Training and Exercises
Virginia Commonwealth University Emergency Management frequently provides training across all VCU campuses, both on an ongoing basis and upon request by members of the VCU community. Additionally, VCU Emergency Management regularly designs and executes training exercises of all types to satisfy state requirements and ensure federal compliance with the Clery Act. These exercises range from small, department-level tabletop exercises to large, multijurisdictional full-scale exercises.
All training and exercises are informed by the VCU Hazard Mitigation Plan for the respective training year, the VCU Integrated Preparedness Plan, and requests from VCU staff, faculty and students. These activities are designed to better prepare VCU to respond to and recover from both known and unknown hazards.
If you are a representative of a student organization, faculty, or staff member at VCU and would like to request a training or exercise, please complete the training and exercise request form, and a member of our team will reach out to you for further coordination.
Previous Operations-Based Training Exercises:
- August. 2nd, 2023 - Full-Scale Active Shooter Exercise
- July. 25th, 2024- Full-Scale Hazardous Materials Exercise
- March. 13th, 2025- Full-Scale Active Shooter/Hostage Exercise
Training: Provides practitioners the requisite knowledge and skills to respond effectively to an emergency. Trainings ensure that everyone knows what to do when there is an emergency, or disruption of business operations, including protective actions for life safety (e.g., evacuation, shelter-in-place, or secure-in-place).
Exercises: Test how practitioners manage the response to a hypothetical incident. Exercises help build preparedness for threats and hazards by providing a low-risk, cost-effective environment to test/validate plans, policies, procedures and capabilities. Exercises help identify resource requirements, capability gaps, strengths, areas for improvement, and potential best practices. The most common form of an exercise is a tabletop exercise, which are facilitated discussion-based sessions with team members.
Exercise Types
NOTE: definitions provided by FEMA.
Seminars are discussion-based exercises designed to orient participants to new or updated plans, policies, or procedures in a structured training environment.
Workshops are discussion-based exercises used as a means of developing specific products, such as a draft plan or policy.
A tabletop exercise is a facilitated analysis of an emergency situation in an informal, stress-free environment. There is minimal attempt at simulation in a tabletop exercise. Equipment is not used, resources are not deployed, and time pressures are not introduced. Tabletops are designed to elicit constructive discussion as participants examine and resolve problems based on existing operational plans and identify where those plans need to be refined. The success of the exercise is largely determined by group participation in the identification of problem areas.
A drill is a coordinated, supervised exercise activity, normally used to test a single specific operation or function. It can also be used to provide training with new equipment or to practice and maintain current skills. Its role in your exercise program is to practice and perfect one small part of your damage assessment program and help prepare for more extensive exercises, in which several functions will be coordinated and tested.
A functional exercise is a fully simulated, interactive exercise that tests the capability of an organization to respond to a simulated event. It is similar to a full-scale exercise, but does not include equipment. It simulates an incident in the most realistic manner possible, short of moving resources to an actual site. The exercise tests multiple functions of your damage assessment plan.
A functional exercise focuses on the coordination, integration, and interaction of an organization’s policies, procedures, roles, and responsibilities before, during, or after the simulated event. Functional exercises make it possible to examine and/or validate the coordination, command, and control between various multi-agency coordination centers without incurring the cost of a full-scale exercise. A functional exercise is a prerequisite to a full-scale exercise.
A full-scale exercise simulates a real event as closely as possible. It is a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional, multi-discipline exercise designed to evaluate the operational capability of emergency management systems in a highly stressful environment that simulates actual response conditions. To accomplish this realism, it requires the mobilization and actual movement of emergency personnel, equipment, and resources. Ideally, the full-scale exercise should test and evaluate most functions of your damage assessment plan on a regular basis.
Full-scale exercises are the ultimate method for the testing of functions. Because they are expensive and time consuming, it is important that they be reserved for the highest priority hazards and functions.