The "Tabletop" Exercise
Tabletop Instructions
The "leader" of the exercise will serve as both a facilitator and a note-taker. They will also be responsible for evaluating the success of the effort and for completing the follow-up activities.
Before you begin the exercise, the leader will need to complete the objectives and the scenario portions of the form, Tabletop Exercise-Leader Copy.
Objectives
The objectives you establish may be as vague as simply wanting to begin a discussion, or as specific and complex as attempting to establish detailed plans, identifying exactly what each staff member will do during each hour of a particular event. These are both valid and useful approaches to the testing process. Overall, your testing should be balanced, such that you don't spend too much time focusing on any one particular scenario. You should instead strive to develop your organization's capacity to respond swiftly to and recover from any type of disruption. Ultimately, these exercises should enable the flexibility to employ the required resources, when they are needed. In other words, keep in mind that you're not rehearsing for a predictable scripted play, but instead practicing to respond to the chaos of real life.
Jack Moyer offers the following advice on establishing your objectives.
"The purpose of a tabletop exercise is not to solve the scenario. The following objectives are accomplished with or without solving the details of the scenario. The objectives include
- testing and validating agency operational and policy-level response plans in problem identification, interagency coordination, integration of resources, and crisis resolution;
- helping representatives of various departments and agencies become more familiar with the personnel, capabilities, and vulnerabilities of one another;
- developing and refining intra-agency and interagency communications, cooperation, teamwork, and confidence;
- improving understanding and familiarity with the incident command system and the unified command system;
- identifying gaps, if any, in plans and resources.
In some tabletop exercises, no solution is clearly attainable. In others, the components of the solution are provided to the participants as the exercise progresses."[1]
[1] "How You Can Use Them to Prepare for Water System Incidents", Jack Moyer. American Water Works Association. Journal. Denver: Aug 2005. Vol. 97, Iss. 8; pg. 52, 7 pgs