Exercise Design and Delivery

Exercises are one of the most important training events for an organization.  A fictitious problem occurs in the background and the staff works together to solve the problem.  There are several types of exercises – here are the most common:

• Table Top Exercise – where the staff gathers around maps on a table and discussed how to solve the problem.  This is better than nothing, however it is an “opinion-based” exercise, which means that if the participants believe they have solved the problem then the problem is deemed solved.  There is no external mechanism to test their decisions.  Table Top Exercises are easy to set up and conduct.


• Constructive Simulation Exercise – where the staff actually performs their tasks within the headquarters or operations centre and they are provided information from a Simulation Cell.  These exercises are much more realistic than a table top exercise because participants’ decisions are tested and their plans are validated by computer.  Constructive simulation exercises require moderate preparation and require more coordination to conduct, but they still are very cost and time effective.


• “Live” Exercise – where the staff at the headquarters or operations centre controls personnel in the field.  In some ways, Live Exercises are extremely realistic because participants are forced to deal with the minor issues and details that they would be burdened with in real life.  They can also be unrealistic because Live Exercises always have limitations placed on them that would not exist during an actual event, or resources that would be there during an actual event are not present during the Live Exercise.  Live exercises are extremely expensive and are not very time effective. 


• Combined Constructive/Live Exercise – where a reduced number of personnel in the field provide extra realism, while the Constructive Exercise provides a much larger scale to the exercise.  A Combined Exercise may eliminate many of the realism issues while reducing the overall cost somewhat.

C4i Consultants has a large amount of expertise delivering exercise of all types.  Our training experts will work within your constraints to produce the best possible Exercise solution.  The advantage C4i Consultants has over other vendors is that our training experts will use our in-house Computer Simulation Tools such as MILSIM, EDMSIM, eMerg-GIS or ePlan-GIS to add realism and training value to your exercise.  Since we own these tools, there is no additional ramp up time and no additional expertise required for the exercise.