The University of Edinburgh had enhanced its Major Incident arrangements, including how they linked with the provisions for managing serious incidents. A Major Incident Plan was in the final stages of development and acceptance when the University approached Risk and Resilience Ltd for advice, training and exercise support. The Major Incident Plan included the arrangements relating to the teams and resources required to implement the plan and it was important that these teams were appropriately prepared. Specifically this included the University Incident Response Team (UIRT) and the senior managers of the Major Incident Team (MIT). We were asked by the University to help develop the competencies of those who will fulfil roles within the various teams and to help assess the likely effectiveness of the plan.

We developed a programme of role and team specific training and delivered this to University staff from the UIRT and MIT. We ensured the training was built upon the existing plans and experience of the participants and tailored it to suit the requirements of the various teams. Training included theory discussions, plan awareness sessions and numerous practical group work to promote knowledge transfer. We capture feedback from each course, reporting the results to the University, and adjusting subsequent courses to take account of any learning.

The training undertaken to date has helped greatly to raise awareness and enhance competencies amongst team members. Feedback has been very positive with over 95% of participants viewing the courses as extremely beneficial. More training, leading to exercises, is planned and the outputs are being used to improve current plans and procedures.