How companies handle such events, however, can make all the difference between survival and ongoing success, or long term damage or demise. Training and practice are essential elements of the process to ensure staff can effectively utilise the plans.

Our standard and client specific training programmes include:

• Introductions to Emergency Management, and Safety Management Systems
• Handling the media in a crisis (with live on camera practice sessions with journalists)
• Risk identification and assessment, and risk management strategy
• Safety auditing, incident investigation, reporting and monitoring
• Design and running of in-house emergency exercises
• Introduction to consulting techniques and controls for in-house service groups

MC² also works extensively with major private and public sector organisations in a range of industry sectors to develop and test crisis and emergency plans, and runs over forty public and private client exercises every year. The style and format of these sessions vary considerably depending on client needs, and include:

• basic drills such as evacuation and mustering
• simple "desktops" where response arrangements are discussed in the context of an unfolding scenario
• "hypotheticals" involving the round table role-playing of internal and external stakeholder responses to given scenario developments
• "role-played" exercises running in real time, with live communication with role-played external stakeholders such as authorities, customers, and the media
• major live events, involving the mobilisation of a field response, activation of corporate management teams, and other agencies such as the emergency services

All such events are meticulously planned and controlled, in line with an agreed set of detailed objectives, to provide a unique and realistic learning experience for everyone involved in managing a major incident. Extensive documentation and materials are prepared, generally including: detailed briefings for participants, detailed scripts for role-players, internal control documents such as an expected order-of-events, supplementary information such as mock news stories on video tape or mock newspaper headlines, and other essential material.

As major exercises are designed to be learning experiences, all exercise outcomes, observations, and recommendations for improvement are documented in a comprehensive debrief report.