Crisis Leadership Team Hybrid Workshop and Tabletop Exercise

Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA)

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About the project

Exercises are crucial to help facilities, communities and governments prepare for unforeseen disasters of any kind. One of the keys to successful preparedness and response is well-trained leaders equipped with the proper tools to minimize adverse impacts during crisis situations. Training executive staff to respond properly to a situation that activates emergency plans is essential to successfully weathering an incident.

LAWA hired Tidal Basin to create an exercise addressing multiple scenarios focused on intentional acts designed to cause harm to the airport, personnel, and passengers.

Key takeaways

  • Tidal Basin and LAWA identified several objectives as areas to address to create an effective response when disaster strikes:
  • Validating roles and responsibilities
  • Executive communication during emergencies
  • Identifying key decision points
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Challenge

LAWA required Tidal Basin to enhance resilience throughout the airport facilities, encompassing both employees and passengers. The organization wanted to train senior executives and leadership members, ensuring a complete knowledge of proper preparedness planning across all levels. Core capabilities validated during the TTX included:

  • Planning
  • Intelligence and information sharing
  • Operational coordination
  • Situational assessment
  • Operational communications

Solution

Tidal Basin proposed a solution that incorporated various components and multiple levels of stakeholders for emergency preparedness, including community leaders, LAWA staff and leadership, and government partners and facilities. This holistic approach ensured the relevant information was received and any issues related to multiple threats/hazards were addressed.

Our experts developed a hybrid exercise that was broken out into three modules and addressed multiple scenarios focused on intentional and accidental acts designed to cause harm to the airport, personnel, and passengers. The hybrid exercise consisted of a discussion-based exercise with interactive functional elements delivered in mini-scenarios during module presentations.

Tidal Basin addressed the following threats and hazards in the exercise:

  • Aircraft incident
  • Organized protest
  • Cyber attack
  • Construction accident
  • Coordinated attack
  • Active shooter

Resilience Delivered

Tidal Basin’s hands-on experience in performing work for a range of airports, local and federal critical infrastructure and transportation agencies, and California municipalities contributed to a successful workshop and exercise program for LAWA. The inclusion of leadership stakeholders made it a unique process.

Chances of getting buy-in and interaction by executive team members are increased when creating customized exercises. Having conducted hundreds of exercises with governments, critical infrastructure providers, and international groups, Tidal Basin creates concise, insightful, and value-added programs that attract executives to the table to provide their insight as well as an opportunity for them to learn about their roles during emergencies. Typically, this may happen 5% of the time; however, with our unique interactive and hybrid exercises we aim to increase that interaction during each exercise we offer with our clients.

Your knowledge of the complex governmental regulations and equally complex insurance and adjusting issues really helped the county maximize the public assistance that was available after all of these disasters. You delivered what you promised, and we are confident in your ability and the ability of your firm to provide these services fully on a technical and professional level yet be able to translate clearly and concisely the intricate and sometimes subjective FEMA regulations which we could not have done without you.

Salvatore R. Zappulla, Division Director Monroe County Budget and Finance, Monroe County, Florida

The State of Alaska…[has] a significant investment in the disaster recovery process for both state and federally declared events…. The collaboration with Tidal Basin in these efforts has been so successful and seamless that in most instances applicants and FEMA staff don’t even realize we have contractors on board unless we tell them. Our interaction with Tidal Basin staff and managers works and feels like true teammates and the result is a faster, more comprehensive delivery of disaster recovery resources to survivors.

Sam Walton, Program Manager for Disaster Assistance, State of Alaska

Months after the storm passed, the County was still faced with tremendous burdens related to the insurance coverage issues and FEMA and MEMA eligibility issues. Jackson County hired your organization to provide professional services for disaster assistance, remediation, restoration and recovery efforts….Their expertise with governmental regulations, the complex FEMA process and insurance adjustments resulted in our successful claim for over $2 million in additional FEMA Public Assistance funding specifically; in our successful negotiations with our insurance carrier; and in numerous other increases in the values FEMA and MEMA initially designated for County projects. Jackson County will always be mindful of the help we received from you when we needed it most.

Alan K. Sudduth, County Administrator, Board of Supervisors, Jackson County, Mississippi