CHAPTER 6

Training and Exercises

The training and exercises element for developing capabilities focuses on the ways an airport assesses its ability to ensure it can adapt to a disruption and restore essential functions during a crisis (Exhibit 6). Strategies for improving the evaluation element to capabilities include:

• Engaging stakeholders to identify criteria for successful response and restoration.
• Regularly exercising the continuity plan, people, and resources.
• Leveraging real-life opportunities to improve the program.

An airport’s training and exercise program reflects its daily commitment to integrating a culture of preparedness into its operations (Figure 20). This includes opportunities to learn from real-life experiences as well as planned exercises so that staff are prepared for crises before they take place.

Starting the Conversation

Several formalities are often assigned to the exercise and evaluation process within airports. Every airport undergoes a series of compliance and regulatory standards, exercises, and formal evaluations each year. This might result in airport personnel associating “evaluation” with extensive investment and year-end reporting.

Meaningful evaluation is about getting the right group of people into a room and starting the conversation about what metrics and criteria will determine what a successful response to crises and disruption looks like. It does not need to be heavily prescribed or facilitated. Instead, it should pull together the stakeholders and prompt them to discuss how they are working toward the continuity capability. The best way to know whether the continuity capability is alive and well is by discussing how the airport’s champions, leaders, and stakeholders envision and implement their roles. At a fundamental level, these discussions should indicate whether stakeholders are working in the same direction and the progress made to the continuity capability.

By making conversation in regular meetings the platform for regular evaluation, airports can normalize continuity as a constant target for their operations. At any time, there should be constant staff development and operational planning taking place. For every one of these efforts, evaluations can be a constant companion, making sure that personnel share common priorities and cohesive strategies.

Critical Thinking Is Critical

The need for airports to have people in leadership positions who can assess what is happening and quickly identify what needs to be done to restore airport operations cannot be understated. The ability to think critically is a driving factor behind strong and actionable continuity capabilities and effective response to disruptions.

The approach taken in this guide steps away from prescriptive planning processes that dictate what to do, when it needs to be done, and how to do a task for every incident that can lead to a continuity event. Instead, the directive of a continuity capability is to cultivate critical thinkers and put them in an environment where they can succeed. Continuity cannot be overly prescribed

because every situation is different and impacts operations in unique ways. This is why it is so important to think about disruptions using a widely applicable framework: facilities, people, and resources. Using that framework, critical thinkers have narrowed the scope of potential impacts to their essential functions so they can hone their ability to innovate.

Airports can support critical thinking across their staff by prompting considerations so that response activities consider the range of potential impacts that may occur. For example, airports can consider:

• How might a facilities-based disruption create cascading impacts to other facilities or resources available to support functions?
• Which resources do we rely on to restore an essential function, and where will the airport turn if traditional sources are unavailable?
• What will happen to our staffing at the airport if the situation gets worse or is extended? What if it gets better or if it stays the same?
• What will change when another impacted airport reopens its airfield?

Expanding the Impact of Exercises

While continuity should be part of regular activities and conversations, airports still need to optimize formal training and exercise programs. Per the FAA Advisory Circular 150/5200-31C, Airport Emergency Plan, airports must implement regular tabletop and full-scale exercises to carry out their Airport Emergency Plan. Airports often exceed these minimum standards, and the existing culture of exercise programs being used as an opportunity to improve can directly translate to the continuity capability at the airport.

During exercises, airports have an ideal platform to reiterate messaging and processes that build the muscle for thinking critically and adapting when it is needed. These processes do not need to be limited to exercises focused exclusively on continuity. For personnel for whom exercises may be their first or only time interacting with the continuity plan, the more that continuity can be emphasized in different exercise environments, the better.

Using Everyday Operations to Reinforce Continuity

Training and professional development opportunities are necessary to prepare staff members for disruptions to airport operations, but, when continuity plans are thoughtfully developed to mirror day-to-day operations as closely as possible, the number of topics that require training can be

reduced. By leveraging the experiences gained through a regular performance of duties, airports can increase their readiness for disruptive events by minimizing the number of unique processes, tools, and organizational structures that guide the response to crises or other disruptions.

Continuity in the Day-to-Day

• Encourage personnel to think about their work in the context of people, facilities, and resources, so that frames future disruptions accordingly when crises take place.
• Challenge personnel during blue sky operations to consider how they would adapt their work if they were missing people, facilities, or resources. This can be modeled through small-scale exercises (e.g., evaluate IT systems by requiring personnel to work from home for a day).
• Embolden creativity during regular meetings by discussing how personnel can adapt their roles based on the availability of all necessary people, facilities, and resources.

Real-Life Situations as an Opportunity to Learn

The chance to learn is not limited to pre-planned incidents and exercises. With new emergencies and disasters comes the opportunity to learn. While exercises can seek to mirror crises, real-life events provide the best way to know whether programs are integrated to the greatest extent possible.

Every time a crisis takes place, airports need to ask:

• Do we have the tools we need?
• Are our plans useful and were they used?
• Do personnel know what needs to happen and how to adapt in this situation?
• Were we able to minimize the length of this disruption?

For every “no” that is identified, the planning and capability development process has a new directive to be improved. While airports can certainly leverage after-action reporting and other formal reviews to support these evaluations, regular meetings that challenge executives and personnel to ask these questions can keep the capability focused on how well it serves the crisis response.

Training and Exercises as an Opportunity for Continuity

In any exercise environment, airports have an opportunity to:

• Evaluate how personnel think creatively and adapt to different situations;
• Grow buy-in among stakeholders;

• Integrate continuity as a priority that exists alongside crisis management;
• Consider how the scenario has created disruptions to the airport’s functions;
• Provide training for any staff that might be included in a surge capacity;
• Incorporate steps that reconstitute the airport’s essential functions; and
• Improve coordination for personnel so the organizational chart fully leverages all teams.

Evolution of Response Planning

Integrating continuity and crisis management efforts into planning and operations helps airports develop a synchronized approach that orients the airport’s preparedness program toward common goals. Equally as important is building continuity and crisis management knowledge and capabilities into day-to-day responsibilities, supporting the culture of continuity, and applying a “whole-community approach” to preparedness.

Making Preparedness a Shared Responsibility

Like creating a culture of continuity within the airport, making preparedness the shared responsibility of airport personnel prevents it from becoming a concept only referenced during a disruptive event. Preparedness efforts and the integration of continuity and crisis management concepts are part of everyday operations at mature and resilient airports, not simply the responsibility of any single department or individual (e.g., emergency managers, risk managers). Some strategies for making preparedness a shared responsibility within an airport are presented in the following section.

Strategies for Making Preparedness a Shared Responsibility

• Add continuity responsibilities as part of the job description and annual performance review of airport personnel supporting operations, finance, and facilities management.
• Include continuity topics as part of regular stakeholder and partner meetings.
• Increase opportunities for interdepartmental interactions during blue sky operations (e.g., a monthly luncheon for department heads to discuss priorities, a quarterly crisis management and continuity town hall).
• Emphasize the need for airport personnel to think critically about priorities and needs during a disruptive event (i.e., “What do I know and who else needs to know it?”).
• Participate in continuity-focused training, exercises, and planning sessions led by external stakeholders and partners.
• Make preparedness part of the airport’s organizational strategy and pursue internal initiatives that acquaint airport personnel with crisis management and continuity concepts.

Making preparedness a shared responsibility of airport personnel can help develop departmental and individual ownership over preparedness initiatives and create a systems approach to preparedness (FEMA 2011). It can also help airport personnel apply a problem-solving mentality and think holistically about restoration when a disruptive event occurs. Sharing the responsibility of preparedness across the airport environment connects the organization from top to bottom and makes preparedness a priority of airport personnel, service partners, and the larger community.

Going Beyond What is Required

While airports will understandably be focused on legal and regulatory requirements when restoring essential functions, simply meeting those standards does not allow for a comprehensive

response. Many of the laws, regulations, and standards surrounding airport management are designed to preserve the safe and continued operations of airport functions; however, previous emergencies and disruptive events have demonstrated that many common response processes are insufficient to support every person in the crisis environment. As centers of transportation, commerce, and business, airports must proactively consider how the response to disruptive events can go beyond today’s laws and regulations. When considering the level of investment to make into an integrated continuity and crisis management program, the reputation of the airport and its relationships with stakeholders is something that airports can factor into their decisions.

Unifying the Response

Adopting a planning approach that brings together the shared objectives and planning needs of continuity and crisis management programs helps airports avoid over-segmentation resulting from multiple, separate planning efforts. There are several steps that airports can take to harmonize their planning efforts and orient them toward the same goals. Coordination between these two efforts can occur whether an airport has distinct personnel responsible for crisis management and business continuity or simply asks planners to approach the planning tasks while considering the needs of both efforts. Working together during the planning process helps establish a shared understanding and common goals among practitioners of both efforts. The result of coordinating operational planning is a more streamlined planning approach that supports synchronized operations during a crisis or event with fewer conflicting objectives and redundancies in the effort.

While this section has described where integration of continuity and crisis management can occur, it is important to note that continual monitoring is needed to ensure they are integrated before and during an incident or event. Integrating continuity into crisis management may demand a shift in mentality for airport operators and emergency managers. There is a risk that crisis management and continuity efforts begin to diverge during a real-world response as airport personnel focus on the circumstances at hand. Airports should look out for this occurrence and be prepared to adjust each day of the response to bring continuity and crisis management efforts back into alignment. Monitoring is an important step to ensuring that continuity efforts take place alongside crisis management operations.

Implementation Considerations During a Crisis

When implementing the capability during a continuity event, airports should be able to expect more adaptability and innovation across all personnel, especially if they have cultivated all four essential elements over time. As leaders emerge across different levels of the airport to address

the crisis, executives can focus on how the operating environment—from communication channels to reporting structures—is reinforcing (or not reinforcing) the continuity capability.

• Is continuity regularly being treated and articulated as a priority?
• Do the continuity champions have what they need to implement continuity activities?
• Are stakeholders engaged regularly and systematically?
• Do personnel have the tools and resources they need?
• Is the airport tracking cascading impacts internally and externally?

When an airport defaults to any activities different from what it planned to do, there is an opportunity to self-diagnose in the moment and reinvigorate the continuity capability. Restoration of essential functions is the most important activity to keep on track. Even during a chaotic response effort, airports can walk through a basic process flow to restore those essential functions (Figure 21).

Airports that are new to continuity and find themselves in the middle of a response effort can further benefit by taking a step back to evaluate what they need to do to launch their capability quickly. Even if it starts in the middle of a crisis, taking steps to initiate a continuity capability that restores essential functions will produce returns. Financially, the airport can mitigate its losses. Operationally, implementing continuity has the potential to initiate a longer-term process that enhances the airport’s resilience to future disruptions. Most importantly, it is never too early or too late to empower leaders so they can innovate and adapt when it is most needed.

For Airport Emergency Planners Facing a Crisis

Establish continuity as an operational priority with incident command and airport leadership.

• Use communication channels with the full staff team to call out continuity as a priority.
• Identify a leadership position or liaison who is responsible for sponsoring continuity.

Identify essential functions that need to be prioritized during the crisis.

• Identify those essential functions that the crisis has negatively impacted.
• Identify critical information about the essential function and who can support it.

Define clear processes for reconstitution of identified essential functions.

• Take immediate steps to restore essential functions.
• Regularly review and report on the status of essential functions.

Integrate continuity professional(s) to coordinate with the crisis response team.

• Give continuity and surge personnel the backing they need.

Chapter Takeaways

Several ways to develop training and exercises were addressed in this chapter. One of the best ways is to make continuity part of regular discussions during meetings to normalize the concept. This, paired with routine staff development and training, as well as the planning and conducting of exercises, can test the continuity capabilities of the airport ecosystem. There is also room to utilize real-life incidents as learning opportunities to test capabilities.