Realistic exercises. Practical learning. Better prepared teams.
When an incident occurs, your people need to know what to do, who to communicate with and how to work together under pressure. Plans and procedures are important, but they need to be tested in realistic conditions.
Square Knot designs and delivers exercises, scenarios and operational drills to help organisations assess their response to emergencies, identify gaps and improve operational readiness.
Working with airports, major venues, transport operators and high-risk industries, we bring real-world emergency response experience to the planning, delivery and review of your exercises.
From a single targeted drill to a fully planned multi-agency exercise, we help you test what matters.
Built Around Your Organisation
Every organisation has different risks, operating environments and response arrangements. We work with you to develop exercises that reflect your operational reality, whether that means testing an established emergency plan, introducing a new procedure or challenging your team to manage a developing incident.
Square Knot can manage the entire exercise, from initial planning and scenario development through to delivery, debrief and written recommendations. Alternatively, we can provide specific scenario injects to test particular functions, decisions or capabilities within an exercise you are already running.
Our approach is practical, proportionate and focused on learning.
What We Can Deliver
Full Exercise Planning & Delivery
From the initial objectives to the final report, we can design and coordinate an exercise around your organisation’s risks, personnel, facilities and emergency arrangements. We can work with your internal teams, external contractors and relevant emergency service partners to create a structured, realistic test of your response.
Tabletop Exercises
Test decision-making, leadership, communications and emergency procedures in a controlled environment. Tabletop exercises are an effective way to explore complex incidents, examine responsibilities and identify issues before committing to a live exercise.
Live Scenarios & Operational Drills
Put procedures into practice through realistic, scenario-led training. We can test individual teams, departments or multiple functions working together, including casualty management, incident escalation, communications, evacuation and the coordination of responding resources.
Scenario Injects & Specialist Support
Already planning an exercise? We can support your existing team with targeted injects designed to challenge specific capabilities. These may include casualty surges, changing incident conditions, communications failures, conflicting information, resource constraints or developments that require a change in operational priorities.
Multi-Agency Exercises
Major incidents rarely sit within the boundaries of a single organisation. We can help exercise the interfaces between your teams, emergency services, contractors, control rooms and other responding agencies, with a focus on communication, coordination and shared situational awareness.
Relevant Experience. Realistic Scenarios.
Our team combines frontline emergency response experience with expertise in pre-hospital care, casualty management, incident coordination, rescue operations and practical training.
We understand that an exercise needs to do more than look convincing. It needs to challenge the right people, test the right procedures and generate useful learning.
Scenarios can be developed around the challenges faced by your organisation, including:
- Airports & Aviation: Aircraft-related incidents, casualties across operational areas, emergency access, coordination between airport teams and external responders.
- Major Venues & Public Spaces: Multiple casualties, security-related incidents, evacuation, communication with the public and coordination of response teams.
- Industrial & High-Risk Sites: Serious injuries, hazardous environments, restricted access, emergency escalation and the interface between site personnel and external responders.
- Transport & Infrastructure: Incidents involving complex sites, multiple contractors, restricted access and competing operational priorities.
- Emergency & Medical Teams: Triage, casualty distribution, resource management, handovers and the practical delivery of care during demanding incidents.
Exercises are developed to suit your environment and objectives, with scenarios that encourage participants to make decisions, communicate effectively and adapt as an incident develops.
Martyn’s Law, JESIP & Emergency Preparedness
Emergency exercises can play an important role in reviewing organisational preparedness and identifying opportunities to strengthen existing arrangements.
We can develop scenarios that explore relevant aspects of Martyn’s Law, the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025, including emergency procedures, incident response, communications and the practical coordination of people and resources. Exercises can help organisations explore how their arrangements work in practice as they prepare for the legislation’s implementation.
We can also incorporate the principles of JESIP (Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles), including shared situational awareness, effective communication, coordination and joint understanding of risk.
Depending on your objectives, exercises may examine how information is shared, how decisions are made, how responsibilities are understood and how your organisation works alongside emergency services during a developing incident.
The aim is to move beyond simply having a plan in place and to examine how effectively it works when tested.
Hot Debriefs, Reports & Recommendations
An exercise is only valuable if the learning is captured and acted upon.
We facilitate structured hot debriefs immediately following an exercise, while events are still fresh in participants’ minds. These provide an opportunity to discuss what worked well, what proved challenging and where procedures, communications or decision-making could be improved.
Where required, we follow this with a written exercise report containing:
- A summary of the exercise, objectives and scenario.
- Key observations and areas of effective practice.
- Identified gaps, challenges and opportunities for improvement.
- Recommendations for changes to procedures, training or operational arrangements.
- Suggested actions to support ongoing improvement and preparedness.
Recommendations are intended to be practical and proportionate, helping your organisation turn exercise findings into meaningful improvements. Reports can be tailored to your requirements, from a concise action-focused review to a more detailed report for senior management and organisational assurance.
A Flexible Approach
Whether you need to test one procedure or exercise your organisation’s response to a major incident, Square Knot can provide support at the level you need.
We can deliver a complete exercise package or work alongside your existing emergency planning, security, safety and training teams. We can also support a programme of exercises, allowing lessons from one activity to inform the next.
Plan it. Test it. Learn from it. Improve it.
Discuss Your Exercise Requirements
If your organisation needs to test its emergency arrangements, develop realistic scenarios or gain an independent operational perspective on its response, speak to Square Knot.
We will work with you to understand your objectives and develop an exercise that delivers meaningful, practical learning.
Contact Square Knot to discuss your exercise, scenario or drill requirements.
