Simulated stress testing an organisation
 

Hi all,

Do organisations such as airlines, nuclear power plants, hospitals etc conduct simulated emergency response scenarios to stress test their systems/operational procedures/response? I’m not talking about an audit but more like an outside organisation running a convincing emergency scenario on the emergency response team - ie office based with senior management being feed data from remote “accidents”.

Thanks

RAAF airfields do so periodically with a full on simulated disaster of one sort or another. A full test of the ERP. A desk audit, by itself, just doesn't cut the mustard. When I did my ASO course, it was timed to finish with the Base airfield exercise - learnt a lot from that day, one did.

Civil airports (if they follow ICAO SARPs) have a full exercise, involving outside agencies as well as aircraft operators, every two years and can do a lesser exercise in the other years. They can be incredibly useful…..or sometimes are seen as an opportunity for theatre and PR.

Thanks for the replies. Clearly a full scale trial would be most beneficial but also… money money money.

I’m thinking of an office based exercise because it’s cheaper plus it’s much easier to supply simulated data to an office environment so the participants don’t know it’s a simulation/training exercise. And if they think it’s real then it’s 100% ecologically valid for research porpoises. 🐬

I guess what I’m actually getting at is bottom up processing - present to management problems that they have created/supplied to front line workers over months/years. And then ask them to resolve it in a crisis situation.

Aaaaaaand now I realise why such a concept is so unacceptable

Rick,

The simple answer is - yes. When I was in BA we had a day long emergency exercise of our Crisis Managament Centre (co-located with Operations Control Centre) every six months. If you tell me why you want to know, I may be able to help you.