These generating facilities form part of the wider Critical National Infrastructure of the UK and present a number of challenges to those charged with their daily management and operation. Additionally EPH staff and teams must be fully prepared to respond to any emergency incident, in the unlikely event that one might occur, and to do so in partnership with statutory agencies.

EPH has developed incident and emergency response procedures for their power generating facilities and had previously enabled shift engineers to undertake training through offsite provisions. They now wished to provide similar training to deputies, to equip them with the capability required to lead an incident response, but crucially required this to take place in their own facilities. EPH also wanted an impartial assessment of the competencies of those taking part in the training.

Risk and Resilience Ltd were engaged by EPH to design a four day continuous programme of training and practical exercising for those staff with responsibilities for co-ordinating the response to an incident. Through a process of reviewing the plans and procedures and conducting site visits and interviews with staff and management we were able to ensure that the design of the course met the requirements of the company and the training needs of individuals alike. Our team delivered this training over a set period to the incident controllers using the EPH plans, locations and facilities. The course provided a safe environment in which to discuss the theory and concepts relevant to incident response and multi-agency operations as well as the chance to rehearse procedure and plans through the conduct of practical exercises. This latter aspect was vital in ensuring skills where honed and new learning absorbed. The exercise element built from a group session on day one into detailed and demanding simulations by the end of the course when each individual had the opportunity to assume a command role.

The training was judged by EPH to have been amongst the best they had received in relation to incident response and management as it directly related to their situation, risks, plans and people. They intend to roll the training out to other sites in due course.