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On 14 and 15 December, the district heating went out at a major hospital…
At least that was the scenario for a couple of drills conducted with CriseIT 2. Two departments at Locum, a company that manages several hospitals, practised using the training concept developed within CriseIT. The exercises were combined with a Teams video conference.

- There are a number of ways to combine digital support, says John Sören Pettersson, head of pilot exercises in CriseIT and professor of Information Systems. We have seen municipal function drills where the participants have all been in the same office and the exercise material and participant reports have been in the digital system.

Because of the pandemic, only distance exercises are possible. However, video conferencing was used. Interestingly enough, the Locum exercise leaders kept certain components individual but brought the answers entered by the participants up for discussion with the whole group.

- In other exercises, individual answers have been used to enable an asynchronous method, allowing certain components to be completed whenever the person has time. Only a few components have been synchronous, via a chat function for instance, says John Sören Pettersson. Since everyone is now accustomed to video meetings on their own computers, synchronous components are easy to employ.

The organisation was happy with the drill
- Well-functioning crisis management hinges on regular drills, says Anders Gidrup, head of security at Locum. When the pandemic struck with full force, traditional exercise protocol was compromised because we could not meet for tabletop exercises. As we looked for digital alternatives, we came across a research project at ¹û¶³´«Ã½, CriseIT, which is now a partner of ours.

The exercise material was added to the training tool by emergency coordinator Charlotte Marner and John Sören Pettersson. The exercises were based on a template that Locum typically uses in tabletop exercises.

- Having used the training tool, I am convinced that the CriseIT training concept more than fulfils our requirements and expectations for distance-based organisational drills that ensure a high degree of learning and experience sharing while maintaining the ability to deal with adverse events, says Anders Gidrup.

In any given situation, there is a wide range of digital support options. In 2021, Locum will proceed with digital exercises, exercises based on the company’s incident reporting app, and exercises based on CriseIT.

Facts
CriseIT 2 is an R&D project intended to help organisations conduct crisis management training more easily, more frequently, and with more people.

CriseIT 1 2016-2018
CriseIT 2 2019-2021
Funded by Interreg Sweden-Norway, task area Innovative environments.
10 partners – academia, public sector, and private companies
¹û¶³´«Ã½ is the project owner.