organised into teams and for content to be published on a team-by-
team basis or to specific individuals.

 “—“”
“
Consideration Seminar Table-top Functional/ Command Live exercise/full-
post exercise scale exercise

Adjudication As a group The exercise will be Because these exercises are designed to give
discussion, the predominantly players greater freedom of action, it’s likely that
facilitator is scripted which means human adjudication is desirable and necessary
adjudicating the adjudication points from an expert or experienced facilitator best
exercise can be more able to interpret player behaviours and their
throughout. quantitative than consequences.
qualitative. This
This requires the allows less Adjudication should be purposefully designed
facilitator to be knowledgeable into the exercise to ensure the best training
more facilitators to run the outcomes.
knowledgeable exercise.
than might
otherwise need be Conducttr can provide Conducttr provides adjudicators with real time data to
the case for table- automated adjudication better understand the state of the exercise and can
top exercises or provide guidance to prompt at specific key adjudication points.
conducted with facilitators based on
expert input during the
simulation design stage.
software.

Branching & Branching is The role of branching Exercises of this type should be designed with
Consequences unlikely to be used is to show players the consequences in mind and not necessarily
or if it is, involves consequences of their branching. Branching is a means to an end and
simply skipping to actions. may not be appropriate in open exercises.
a presentation In a table-top exercise
slide. that is predominantly Thinking in terms of consequences allows us to
scripted, several consider how we can augment the linear master
branch points can be events list with additional content to raise or
prepared and lower stakes without worrying that our MEL will
anticipated in fall apart on first contact with the players!
advance.
Consequences can take the form of increased or
After branching, it is reduced reputation, stress, sentiment, share
important at some price, fatalities, support and many other factors.
point in the scenario
to return to a core
inject to avoid too
many branches on
branches which
results in an explosion
of work for the
designer.

Conducttr allows Conducttr provides several features to exercise control

designers to to manage branching and consequences. This includes
automatically branch the on-demand content sequences (Pattern of Life),
exercise based on a branching (Inject Grid), impersonation, engagement
range of player actions, spoofing and more.
multiple actions and
inaction.

 “’“”

Consideration Seminar Table-top Functional/ Live
Command post exercise/full-
exercise scale exercise

Assessment Assessment will Assessments are more Given the range of player freedom,
likely be straightforward with this type of assessment is more complicated. Even
continuous during exercise due to achievement of if training objectives have a simple pass
the discussion. training objectives being more or fail, providing feedback to players on
easily quantifiable and how they passed or failed is more useful
verifiable. and constructive but more problematic.

Trained observers are likely to be used

to evaluate qualitative behaviours and
actions throughout the exercise.

Conducttr provides a range of In addition to our Assessment Toolkit

interaction types and calculations
to provide quantitative scores for
players and teams.
Our Assessment Toolkit allows
designers to create assessment
schemas to score observed player
behaviours and present these as
desirable capabilities. Player and
team scores can be compared as
a radar diagram.
(mentioned in the left column), Conducttr
provides a detailed time-stamped export of
all player activities and content produced
including emails, tweets, news articles and
comments and more.
Observers can use our After-Action Review
feature to tag content and leave
contemporaneous notes. This tagged content
and notes can be exported for easy and
speedy feedback at any time.

Pacing The seminar Without a simulation platform, exercises are usually paced manually by a
leader is expected person with a watch and using an excel sheet displaying the exercise run
to manage the time schedule.
group discussion
and ensure the Pacing is a factor of importance in increasing and reducing pressure on
exercise runs to the players as time is always critical during a crisis. Hence it is desirable
time and finishes to test and rehearse the exercise to assess the pacing ahead of the real
as expected to exercise. Note that the perception of time will be different for players
finish. compared to exercise control and more time should be allowed for
collaborative tasks compared to solo tasks.

Conducttr’s master events list ensures that exercise control is focused on higher-order activities such as
player assessment and not mundane time-keeping. The time interval between injects can be slowed or
speeded up. And because the pace is computer-controlled, unless altered manually the pace will never
vary between rehearsals and exercises – making it much easier to perfect the exercise and compare player
performance across exercise sessions.

Red Teaming & As mentioned throughout this document, a “red team” is a team of participants providing a
Role-playing realistic “push back” against player actions to either simulate real world conditions or to provoke
fresh thinking and insights.

If a red team is to be used, consideration must be given to how they’ll appear to the players,
what the boundaries might be and what special permissions they might be given within the
exercise environment.

Within Conducttr, red teams can appear as any stakeholder without revealing their true identity – hence
making the exercise immersive and more realistic. Specific red team prompts and data can be published to
ensure no opportunity or time for (re)action is missed.

 “˜“”
Conducttr crisis simulation software 
allows anyone to create engaging www.conducttr.com
exercises and develop higher performing info@conducttr.com
teams, faster.
Our clients include NATO, 77 Brigade, the
UN Office on Counter Terrorism, GSCP,
UEFA and many other forward-thinking
organisations who want to exercise in a
realistic way.

With experience developed on projects, 

events, incidents and exercises, www.controlledevents.com
Controlled Events has since 2011 support@controlledevents.com
become a trusted one stop supplier of
resilience, readiness, control and
communications to a wide range of
corporate clients and major events. We
retain a large number of our clients year
on year and differ to most single service
suppliers in that we integrate a range of
capabilities to deliver first class
resilience, readiness, communications
and control.

Version 1.0
10/23/2020 12:55:00 PM