Prepare Your People. Validate Your Plans.
Critical Pathway Group designs and delivers practical, objective-driven training and exercises that strengthen decision-making, coordination, communications, response, continuity, recovery, and organizational resilience.
A Plan Is Only Effective When People Can Use It
Training and exercises help personnel understand their roles, practice decisions, coordinate resources, validate procedures, identify gaps, and improve performance before a real disruption.
Realistic Exercises Designed Around Measurable Objectives
Critical Pathway Group develops preparedness programs that connect training, planning, exercises, evaluation, corrective actions, and continuous improvement.
Exercises are tailored to the client’s mission, operating environment, hazards, plans, personnel, technology, facilities, regulatory requirements, partner organizations, and program maturity.
When appropriate, exercises are designed and documented using Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program principles, including clear objectives, realistic scenarios, trained evaluators, structured analysis, and measurable improvement planning.
Comprehensive Preparedness and Exercise Services
We support the complete exercise lifecycle, from identifying capability gaps and defining objectives through exercise conduct, evaluation, after-action reporting, and corrective action tracking.
Training Needs Assessment
Identify required knowledge, role-specific competencies, personnel gaps, target audiences, training priorities, delivery methods, and measurable learning objectives.
Exercise Program Development
Establish exercise priorities, capability targets, annual schedules, multi-year strategies, planning structures, documentation standards, and evaluation requirements.
Exercise Design and Development
Develop scope, objectives, scenarios, participant materials, injects, evaluation guides, safety procedures, communications, logistics, and exercise control documentation.
Facilitation and Exercise Conduct
Facilitate seminars, workshops, tabletop exercises, drills, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises using clear procedures and experienced exercise staff.
Exercise Evaluation
Collect observations, measure performance against approved objectives, analyze strengths and gaps, identify root causes, and document capability-level findings.
After-Action Reporting
Produce clear After-Action Reports that summarize performance, strengths, areas for improvement, supporting observations, analysis, and recommended actions.
Improvement Planning
Establish specific corrective actions, responsible owners, target completion dates, required evidence, validation methods, status tracking, and closure authority.
Executive and Leadership Exercises
Test strategic decisions, crisis coordination, communications, legal considerations, operational priorities, recovery choices, and stakeholder management.
Technology and Recovery Exercises
Validate application recovery, backup restoration, failover, communications, cyber incident procedures, business-owner acceptance, and return-to-normal operations.
The Right Exercise for the Right Objective
Exercise type should be selected based on the capability being tested, personnel experience, available resources, operational risk, program maturity, and desired level of realism.
Seminars
Discussion-based sessions that orient participants to plans, policies, authorities, concepts, roles, responsibilities, procedures, and organizational capabilities.
Workshops
Facilitated sessions that bring participants together to develop plans, establish priorities, resolve issues, define responsibilities, or produce a specific planning product.
Tabletop Exercises
Scenario-driven discussions that examine plans, decisions, authorities, communications, coordination, resource needs, dependencies, and recovery priorities.
Drills
Focused activities that test a specific operation, procedure, team, technology, notification process, evacuation action, or other limited capability.
Functional Exercises
Simulated operational exercises that test command, coordination, communications, information management, decision-making, resource tracking, and recovery procedures.
Full-Scale Exercises
Realistic, operations-based exercises involving personnel, facilities, equipment, technology, field operations, multiagency coordination, safety controls, and exercise simulation.
A Structured Exercise and Improvement Process
Each exercise is developed through a disciplined process that connects program priorities, objectives, scenario development, exercise conduct, evaluation, and improvement planning.
Program Management
Define preparedness priorities, capability targets, training needs, exercise schedules, stakeholders, and program governance.
Design and Development
Establish scope, objectives, scenario, documentation, participant roles, logistics, safety requirements, and evaluation methods.
Exercise Conduct
Brief participants, facilitate play, manage injects, control simulation, collect observations, maintain safety, and document performance.
Evaluation
Analyze performance against objectives, compile observations, identify strengths and gaps, determine root causes, and validate findings.
Improvement Planning
Assign corrective actions, owners, due dates, evidence, validation methods, reporting requirements, and closure criteria.
Turn Exercise Observations Into Measurable Improvement
Effective evaluation goes beyond listing what happened. It determines why performance occurred, what should change, who is responsible, and how improvement will be verified.
Objective-Based Evaluation
Measure performance against approved objectives, expected actions, plans, procedures, standards, and capability targets.
Evaluator Training
Prepare evaluators to observe assigned functions, document evidence, avoid unsupported conclusions, and apply consistent evaluation methods.
Root-Cause Analysis
Examine the plans, policies, training, staffing, equipment, communications, technology, authorities, and coordination factors behind performance gaps.
Corrective-Action Tracking
Track specific actions, responsible organizations, assigned owners, due dates, status, evidence, validation, and closure.
Participant Feedback
Collect structured input on exercise realism, procedures, coordination, decisions, strengths, challenges, and future training needs.
Hotwash Facilitation
Capture immediate participant and evaluator observations, major strengths, critical concerns, unresolved issues, and priority recommendations.
Capability Ratings
Apply documented rating criteria to assess whether objectives and critical tasks were performed fully, partially, or with significant difficulty.
Executive Reporting
Present concise findings, major risks, corrective-action priorities, responsible owners, resource needs, and progress to leadership.
Professional Exercise Documentation From Start to Finish
Deliverables are tailored to the client, exercise type, objectives, hazards, participants, regulatory environment, security requirements, and documentation needs.
Exercise Charter
Scope, purpose, objectives, participants, planning structure, assumptions, constraints, milestones, and approvals.
Situation Manual
Scenario background, exercise structure, objectives, discussion modules, participant guidance, assumptions, and reference information.
Exercise Plan
Purpose, scope, objectives, exercise organization, logistics, communications, safety, participant roles, and conduct procedures.
Facilitator Guide
Facilitation instructions, discussion questions, timing, expected issues, prompts, transitions, and session management.
Controller/Evaluator Handbook
Control structure, evaluator assignments, simulation procedures, communications, safety, documentation, and evaluation guidance.
Master Scenario Events List
Scheduled events, injects, delivery methods, expected actions, responsible controllers, recipients, and supporting documentation.
After-Action Report
Exercise overview, objective analysis, strengths, areas for improvement, root causes, supporting observations, and recommendations.
Improvement Plan
Corrective actions, responsible owners, due dates, required evidence, progress status, validation methods, and closure authority.
Prepare for the Risks That Matter Most
Scenarios are customized to the organization’s mission, hazards, vulnerabilities, operating environment, prior incidents, regulatory requirements, and preparedness priorities.
Cyberattack or Ransomware
Technology compromise, prolonged outage, data risk, manual workarounds, regulatory reporting, restoration, and recovery.
Severe Weather
Hurricanes, flooding, winter weather, utility failure, facility impact, workforce disruption, and regional consequences.
Facility Loss
Evacuation, alternate worksites, relocation, remote operations, equipment replacement, access restrictions, and restoration.
Workplace Violence
Threat reporting, protective actions, lockdown, law enforcement coordination, communications, reunification, and recovery.
Technology Failure
Application outage, communications loss, system failure, vendor escalation, manual operations, and service restoration.
Supply-Chain Disruption
Supplier failure, transportation interruption, material shortage, alternate sourcing, customer impact, and recovery.
Major Planned Event
Large crowds, public safety, transportation, communications, infrastructure dependencies, medical support, and contingencies.
Public Health Emergency
Staffing shortages, increased demand, protective measures, remote operations, supply needs, communications, and prolonged continuity.
Are Your People and Plans Ready to Perform Under Pressure?
Critical Pathway Group can help you design a realistic exercise, train participants, evaluate performance, identify capability gaps, and build a measurable path toward stronger readiness.
Request an Exercise Consultation