| Following up Exercise Knot
Termed ‘Exercise Knot’ the exercise sought to establish the current state of readiness of police forces across the UK to deal with major incidents –it simulated three such incidents happening almost simultaneously. The fictional scenarios centred on an explosion in the Millennium Stadium during a motoring event, a collision between two passenger ferries in the North Sea and a train derailment at Ashford railway station. 80,000 scripts were produced for the exercise, with domestic and overseas callers volunteering from the public and private sectors. In many organisations this process was coordinated by business continuity managers who had been targeted via the Business Continuity Institute and Continuity Central. Exercise Knot tested, for the first time, the processes by which the casualty bureaux increased the scale of their operation until nearly every force in the UK was involved. Also for the first time, call analysis systems allowed senior officers to understand call patterns, waiting times, abandoned and engaged calls. The accuracy of the information recorded has been painstakingly checked against the original scripts and the effectiveness of the National Mutual Aid Telephony system, individual Forces telephony systems, computer servers and even individual officers have been tabulated. Now, the business continuity community has been asked to help again, this time with exploring what the future might hold for the casualty bureau in the hours immediately following a major incident. Following any major incident where large numbers of casualties may be involved it is established practice to open a Casualty bureau ‘missing persons’ line. However, it is standard protocol for the lines not to be opened for 3-4 hours. This is in order to: 1. Ensure appropriate staffing of the Casualty Bureau It is for this 3-4 hour period that the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) and ACPO is now exploring the feasibility of forging links with commercial call centres, to improve the experience for all those involved. There are two options, the first of which would see a commercial call centre switch off all non-essential calls and become a public point of information and call filtering agent for the first few hours between the incident happening and the casualty bureau opening. During this time, call centre agents would give practical advice on how to find loved ones using mobile phones, work numbers, friends’ numbers and so on. They will also state how and when to contact the casualty bureau and what information to have ready. The other option is that a commercial call centre would assume responsibility for the entire casualty bureau function during the first dynamic hours of the incident: receiving, logging and cancelling missing person reports, collating information from emergency services, hospitals and so on. This is an opportunity for established call centres to work with the emergency services on a commercial basis, providing essential services in response and recovery phases. A call centre capacity of 600-800 lines would be required, incorporating occasional teleconference facilities so that translators can join certain calls, where required. If you think this is something your organisation would like to learn more about, please contact Inspector Martin Slevin, West Midlands Police on 0845 113 5000 Ext: 7800 5523. Alternatively e-mail m.slevin@west-midlands.pnn.police.uk An informal information and discussion event will be held shortly in Birmingham to discuss opportunities, which may lead to an invitation to tender. A summary of the debrief report is also available to the companies who took part in the original exercise. Again, this is available from Inspector Slevin, as detailed above.
•Date: 13th May 2008• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC general
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