BCAW 2019 at South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue - Exercise Blue Chip
After the success of Exercise Bravo Charlie 2016, Exercise Broken Crown 2017, and Exercise Battle Creek 2018, South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue decided that another exercise of a similar nature would be organised for Business Continuity Awareness Week (BCAW) 2019 which had the theme of ‘investment through resilience’.
Exercise Blue Chip was a UK national level exercise which was open to participation from any organisation that has access to the UK public sector Resilience Direct (RD) website. The exercise took place during BCAW between the 13th and 17th May 2019.
The exercise ran throughout the week on RD with injects being released each day to progress the scenario. Each organisation could participate to whatever level their workload would allow.
The planning team and exercise control was run by two members of the South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Resilience, Planning and Contingencies department.
32 organizations actively took part in the exercise and when asked afterwards whether the exercise tested organizations business continuity plans answers included;
- 'Yes and also made you consider longer term impact and how robust our plans are in similar situation’
- ‘I was satisfied that our BC Plans and mechanisms are in place and would have stood up effectively to these scenarios’
- ‘I think our BC Plans were given a thorough test throughout the week and stood up to everything thrown our way’
- ‘The exercise worked extremely well for our organisation where we were able to cross reference into a Facilities IRP that is being written currently’
- ‘The exercise highlighted some issues to be considered in our plan reviews’
- ‘Yes, we will be carrying out a small gap analysis based on the exercise'
Due to the positive feedback once again given on this exercise, it is envisaged that a similar exercise will be planned for next year’s BCAW.
The full debrief report can be downloaded below.
Exercise Blue Chip debrief
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