Exercising Your Resiliency Plan - Home and Work

Before each game, football teams practice their plays over and over.  The military exercises their plan of attack prior to engagements if they can.  Even kids participate in regular fire drills at school.  Think about high school Algebra, how many times did we work equations determining what 'X' stood for?  Yet, when it comes to both business continuity and family preparedness, we tend to leave the drills and exercises outside of our commitment to resiliency.  This oversight will create increased confusion and stress during a crisis.

There are many reasons we should exercise our business continuity plan.  One of the most important, is that it validates the plan and predicted outcomes.  For example, if the plan calls for a recovery of the phone system in under two hours, it would be ideal to be able to point to a set of exercises which prove the two hour mark can be achieved.  Not to mention improving each time as the recovery team becomes faster and more confident.  Team confidence and synergy is critical to resilience and a successful outcome to a crisis.

Additionally, many of the unforeseen 'cascading effects' of the plan may be discovered during exercises.  These cascading effects are the domino or down stream effects that we might have missed during the initial business analysis.  Many times, we plan for recovery efforts to unfold a particular way, only to discover we planned them backwards, or the expectations were unrealistic.  We might have overlooked a task interdependency, like the computer system controlling the electrical distribution of the manufacturing plant, but the power is out making the recovery of both processes incredibly difficult.

Some experienced Business Continuity Planners are able to determine shortfalls and adjust the plan based upon a detailed review of the business impact analysis; some will not.  This is a perfect reason to use exercises - to discover hidden effects of the plan or crisis.  A side note, some use exercises to validate a line of thinking.  Perhaps upper management believes the best manner to recover operations is X, Y, Z, however, the operators believe it to be, A, B, C.  Planners can use the exercises to validate or invalidate either preferred methods then present the findings to both groups.

Finally, when we exercise our plans, we discover new information or methods to carry out everyday tasks.  In some cases, these methods are more efficient than everyday operations while other methods should be regulated to emergency operations because they are cumbersome.  I recall a client who was conducting a national level event.  An hour prior to starting, the primary collaboration tool went down, taking away the only perceived way to communicate and collaborate with dispersed employees and units.  A young employee pointed out an alternative which is used commonly, but has limited capabilities. The Operations Director elected, as most will, that some capability is better than none.  This adaptation was a "Lesson Learned," especially since there was an abundance of new employees who did not realize the common method would suffice for the main method.  This sort of organizational knowledge is often lost when employees transition to new positions or leave the company.  One final thought, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," George Santayana.

Tracking lessons learned from exercises and events is an important way to learn from the past.  Even the federal government has a website for the review of lessons learned from all public safety agencies.  For additional information on exercising a plan, refer to the Disaster Recover Institute's Professional Practice and FEMA's Exercise Planning Course.

Like our businesses, we tend to neglect our family's safety when we fail to exercise a plan.  The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) indicates that only 23% of families have a fire plan and have exercised it.  This is especially alarming since one third of Americans believe they have 6 minutes to get out of their house before the fire is life threatening.  That is six minutes from the time the fire started, not from the time you heard the fire alarm.

Consider this, my wife and I were at a hotel asleep when a fire alarm finally woke us up.  She believed it was the alarm clock and tried to turn it off while I covered the alarm with my pillow.  After all, it was 2am.  Now that we've lost additional time, how long was the fire burning before it set the alarm off?  Less than a minute?  A minute?  More?  Waking up at 2am to a sounding alarm with smoke in the house, is not the time to practice the fire drill.  Therefore, I pose the following questions:

• Do your children know how to crawl out of their room and outside to safety in the dark?  
• Where does the family meet up?  
• What do they do if they can't get out of their room, what happens then?  
• Can the entire family escape to safety in under six minutes?
•  Have you practiced this multiple times?  Why not?

Another incident to ponder, I was working graveyard as a Deputy Sheriff.  My family was in town running errands.  My phone rang, it was a coworker asking me what I was doing.  I rudely indicated I was sleeping.  My coworker asked me to step outside and look east.  This is what I saw:

By the time I was off of the phone, the fire turned into this and was headed in my direction (notice the rapid change in the wind):

How long did I have?  How long did I need to evacuate with the dogs, photo albums, work stuff, etc....I didn't know because I failed to exercise my plan for wildfires.  I had no idea how long I needed to get the stuff out of the house.  I knew the priorities as I had a wildfire plan, but I did not take the time to test the plan. 

Have you practiced your tornado drill?  Wildfire evacuation?  How long does it take to drive to the hospital in different traffic conditions?  Do your children know where the fire extinguisher is?  Do they know how to use it?  Have you practiced it?

Another item I have noticed, I'm sure all of us know how to dial 911 on our cell phones.  However, do your children know how?  It's much different than picking up the landline and dialing the number needed.  In this simple task, there are many factors.  First, do you have to unlock the phone, or can you use the "Emergency Call" feature to dial the number?  Do you have to select a certain phone setting which is common to touch screens?  Don't forget to use the "Send" button to actually make the call.  Also, my oldest, he holds the phone in front of his face like he's on speaker phone.  Apparently, he's seen me on the speaker phone a few times.  Needless to say, in this instance, he wouldn't be able to hear the emergency dispatcher ask him vital questions unless he turned on the speaker.  Don't forget to do the same for the other cell phones in the house; brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, can all have different phones, and then there's the work cell phones too!

For additional considerations and planning guidance for the home and family, please refer to The National Fire Protection Association's Planning Section and FEMA's Family Plan Section. Also, take time to review this video as well when considering your fire plans. 

Once you plan for the emergencies, exercise them.  Remember our children are exercising their fire drill plans at school.  Don't be bested by the school system!  Exercise your plans at work and at home!  Failing to exercise is the same as failing to plan completely.