The Binomial Bookstore

Plan AHEAD ™
ALL HAZARD EXERCISE ADMINISTRATION AND DEVELOPMENT SOFTWARE
by Cliffside Software

“Because of the quality of the exercise, I was able to make lasting and significant
improvements to my company’s disaster preparedness plans and processes.”
Patrick Kelley in Disaster Recovery Journal article “Honey, I blew up the Data Center.”
(Summer, 1998)

- - - - - - - - - -

SURVIVE! Magazine product review - “. . ..probably the best product ever developed to deal
with a disaster situation. . . recommend you obtain your own copy of Plan AHEAD as soon
as possible. (2/98)

- - - - - - - - - -

“. . . Plan AHEAD makes it easy for you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your
exercises. . . document results. . . assign corrective actions. . . and automatically
incorporate results into an After-Action Report” (Occupational Health and Safety June, 1997)

- - - - - - - - - -

Lt. General R. L. Wetzel, US Army Retired (from The Military Engineer, No. 592, May 1998)
“The ultimate strengths of Plan AHEAD are its easy-to-use, full range capabilities to develop
and enhance co-ordination of exercises between and among exercise partners.”

- - - - - - - - - -

“I was able to create an exercise involving four Red Cross chapters, 68 participants, with
messages, evaluation forms, narrative etc. in less than 4 days using Plan AHEAD. There is
no way word processing packages could cut it. I highly recommend this product, and have
told National Red Cross. it should be adopted across the county.” (Gisla Dewey, Disaster
Manager, California Red Cross)

- - - - - - - - - -

“Plan AHEAD gets me organized to exercise! It's much better than a word processor, since
it gives me a place to really think about what I'm doing, instead of worrying about formatting.
The output looks really professional. Cliffside was very thoughtful when putting this product
together, it is quite comprehensive, but I'm still on the look-out for possible ways to improve
it!” (Jim Howell, Emergency Manager, Linn County Oregon).

- - - - - - - - - -

Prepare for any threat to standard operations

“Disgruntled employees? Network outage? Product safety recall? Civil Disturbance? Y2K?
Bomb threat? Executive kidnaping? Network failure? Hazardous materials spill? Industrial
espionage? Tornado, fire, flood, earthquake, volcano, winter storm, drought? These low
probability and high impact events are just a few of the thousands of potential threats to your
on-going operations! How can you improve your capability to not just survive, but continue to
thrive in such conditions?

“Management exercises are the best means to create plans, train participants and test
quality. Plan AHEAD is the world’s best exercise development system!

Supports all exercise types and scales

“Use Plan AHEAD to create the materials to prepare for, conduct, evaluate, review and track
the outcome of management exercises. Table-top exercises, informal but crucial, are used to
develop plans and establish responsibilities between and among all affected parties.
Functional exercises train plan participants through role playing. Full scale exercises test the
degree of plan operational readiness. Actual occurrences of plan activation can be
documented within the product, as this influences both future exercises and plans.

“Plan AHEAD produced materials help improve the quality of existing plans and are used to
exercise ANY MANAGEMENT PLAN, especially useful for contingency plans such as
emergency response, crisis management, disaster recovery, safety, security, computer
operations, hazardous materials spill response, medical, military, ISO 9000/14000 quality
improvement plans, product acceptance testing, Y2K contingency plans and other plans for
continuity of operations.

Produce many types of exercise materials

“plan AHEAD develops materials to drive management plan exercises. By presenting
participants with a set of problem statements or messages, and carefully evaluating their
responses, plan AHEAD measures how well (or if) the plan overcomes a hazard. Narratives,
messages, major and minor events, evaluation forms and all other reports created from the
data base are thorough and high quality exercise materials. Lessons Learned are tracked,
along with corrective actions. Plan corrections and subsequent exercises can be influenced
by prior results in a continuous cycle of plan quality improvement.

“An entire section of the product is devoted to logistics tracking. Many times exercises fail
due to a failure of logistics. While the product can’t deliver the catered lunch to the correct
location and on-time, it does remind you to provide food for participants. Well fed participants
are more likely to enjoy their exercise experience and they will want to participate again.
Communications plans, press relations plans, security and safety, the weather on the day
and other logistical considerations are documented.

Reasons to exercise contingency plans:

- Assure operational readiness, practice plan procedures
- Identify further training needs
- Expose executives to the stress of emergency decision making
- Strengthen infrequently called upon relationships
- Create new plan items, test existing plan items
- Build teams within and outside the organization
- Meet regulation and industry accreditation requirements, avoid legal liabilities, and much
more!

Finally, a standard methodology

“FEMA’s (Federal Emergency Management Agency) model for exercise design and
evaluation is followed throughout the product. This model was deemed both robust enough for
the worst possible regional disaster scenario and equally effective when handling less
cataclysmic problems. Since emergency exercises may involve participants from outside
your organization, getting something useful out of sharing the experience is one key
component. plan AHEAD users share the exercise development experience as well. This
goes a long way to establishing good working relationships with exercise partners, partners
you’ll count on to help you when reacting to “the real thing”.

“Traditionally, plans for security, utility outage (electricity, pipeline, voice/data networks),
safety, medical, and the like, benefit from exercising. These emergency and business
continuity plans are not the only types of plans that can be evaluated using this methodology.
Any management plan can benefit from exercising. The FEMA model (a basic “management
by objective” military model adapted to exercising) applies as well to marketing or HR plans,
which have not traditionally been exercised. As matrix management becomes more of the
norm, exercises can be performed to assist in team building. Exercising can help
organizations with their plans for continuous process improvement, and total quality
management.

Product structure facilitates ease of use

“plan AHEAD™ is a standalone database application with an embedded word processor and
report generator. A 16 bit Win3.11 compatible application (it also operates under Win95/98
and WinNT Client) appears as a notebook on screen. Each page contains a logical set of
simple data entry tasks. Ease of use functions include sample exercises that restore to their
original state, even after changes are practiced by the end user. Extensive on-line help
describes each control on each page. The Concepts section is a tutorial regarding exercising
and answers why one should perform a particular development step. A set of Guides show
users how advanced functions operate. There are libraries of functional requirements,
exercise objectives, messages and more. Developers can find an item, edit it to their needs,
and save it back to the library. Over time, libraries will make the exercise developer even
more productive as libraries build up organizational specifics as they are tailored to a
particular operation. Libraries are also a means whereby organization-wide standards of
quality can be instituted. See the Shuttle Technology discussion below to understand one
way that multiple users are accommodated.

Exercise creation is a step by step approach.

“plan AHEAD takes the exercise developer from the needs assessment stage (what
specifically in my plan needs to be exercised?) through evaluation development (how can we
measure participant’s performance and compare their actions to those identified in the plan?),
through lessons learned (that will influence subsequent exercises) and corrective actions
(tracking who does what to fix the plan, by when and for how much). plan AHEAD can be
used one day, and then not used for months, yet it will still seem familiar to users.

Share workload with other design team members, improving your productivity

“plan AHEAD brings unique productivity aids to the exercise developer. plan AHEAD’s Shuttle
Technology™ allows for workload sharing between exercise partners during exercise
development and evaluation. Shuttles essentially allow the exercise developer to copy a page
out of the notebook, and electronically (or via diskette) share that page with an exercise
partner. In other words, a Shuttle is a limited function copy of plan AHEAD, that can be run
by a remote computer, either connected via a network or standalone, to facilitate data entry
tasks. Once the partner has completed their data entry task and returned the Shuttle, their
data is returned and included within the now jointly developed exercise. The best part is that
Shuttle recipients do not have to own plan AHEAD to participate as Shuttle operators. This
greatly reduces the total cost of ownership, while sharing workload, providing a standardized
input capability, improving exercise quality and achieving design team management
simultaneously.

“plan AHEAD assists in the management of design and evaluation teams. plan AHEAD can
also be used to establish organization-wide resources related to exercising. A library of
exercising objectives can be established and distributed to all plan AHEAD users within an
organization. The support of standards, along with measurement, is a key benefit.

plan AHEAD builds the paperwork to run an exercise.

“Each field and table of data in plan AHEAD is capable of being included in a merge
document. The embedded word processor sets up a template of fields and tables to be
included in a report, and the report is then generated using the current exercise data. The
template is then available to use during the next exercise, and the report can be further edited
in any word processing program.

“The database reporting module is capable of an almost unlimited number of different reports,
with choices of paper orientation (landscape or portrait), font type and size etc. Templates
that create particular reports such as those described below, and others, can be included
within a master template to form reports such as the COSIN (controller and staff instructions)
and the Exercise Plan (a roadmap of the exercise).

plan AHEAD formats include:

“Exercise Directive - an invitation to exercise

“Master Sequence of Events List - the exercise script can include up to 23 different fields
of information. The MSEL is just one of over 40 different tables of data within the product.
Fields may be displayed or non-displayed, and their order across the screen changed (along
with their width). Data can be included or filtered out, and sorted. Once manipulation is
complete, a view of the table is saved. This view is ultimately included in a template, or merge
document. With 23 total fields, the MSEL can contain a lot of information. However, by
selecting only certain fields to be displayed (for example, message time, message content,
message-from and message-to fields) exercise management tasks can be performed, even
before the exercise takes place. Using the fields suggested, and sorting by message time,
one can discern whether too many or too few messages are being sent from a particular
simulator at a given time. This information is difficult to determine with a word processor, but
will stand out in a plan AHEAD report. The exercise designer now can choose to assign more
simulators, or move the messages to another time to smooth out the rate.

“Another aspect of the MSEL is that it includes Controller Notes, or stage direction for the
controller of the exercise. In this way, the controller can include or skip messages, to allow
for exercise continuity, and to slow or speed the action. Skip time is supported, along with a
24 hour clock option for message labeling.

“Messages - Display a single message to a page (with or without expected actions) or
listings of messages sorted and selected appropriately. Messages (sometimes known as
exercise injects) are used to simulate the outside world, and give participants something to
react to. Messages are also used to drive participants into making choices.

“Evaluations - Of pivotal importance to an exercise, evaluations reflect the exercise
objectives. Objectives are, in the best of all possible worlds, measurable. plan AHEAD
supports many question types that automatically format on the page. Create a question and
plan AHEAD automatically creates a printable form, an electronic version to collect the
results, and creates an Evaluation Response Shuttle. After the exercise is over exercise
evaluators use the Shuttle to amplify and expound on the answers they wrote on the
evaluation printout during the exercise. Users report this makes for much higher quality
evaluation results than previously obtained. It also makes for far fewer errors when including
the raw evaluation data into the process. No more hard to read answers, the evaluation team
will already have keyed in the answers for you on the Shuttle.

“Selective reporting - Players, observers, simulators, controllers, and evaluators can now
have reports printed with role specific information. This selective printing function potentially
saves hundreds of dollars of printing and copying costs as each participant can now obtain
just the information they need to be effective during the exercise.

“Training tracking - plan AHEAD can be used to track the training history of participants.

“After-action report - plan AHEAD can greatly assist in generating the after-action report,
as much of this report is a summary of exercise design and development activities. While the
conclusions drawn are your own, the basis for those conclusions can hit the page
consistently every time, using the reporting structures in plan AHEAD. The product is also
used to document actual incidents, as these also affect future plans and exercises.

“Sharing - The product supports exercise sharing. Oversight agencies and/or departments
can review exercise outcome for credit. Exercises can also be cooperatively prepared by
multiple users, samples can be established and distributed within an organization, and more!

“Lots More - Having the data stored in a data base means that thousands of reports
specific to your operation are easily and consistently formatted, stored and printed.

- - - - - - - - - -

BENEFITS OF PLAN AHEAD -
PRODUCTIVITY, CREATIVE FREEDOM, QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

“Novice exercise developers quickly become exercise development “pros”. Long time exercise
developers appreciate the ease of use and comprehensive nature of plan AHEAD. By using
plan AHEAD, exercise development, evaluation and plan improvement are all included in one
continuous process. That is the basic purpose of the product, to support the entire process of
exercise development along with outcome management, at each stage of plan development,
training and plan improvement.

“Estimates of the value of plan AHEAD vary from organization to organization. One measure
that seems consistent across organizations is that it takes, using word processing, about
one month of work per hour of real-time exercise practice (functional, fully scripted exercise).
Users of plan AHEAD have indicated they are better off using the product by 50-75%, or, up
to three times faster, using plan AHEAD Certain tasks (evaluation development and
formatting) are shortened by an even greater percentage (on the order of a ten to one
improvement, with a huge increase in quality).

“The other major benefit reported by users is that plan AHEAD helps focus their effort. It is
nothing like staring at a blank word processing screen. The step by step approach to
development, along with the emphasis on exercise objectives, means that smaller, shorter,
simpler exercises can now accomplish more than larger, longer and more expensive
exercises did in the past.

“Many organizations have spent many thousands of dollars on software that simply
documents their contingency plan. plan AHEAD gives organizations a chance to measure the
plan quality, before they are needed in an actual incident. The value to these organization is
tremendous, not just in terms of planning dollars saved and/or justified, but in potential for
lives saved, and operations now better ready to withstand disruption. plan AHEAD provides
the process control mechanism for plan management.”

- - - - - - - - - -
Requires Microsoft Windows, 20mb min. disk space.
- - - - - - - - - -

The commercial price includes the user's guide, training materials, classroom training at
Cliffside’s facilities, (on-site training as well as consulting is available at additional cost),
telephone support, ClubEx membership and other benefits.

The government price includes a self-study guide, user's guide, and one year of
Club-Ex membership. Training and other services are available at extra cost.

Consulting support for plan AHEAD is available. Contact THE ROTHSTEIN CATALOG ON
DISASTER RECOVERY for additional information.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
DEMO (Disk or Download) AVAILABLE: Contact Rothstein Associates Inc. for details

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Order #DR274
- - - - - - - - - - - -

The Binomial Bookstore

Software; CD/Diskette Products

Rothstein Associates Inc.