Testing Your Crisis Management Plan

Many K-12 schools, colleges, and universities prepare for disasters by developing emergency response and business continuity plans. But an untested plan is a hypothesis; it merely supposes how your institution would respond when faced with a disaster.

Exercises are efficient, cost-effective ways to test your institution’s plans and identify practical improvements that can increase your ability to withstand the next disaster.

This report provides details about the different types of exercises your institution can conduct and offers tips about how to build an exercise plan.

• Four basic types of exercises — audit or checklist, tabletop, role-playing or functional, and disaster drill — can test an exercise plan’s functionality.
• Use exercises continually in assessing, revising, and practicing your institution’s plan — this way, if disasters occur, everyone will know what to do.
• If your institution hasn’t previously held a tabletop exercise, don’t undertake a full-scale disaster drill; develop the expertise and confidence of emergency response and continuity team members by starting small and building upon successes.