Prepare your first drill

A drill is worth running only if it tests something. This guide is the pre-flight list that stops your drill turning into a debugging session in front of the whole site.

1. 01

   Confirm the response plan says what you want people to do

   Open the scenario and read its response steps as if you were a person in a corridor with 20 seconds of attention. Ambiguity in this text is the single most common reason a drill goes badly, and it is the cheapest thing to fix.

   ✓

   Confirm it worked

   The scenario shows as Approved, not Pending Approval.

2. 02

   Check the receiving devices are actually connected

   Open Agent Devices and look at Last seen for every device you expect to participate. A device that last checked in yesterday will not wake up because you started a drill.

   • Agents — running, connected, assigned to a room.
   • Signage screens — paired and showing current content.
   • Kiosk — online and on the welcome screen.
   • Mobile — at least a sample of participants signed in with notifications allowed.

   

3. 03

   Check the geometry the drill will rely on

   If your drill involves exit routes, preview routes from a handful of rooms in the target zone before the day. A route that fails during a drill is indistinguishable to participants from a route that would fail in a real event.

   !

   Verify after any building work. Routes do not re-check themselves against a changed building.

4. 04

   Decide the incident type deliberately

   Use TEST for anything where surprise is not the point. Use a real type only when everyone in scope has been told, and only when you specifically want to test the full sensory response — sirens, takeover, PA.

   i

   Whichever you choose, record why. A drill record that says which type was used and why is stronger evidence than one that only says a drill happened.

5. 05

   Brief the participants and the observers

   Tell participants what will happen and what you want them to do. Separately, brief observers on what to watch: who did not receive it, who did not acknowledge, which screens stayed on the wrong content, which rooms went the wrong way.

6. 06

   Run it, and hold the observation

   Trigger the drill and stay on the incident view. Watch acknowledgements arrive in real time — the gaps are the finding. Resolve with an authorised all-clear when the exercise is over.

7. 07

   Review the record while it is fresh

   Open the resolved incident in Reports and compare the timeline against what you observed. Discrepancies between what the system recorded and what you saw are worth more attention than either on its own.