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Design and Execute a Successful Active Assailant Drill

The problem No doubt you and your management teams are concerned about an Active Assailant and what you might do to manage the impact of such an incident. That is not surprising – as of June 28, 2018, there had been 154 mass shootings in the United States this year alone according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in the US. To put this into perspective, as of June 28, we were 177 days into the year, which means the US has had nearly as many mass shootings as days in 2018. Exercises – the best form of training What is the best way to train managers and employees to respond to the aftermath of an active assailant? An exercise. We all know that adults learn by doing – not reading a plan or listening to a lecture – by doing. While the traditional run – hide – fight training is important for all employees to learn – it only deals with the moment of the shooting. What happens afterward? How do you account for your workers? How do you deal with the media and how to do you restore your business with a severely affected group of employees and the media chewing at your feet? There is a lot to think about in dealing with the first hours and days after a workplace shooting. The best way to prepare is to exercise. We have compiled an Active Assailant Resource Kit to help you run a successful drill with stakeholders from your company. Why should you download this exercise kit and materials? We have done a lot of the work for you! We have done a lot of the initial thinking for you. This kit has a lot of the materials you need to make your exercise really work:

Exercise Agenda
Exercise Slide Deck
Evaluation Form
Attendee List
Document Summary
Design Team Roster
Active Assailant Whitepaper
Two 1-Hour On-Demand Webinars

Where to begin?

Listen to the webinars and read the whitepaper first
- There are two webinars that are part of this package that you can listen to “on-demand.” They are both one hour in length and will provide you with the deep background you need to get started. The first webinar walks through how to design a successful drill, and the second simulates a ‘live’ drill.
Determine the scope of the exercise
- The scope is knowing who is playing. Design the exercise to fit the players. For example, an exercise aimed for the executives would have different injects (issues raised) and questions than one designed for the Security department. Make sure the exercise injects fit the level of the individuals who are playing.
Schedule a date, book the room and any necessary equipment, people and tools
- Send out exercise invites to all of the players.
- Book the room and any equipment or people you need to make it work.
Recruit an exercise design team
- This is a group of your company professionals who can help you modify the materials to make sure the exercise is accurate and hits the mark. It may include employees from HR, communications, facilities, key lines of business, security and business continuity.
- Once you have recruited the team, plan to have two meetings, about an hour each, to review the materials and modify them to fit your company.
Edit all of the materials and prepare others as necessary
- Use your design team feedback to modify the materials and edit them accordingly

Now what? Get going! We have done a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Time is a wasting! Download the materials and listen to the webinars and you are over halfway there! Regina Phelps Bio Regina Phelps is an internationally recognized expert in the field of crisis management, exercise design, and continuity planning. Since 1982, she has provided consultation and speaking services to clients on four continents. She is the founder of Emergency Management & Safety Solutions, a consulting company specializing in crisis management, exercise design, and continuity and pandemic planning. Ms. Phelps is the author of three exercise design books: Emergency Management Exercises: Exercise Design, From Response to Recovery, Everything You Need to Know to Create a Great Exercise; Emergency Management Exercises: The Instructor’s Guide; and Cyber Breach. She is currently working on book number four, which is on Crisis Management. She has also designed college-level courses in exercise design and has written numerous papers and has given hundreds of lectures on the topic. Find Ms. Phelps’s books on Amazon