Design and manage the regional evacuation and relief centre exercise

What is going on

The Summer Readiness Plan commits Guardian to testing evacuation and relief centre arrangements with councils, police and health services on 19 November 2026. The Chief Officer wants a coastal grassfire scenario that forces the evacuation of a township, activation of a relief centre, a community warning sequence and a handover to recovery. The exercise must use the real documents, including the Incident Action Plan Template, and involve the incident management team, the communications centre, the relief centre staff and partner agency liaison officers. Last year's exercise was criticised for injects that arrived too fast and an evaluation that produced no actions. The exercise plan is due at the leadership meeting on 7 October.

Your brief

Design an exercise with clear aims and measurable objectives, a credible scenario and inject schedule, defined roles for participants, controllers and evaluators, safety and communication arrangements, evaluation criteria tied to the objectives, and a debrief and reporting process that produces actions.

Work through it

You do not need to do it all. Doing a few of these will show you what the work is like. Your ticks and notes stay on this device.

• Read the Summer Readiness and Emergency Management Plan, the Incident Management and Command Policy and the Incident Action Plan Template, and confirm with the Chief Officer the aim, the scope and the participating agencies.
• Write measurable objectives for evacuation decision making, community warnings, relief centre activation, multi-agency liaison and handover to recovery, each linked to a plan or procedure to be tested.
• Develop the scenario: a coastal grassfire with weather, fire behaviour and timeline, and a master schedule of injects paced to allow decisions, with contingency injects if the exercise runs fast or slow.
• Define the exercise structure: participants, exercise control, role players, evaluators, safety officer, communications plan on a separate channel, and the no duff protocol for real emergencies.
• Prepare the exercise documents: participant briefing, controller and evaluator handbooks, evaluation checklists tied to each objective, and the incident action plan the incident management team will complete.
• Plan safety and welfare: site risk assessment for the relief centre and any field elements, fatigue limits, catering and peer support, and record the plan in the Health and Safety Incident Register as a planned control entry.
• Design the hot debrief and the formal debrief, the evaluation report format and the process for turning findings into actions with owners and dates in the register.
• Prepare the exercise plan and a leadership briefing for 7 October, including resources, costs and the participant list, and schedule the pre-exercise briefings in the calendar.

What someone in this role would produce

• An exercise plan with aim, objectives and scope
• A scenario and master inject schedule
• Controller and evaluator handbooks with evaluation checklists
• A safety and communications plan
• A debrief and reporting process with an action tracking method