Active assailant exercise design series: Part one

You have heard of “active shooter”; this series will focus on an “active assailant,” which is a person (or group of persons) actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill or cause serious bodily injury to a person or group of persons. The weapon could be a gun or it could be something else, such as a knife, explosive device, or a car. The key difference between “active shooter” and “active assailant” is that the weapon is not specified. As threats continue to expand, the “active assailant” term is perhaps more accurate and more appropriate. Is your organization concerned about an active assailant scenario? One of the best ways to see if you are ready for such an event is to conduct an active assailant exercise. This blog post looks at Part One of the two-part Active Assailant Exercise Design Series:

• April 26, 2018: Everything you need to know to design an active assailant exercise (Part One)
• June 12, 2018: Participate in a 50-minute online active assailant exercise (Part Two)

What makes this webinar different that others that you may have attended This webinar series is very hands on! In Part One of this Active Assailant Exercise Design Series (April 26, 2018), we will detail everything you need to know to design an active assailant exercise. We will peel back the details of designing a great exercise and focus on the things you need to develop for an interactive and well organized experience for the exercise players. Why the focus has shifted from “active shooter” to “active assailant” With the focus only on active shooter incidents, we tend to forget about the very real risk of other types of attacks. We become myopic and that can have serious consequences; we don’t see the bigger picture. Just in the past year, we have seen other items used as weapons, such as cars, trucks, knives, and explosive devices. Changing the terminology also makes us broaden our view of what might be a blind application of the “Run, Hide, Fight.” Individuals may see an active shooter video or attend a training and walk away thinking that you always react that way and in that order. They may believe that doing so would be a recipe for response success. Not really; it depends on many things. Do I get any materials or handouts in this webinar to design my own exercise? Absolutely! This hands-on experience is designed to give you several tools that you can use immediately in your planning and design process. We will review in detail what is in a well-designed exercise plan, and discuss exercise goals, objectives, agendas, and participant instructions. We will also look at possible exercise narratives as well as the exercise injects that will drive the exercise forward. The goal of this exercise design webinar The goal of this presentation is to review key exercise design aspects, and demonstrate the value of conducting an active assailant exercise to improve a company’s overall readiness and resiliency. We will focus on the impact of an active assailant in your organization, the aftermath. In designing an active assailant exercise, you can elect to focus on two things: emergency response, or the aftermath and recovery. Once the perpetrator has been eliminated and the emergency responders have come and gone, what happens then? Our design will begin at that shift in the story. Can I design this exercise alone? You can design this by yourself, however, we are big fans of the exercise design team concept. We will discuss how you can pull together subject matter experts in your organization to help you design a more robust and thoughtful experience. You, of course, know a great deal about your company, but you don’t know everything, and a great design team can make the difference between a good exercise and a great exercise. We’ll talk about how to run a good design team meeting, how to motivate design team members, and how to keep the design team members on track. Will you cover exercise communications in the webinar? Absolutely! We will explore how you can use your communication tools to engage the exercise players, deliver injects, and move the story forward. We will cover messaging and a variety of delivery tools. So what are you waiting for? Sign up!Plan to attend the first part of this two-part series on April 26, 2018, and learn everything you need to know to design an active assailant exercise. See you then!