Pre-planning for the Training and Exercise Planning Workshop (TEPW) is required from every jurisdiction so that the most essential and effective schedule will be produced that tests your priorities. It starts by identifying information resources necessary, such as elected and/or appointed jurisdictional officials, relevant disciplines (police, fire, hospitals, non-government and volunteer organizations, etc.). With stakeholders jurisdictions should review the results of previous exercises, jurisdictional assessment and preparedness reports that help make up the State Preparedness Report (SPR). Other information needed is the state Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) and the Nevada Commission on Homeland Security’s set of Core Capability priorities. With this information your jurisdictional stakeholder group should analyze your own jurisdiction’s essential capabilities that need to be trained for and tested in an exercise. You control what your jurisdiction’s needs are!
The new Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP) guidance suggests jurisdictions use the “progressive approach” in developing your schedule so that the smaller steps necessary to have an effective training and exercise program occur first. An example would be if previous exercise results state that Incident Command System (ICS) training is needed for local emergency personnel, First Responders, and community stakeholders, this should be evident by scheduling your training needs early in the new schedule. If it is a plan that needs to be updated, that also needs to be scheduled for completion before training to the new plan or testing it in a new exercise.
For exercises, schedule a series of discussion-based (E.g., Workshop or Tabletop) exercises months prior to an operational exercise (e.g., Functional or Full-Scale). Such a series leads to many lessons learned and improvement for participants prior to the “Big Day.”
Jurisdictions need to bring with them to the State’s Training and Exercise Planning Workshop (TEPW) this well thought out list of training and exercise needs so that Emergency Managers can see and share each others’ proposed schedule making the coordination of scarce training and exercise resources possible. At the TEPW jurisdictions will be asked to work together toward readiness in a more regional fashion (which is “real-world”) sharing resources to meet each jurisdiction’s training and exercise needs. The end product is our State’s Multi-Year training and Exercise Plan (MY-TEP), which is a Grants requirement.
The State Training Officer, Michele Candee has scheduled the State’s annual TEPW for September 17 &18, 2013. For additional information concerning statewide training opportunities contact Michele at mcandee@dps.state.nv.us.
FEMA just published the new HSEEP Toolkit (NEXS, DDS, and CAP databases). It’s at the same website: https://hseep.dhs.gov/DHS_SSO/?ReturnUrl=%2fhseep_em%2fToolkitHome.aspx If you need to gain access, request to be a User from FEMA then I can help you get started.
For comments and or questions feel free to email me at: tcary@dps.state.nv.us
Best Regards,
Tim Cary