Success Stories

ORAU Creates Exercise Builder: A Computer-Based Tool Designed to Help Plan an Emergency Management Exercise

In order to assist the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in planning its many exercises, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) was called upon to help ensure the agency's readiness to respond to a variety of events.

To address the need, ORAU teamed with subject matter experts from the DOE Emergency Management Issues Special Interest Group (EMI-SIG) and devised a computer-based tool called Exercise Builder.

Exercise Builder, an automated, Windows®-based application used for designing and developing emergency preparedness drills and exercises, helps streamline the process of planning an exercise.

The program allows emergency management staff to create drills and exercise plans based on information customized for a facility or site. Separate documents are then created for each of the components that make up an exercise plan.

Features of Exercise Builder include:

• Step-by-step, prompted assistance in developing the documents required for an exercise plan
• Stored site-specific information that is automatically inserted into the exercise plan
• Suggested appropriate exercise objectives based on the scenario type and exercise participants
• Customizable exercise objectives and the ability to add new objectives
• Automatic generation of a master scenario events list (MSEL)
• Stored and linked exercise messages to the MSEL that are automatically updated and re-sequenced if the MSEL times change
• Generated entries for the controller directories based on message addressees
• Use of previously entered information to assist with the creation of exercise evaluation guides
• Generated after-action report components

Exercise Builder is so successful that DOE adopted the program as the standard for developing its internal-only exercises.