---
title: "[CM] [JHA] [E2] [C7] Implementing Testing and Exercising Phase as part of the Crisis Management Planning Methodology for Jamiyah Home for the Aged"
description: "JHA testing and exercising phase: tabletop, simulation and full-scale exercises that test the crisis management plan and keep residents safe throughout."
---
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###### Crisis Management in Action: A Practical Implementation Guide for Jamiyah Home for the Aged
# \[CM\] \[JHA\] \[E2\] \[C7\] Implementing Testing and Exercising Phase as part of the Crisis Management Planning Methodology for Jamiyah Home for the Aged
[![\[CM\] \[JHA\] \[Full Banner\] \[Haze\] A Practical Implementation Guide for Jamiyah Home for the Aged](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/3893111/bdc00ed8-f19a-4103-a408-1d726db0e452.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/3893111/bdc00ed8-f19a-4103-a408-1d726db0e452)
This chapter is part of eBook 2, *Implementing Crisis Management for Jamiyah Home for the Aged*, in the series *Crisis Management in Action: A Practical Implementation Guide for Jamiyah Home for the Aged*. The work aligns with ISO 22361, which includes training, validation, and learning from crises as elements of a crisis management capability.
Exercising has three purposes. It checks whether the plan works: whether the activation triggers are clear, the roles are understood, and the decisions can be made in the time available. It builds familiarity, so that people who have rehearsed a situation act more calmly when a real one occurs. It also finds gaps when the cost of finding them is low. A weakness discovered in a tabletop exercise costs an hour of discussion. The same weakness discovered during a real evacuation can cost far more.
Exercising a plan in a residential home calls for particular care. Residents are frail, and some may be confused or anxious by changes in routine. Care must continue throughout. The design of every exercise at JHA should therefore begin with a simple rule: no exercise may put residents at risk or cause them distress. That rule shapes the choice of scenarios, the timing, and how larger exercises are run.
[![\[Logo\] \[CM\] Certification Transparent](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/3893111/93e4d869-8de4-4ffd-8aad-33538c5ce0ee.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/3893111/93e4d869-8de4-4ffd-8aad-33538c5ce0ee)
[Dr Goh Moh Heng](https://blog.bcm-institute.org/cm-v2/author/dr-goh-moh-heng) Nov 12, 2026
A crisis plan that has never been used is a set of assumptions. The CM Testing and Exercising (TE) phase turns those assumptions into evidence by putting the plan and the people through realistic situations before a real one arrives. This chapter describes the steps for carrying out the phase at Jamiyah Home for the Aged (JHA), the types of exercise to run, and an example of each.
## [![\[CM\] \[JHA\] \[Full Banner\] \[Haze\] A Practical Implementation Guide for Jamiyah Home for the Aged](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/3893111/bdc00ed8-f19a-4103-a408-1d726db0e452.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/3893111/bdc00ed8-f19a-4103-a408-1d726db0e452)
## Introduction
[![\[CM\] \[JHA\] \[E2\] \[C7\] CM Testing and Exercising](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/3893111/6452dcaf-9116-467d-9cfd-9fdc973ab3e0.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/3893111/6452dcaf-9116-467d-9cfd-9fdc973ab3e0)*Implementing Crisis Management for Jamiyah Home for the Aged*, in the series *Crisis Management in Action: A Practical Implementation Guide for Jamiyah Home for the Aged*. The work aligns with ISO 22361, which includes training, validation, and learning from crises as elements of a crisis management capability.
Exercising has three purposes. It checks whether the plan works: whether the activation triggers are clear, the roles are understood, and the decisions can be made in the time available. It builds familiarity, so that people who have rehearsed a situation act more calmly when a real one occurs. It also finds gaps when the cost of finding them is low. A weakness discovered in a tabletop exercise costs an hour of discussion. The same weakness discovered during a real evacuation can cost far more.
Exercising a plan in a residential home calls for particular care. Residents are frail, and some may be confused or anxious by changes in routine. Care must continue throughout. The design of every exercise at JHA should therefore begin with a simple rule: no exercise may put residents at risk or cause them distress. That rule shapes the choice of scenarios, the timing, and how larger exercises are run.
## What the TE phase involves
The BCM Institute source page for this phase describes three steps: develop testing scenarios; conduct tabletop exercises; and run full-scale crisis management exercises. A table on the page also lists three exercise types: an incident simulation exercise, a partial crisis management simulation exercise and a live crisis management exercise. The page does not describe these three, so the explanations below are general explanations by the author of this eBook and not statements from the source page. Taken together, the page gives a progression from discussion to rehearsal to full deployment, with each stage adding complexity and demand.
## Steps for implementing the phase
### Step 1: Develop testing scenarios
The first step is to build realistic scenarios that match the threats identified earlier and differ in complexity. The source page advises drawing on lessons from past events, adding time limits, resource constraints and possible media involvement, and creating several scenarios so that the programme is not repetitive. A good scenario has an objective, a timeline with events that arrive in sequence, and clear criteria for judging how the team did.
**Example for JHA:** Scenario CS-03, a serious event involving a resident, illustrates this. An outline for a tabletop exercise might run as follows. At 2:10 in the morning, a care assistant finds a resident on the floor with a head injury. The person in charge on the shift must decide what to do before anyone senior arrives. By 4:00, the resident has been taken to hospital, and the Superintendent has been called. By 7:00, a relative has heard something from another resident and is calling the home for information. By 9:00, a member of the media has called the managing agent asking about an incident at the home. At 10:30, MSF asks for a written account. Each of these events is an inject, a prompt that the facilitator introduces to see how the team responds. The objectives might be to test the first-hour authority of the person in charge, the speed and quality of the call to next of kin, the handling of the media enquiry and the notification of MSF.
The scenario should be written with the plan open, so that each inject maps to a part of the protocol. It should also state what the exercise will not do. For example, it will not involve real calls to families or the media, and it will not interrupt care routines.
### Step 2: Conduct tabletop exercises
The second step is the tabletop exercise, in which the crisis management team walks through a predefined scenario, reviews each step of the response protocol, confirms roles and responsibilities, rehearses communication, and notes gaps or weaknesses in the plan. A tabletop exercise takes place in a meeting room, usually lasts one to three hours and needs a facilitator who does not play a role in the response, along with a scribe who records decisions and issues. It is the most economical way to test a plan and the right starting point.
**Example for JHA:** The first two exercises in the programme might be tabletop exercises, EX-01 on scenario CS-03 and EX-02 on scenario CS-02, an infectious disease outbreak. In EX-02, the facilitator might ask the team to decide at the first inject whether to restrict visiting, then add an inject in which two staff members test positive and the roster for the night shift falls below the agreed minimum. The team would then have to decide how to redeploy staff, whether to ask the managing agent for help and how to inform families. The scribe would record each decision, who made it and the time taken, and the facilitator would end the session with a short debrief while memories are fresh.
At a tabletop exercise, questions are as important as answers. Who decides? How do they know? What do they say to the family? Where is that written down? A hesitation or an unclear answer is a finding. It is not a failure of the people, but a signal that the plan needs a sentence, a name or a rule that is not yet there.
### Step 3: Run full-scale crisis management exercises
The third step simulates a crisis in a realistic setting that involves multiple departments and deploys the entire response plan. The source page asks the team to observe how people apply the protocols and to review the results to improve the plan. Between the tabletop and the full-scale exercise, the exercise types named on the page give a graduated path. The author's general descriptions are as follows.
- An **incident simulation exercise** tests the response to a single incident, often one function or one team, using a realistic injected situation. It is more active than a tabletop discussion but narrower than a full-scale exercise.
- A **partial crisis management simulation exercise** involves the crisis management team and some operational staff, but not the whole organisation. It tests how decisions at the top reach the people doing the work.
- A **full-scale crisis management exercise** involves many departments and deploys the whole plan in a realistic setting.
- A **live crisis management exercise** runs in real time, with events unfolding as they would in a real crisis and the team acting in its actual roles and places. It demands the most preparation and carries the most risk.
**Example for JHA:** The table below shows an illustrative programme of six exercises over about two years, starting after the plan has been issued and staff trained. The exercises become more demanding as the team gains confidence. The timing and participants are examples only.
| **Code** | **Exercise type** | **Scenario** | **Participants** | **Illustrative timing** |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **EX-01** | **Tabletop** | **CS-03 Resident death, serious injury or safeguarding allegation** | **Crisis management team, managing agent representative** | **Month 1** |
| **EX-02** | **Tabletop** | **CS-02 Infectious disease outbreak** | **Crisis management team, shift supervisors** | **Month 4** |
| **EX-03** | **Incident simulation exercise** | **CS-06 Records loss, data breach or systems failure** | **Information technology, administration, nursing, BCM team** | **Month 8** |
| **EX-04** | **Partial crisis management simulation exercise** | **CS-07 Severe staff shortage** | **Crisis management team and shift staff for one shift** | **Month 12** |
| **EX-05** | **Full-scale crisis management exercise** | **CS-01 Fire or evacuation** | **Whole home, with the managing agent** | **Month 18** |
| **EX-06** | **Live crisis management exercise** | **CS-05 Prolonged failure of utilities or building services** | **Crisis management team, facilities, shift staff** | **Month 24** |
Scenarios CS-04 and CS-08 are not in the first two years of the table. They can be added to the next cycle, or folded into tabletop exercises as additional injects. The programme should be reviewed each year against the scenario ranking from Chapter 3, so that high-priority scenarios are exercised more often.
Because the home's residents are vulnerable, the larger exercises need extra safeguards. The project team might agree the following. The managing agent approves each exercise in advance, and families and residents are informed in a way that avoids alarm. A clearly agreed stop word allows any participant or observer to halt the exercise at once if a real need arises. Care and supervision continue throughout, with enough staff kept outside the exercise to cover residents. Emergency services are contacted only through an agreed arrangement and never by surprise. Evacuation practice with residents is planned with the person in charge of fire safety, and it moves residents only as far and as fast as is safe. A full-scale or live exercise should not take place until the earlier exercises have been completed and their findings acted on.
## Evaluating and learning from exercises
An exercise that is not evaluated is only an event. Each one needs objectives set in advance, observers who watch the exercise against those objectives, a debrief immediately afterwards and a short written report. The report lists what worked, what did not, and the actions agreed, each with an owner and a date. Illustrative objectives for EX-01 might include convening the crisis management team within an agreed time, keeping a written log of decisions, making the first call to next of kin within an agreed time, issuing an approved holding statement and notifying the managing agent and MSF.
The findings feed back into the plan. Any change to a protocol, contact list, or role goes into the next version, and training is updated. The Program Management phase in Chapter 8 tracks these actions until they are closed. Over time, the record of exercises also shows how the capability is maturing. If the same weakness appears in three successive exercises, the cause is probably not training but design, and the plan itself needs rethinking.
Facilitation deserves a word. The facilitator should know the plan well but should not own it, so that findings are not taken personally. For early exercises, an experienced person from the managing agent or an outside adviser may be best placed. Over time, trained staff can take the role. Observers should be briefed on what to watch for and should record times and decisions, not opinions. A short, kind, and specific debrief that begins with what went well makes people more willing to take part next time, and willing participants are the foundation of any exercise programme.
## The regulatory and standards setting
The pages read for this eBook do not set out any specific requirement from MSF about exercising a crisis or emergency plan. MSF states that the Social Residential Homes Act came into operation on 1 July 2026 and that its Code of Practice 2026 includes incident management among five domains. The text of that domain has not been read for this eBook. The project team should read it, check whether it requires drills, exercises, or particular forms of testing, and add any requirements to the exercise programme \[verify\]. Where the home must carry out fire evacuation drills under other rules, those drills should be recorded as part of the programme, but the applicable requirements have not been confirmed here \[verify\].
ISO 22361 is a set of guidelines and not a set of requirements. According to its publisher's listing, one clause covers training, validation, and learning from crises. That clause supports the approach in this chapter, which treats exercises as a way to validate capability and learn from the results.
## Outputs of the phase
- A library of tested scenarios with objectives and injects.
- An exercise programme, EX-01 to EX-06, with a rising level of difficulty.
- Safeguards for residents during exercises.
- Evaluation criteria and exercise reports.
- An action list from each exercise, with owners and dates.
- An annual review of the programme against the scenario ranking.
## [![x \[CM\] \[JHA\] \[Haze\] Summing Up Banner](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/3893111/bad7a111-1867-45a8-8fc3-ce1000eed090.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/3893111/bad7a111-1867-45a8-8fc3-ce1000eed090)
## Conclusion
The TE phase gives the plan its first contact with reality. For JHA, the illustrative programme moves from tabletop discussions of resident incidents and outbreaks to an incident simulation, a partial simulation, a full-scale evacuation exercise and a live exercise, with safeguards that put residents first. Each exercise produces findings, and the findings are only worth the trouble if they are acted on and the plan is kept current. Chapter 8 covers that last step, the Program Management phase, which keeps the capability alive through reviews, training and after-action learning.
## Sources
- [BCM Institute, CM Phase 6: Testing and Exercising](https://blog.bcm-institute.org/en/ebook-cm/cm-phase-6-testing-and-exercising)
- [MSF, Regulatory Requirements Under SRHA](https://www.msf.gov.sg/what-we-do/srha/regulatory-requirements)
- [MSF, About the Social Residential Homes Act](https://www.msf.gov.sg/what-we-do/srha/about-srha)
- [ISO 22361:2022 listing, AFNOR](https://www.boutique.afnor.org/en-gb/standard/iso-223612022/security-and-resilience-crisis-management-guidelines/xs140281/336670)
**Continue reading:** Chapter 8, *Implementing Program Management Phase as part of the Crisis Management Planning Methodology for Jamiyah Home for the Aged*, shows how reviews, training and after-action learning keep the capability current.
## **Comments**
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