Utility Support
Do your operations team and executives struggle to work together when they need to jointly solve complex problems?
The Utilities Sector comprises a myriad of organizations engaged in delivering electric power, natural gas, steam supply, water supply, and sewage removal to every corner of America. Within this complex sector, many threats can critically impact life safety and customer service within the community.
Our proven track record and decades of experience will allow us to partner with you and build programs across every level of your organization, including Strike Team development, Incident Management Team planning and activation, and Crisis Management Team/Business Continuity Development. We can even bolster and support your team with Activation Support when you need additional resources to support successful response and recovery.
Five Key Steps to Program Sustainability
For any utility, a successful resiliency program requires 5 key steps to ensure that there is regulatory compliance and sustainability built into the program components:
Assessment and Gap Analysis with a Regulatory Review
The first step to a comprehensive program is to conduct a gap analysis of all the documents, support materials, and After Action Reviews (AAR) to determine how complete and comprehensive the current program is. Then, we’ll meet with the response team(s) to identify how they see the program, issues, and areas of concern. Finally, using the latest regulations and industry guidance, we’ll assess where there are deficiencies and areas for improvement.
Team Structure Review and Improvement
Defined roles keep the response focused on the objectives and the appropriate deployment of resources to meet the current capabilities. Distinctions between tactical and strategic teams are critical to effective decision-making. We build your structure based on how your organization operates and ensure decision-making is aimed at the correct level based on the incident threat and severity. We also help build out the two critical roles that are often missing at a utility (EM/Incident Management Team Facilitator and Documentation/Recorder support).
Tools and Resources
We help clients build the tools that keep responses smooth and the team functioning. This includes a standard activation agenda, policy language, and tracking tools. If you’re implementing resilience software, we’ll help integrate those tools to create a seamless response experience.
Activation and Communication Protocols
Activating your teams requires practical systems that quickly bring everyone together and, with the support of a comprehensive threat escalation matrix, ensure that the response is managed at the appropriate decision-making level. We help define your Activation and Communication protocols and integrate them with any newly developed tools.
Training and Tabletop Exercises
We’ll train your team in the program and conduct implementation and yearly tabletop exercises to help the team practice response and be prepared to operate seamlessly together. These exercises will include lessons learned that will be documented and tracked to ensure they become lessons implemented.