Apr 11, 2008
SO15 Counter Terrorism Command Business Exercise

CitySafe has successfully delivered a secure web-based virtual exercise system in partnership with SO15, enabling them to deliver a 2 day exercise workshop to around one hundred businesses coordinating and capturing their response in real time.

The challenge:

In a bid to maintain business advantage and to address those additional operational challenges faced in collaboratively training and exercising public and private groups (including Emergency Services, Government Departments and Critical National Infrastructure organisations)CitySafe and the Metropolitan Police Service SO15 (Counter Terrorism Command) jointly developed a web based system called the VES (Virtual Exercise System) intiative.

The solution:

The VES intiative, (part of the Resilience Pulse service) is a web based training and exercise system which enables enterprises to test their responses to disruptive events from the comfort of their own office and coordinate “live” exercise workshops

Pulse was delivered to over 100 businesses, including the Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) in an annual workshop designed by SO15 CTC. In the exercise, Pulse was deployed to deliver and coordinate responses from nine syndicates and allowed a team of experts to directly feed into the exercise based on questions and responses, giving the whole exercise a real-world feel. Both public and private sector organisations benefited from the reduction in operating costs this brings through slick collaboration tools, meaning many geographical problems often associated with such exercises were a thing of the past. Pulse enabled detailed planning for incidents like fire, power failure, a flu pandemic or terrorist attack. Better still, key stakeholders were able to benefit from shared knowledge and best practise lessons learned via a centralised Web community.

Pulse ensured that key issues were identified for a ‘Hot Debrief’ and automatically presented key metrics against exercise objectives, enabling SO15 to quickly identify gaps, mitigate weaknesses and fully assess resilience, enhancing their service delivery to key stakeholders. Additionally participants in the exercise received a CDRom containing a comprehensive report of issues raised during the exercise, along with supporting information.