The Alternative Worlds system

When you subscribe, we create an 'Alternative Worlds' application solely for your use, on a web site to which only you have access. We customise the system to reflect your scenarios, your assets, and your stakeholders. From then, the system is ready to generate new exercises, producing exercise documentation such as table-top handbooks, directing staff instructions, master event lists, and so on, depending on the type of exercise you want.

If you want to update and manage the system yourself, and to generate exercises, you can do so. If not, we will do this for you, on request.

Generating a table top exercise typically takes a few minutes. Generating exercises with role-players and several participating organisations takes longer, because it is necessary to invite people to play before you can allocate roles to them, to generate exercise telephone directories, and so on!

You can write as many exercises as you want, with the minimum effort.

'Alternative Worlds' is a service, not just a piece of software. Our goal is to make sure your organisation has first class exercises quickly and with a minimum of fuss.

You subscribe to the Alternative Worlds programme on an annual basis. There is a single fixed fee.

We set up an application on a web site which is solely for your use. We arrange and manage third-party hosting, and we maintain the site. After consultation with you, we load suitable data on to the site about your scenarios, assets and stakeholders. We provide a specified amount of training for your staff, and also an email help line. However, we are always happy to operate the site on your behalf to make sure that you get exercises whenever you want them, quickly and without any trouble.

So, 'Alternative Worlds' delivers first-class exercise scripts, without fuss, in a fraction of the time it would take you to write them 'by hand'.

Sometimes, new software systems require you to change your procedures, which may not always be acceptable, and puts a heavy training burden on your staff.

The 'Alternative Worlds' system does not do this. It produces written exercise briefing - handbooks, Master Event Lists, injects, just as you do now. It is written from the background of best current practice - for example the new BSI guidance note PD 25666, and the UK Civil Contingencies Act guidance on exercises - but it can easily be customised so that its documentation looks exactly like your existing documentation and follows the same patterns.

It is not a computer game, and you do not have to work with computers on your table if you don't want to.

The system enhances the way you work now: it just makes it easier and more consistent. We have done the research into standards, so you don't have to.

Exercises are not 'rocket science', but they are often high-profile events. You want them to work, you want them to be of consistent high quality, and you want them to meet auditable standards.

Staff turnover and movements are high in many organisations. Writing and running exercises is often not a core responsibility. Skills acquired the hard way are lost when the incumbent moves on, with the result that the same lessons are learned over and over again.

Our system stores information about your company, and our experience of writing exercises, to give you a consistent high-quality result.

Virtually any sort of exercise or simulation. The format can be a simple table-top or seminar exercise, or a complex simulation with role players and many telephones in use. Exercises can be in-house, with only your organisation taking part, or jointly held with several other organisations.

The subject matter can be an emergency such as a fire, flood or explosion, a crisis such as the kidnap of an executive or the failure of a major system, or a business continuity issue - anything where you have a response plan that needs to be tested, and you need to train a response team.

Many regulators and many company polices require regular testing of plans and training of teams, using exercises of one sort or another. Meet these requirements easily with 'Alternative Worlds'!

Costs depend on the number of locations you want to be included in your 'Alternative Worlds' web site. The prices are less than it would cost you to do the equivalent work internally, or to use consultants to write each exercise, so you will always save money without having to cut corners on your exercise programmes to do so.

The system is most cost-effective when dealing with several similar sites or situations. For example, if you operate several oil refineries, or several businesses each with its own business continuity plan, your 'Alternative Worlds' subscription will offer really good value.

The hidden cost of exercises includes the time taken by your staff to research and write them, to administer a systematic exercise programme, and to present and store the results in a form that can be used to demonstrate that you have a resilience programme in place.

Our system automates most of this for you. You choose the time, the people, and the scenario, and the artifical intelligence in our system will do the rest for you, setting sensible defaults if you don't want to 'fine tune' it yourself.

If you do (or should do!) more than two exercises a year, yes, 'Alternative Worlds' will save you money!.

Firstly, you get access to a unique site prepared for your organisation, which contains our pwoerful exercise-generation software.

But we provide more than this. 'Alternative Worlds' is a service, not just software. We update the data on your site. We will generate exercises for you if you don't want to do so yourself. We provide training and an email-based help facility. We keep up to date with new standards and requirements for you.

You can use the site to generate as many exercises as you need during the subscription period.

You can also use it to generate reports that will give you a valubale insight into your training programme, and also enable you to demonstrate its effectiveness to regulators and senior management.

Once we have set the system up for your organisation, a complete table top exercise can be written in half an hour

More complex exercises, with several organisations involved, telephone role-players, etc., take longer to set up, largely because of the need to approach individuals and set up rooms, etc. But 'Alternative Worlds' can:

• Automatically generate emails for you to send, inviting people to participate, and help you keep track of their responses.
• Allow you to share the exercise as 'work in progress' with other exercise owners.
• Allow others to comment via the web site, and automatically email their comments to you.
• Help you to prepare briefing packages for players and role-players, and to send them out by email.
• Keep track of rooms and telephone numbers.
• Automatically generate and if necessary revise exercise telephone directories, if you have to make last minute changes.
• Keep track of hundreds of details for you.

It will make them more systematic, and it will enable you to store and re-use knowledge and techniques.

It is written from the background of best current practice - such as the new BSI guidance note PD 25666, and the UK Civil Contingencies Act guidance on exercises. Two of the 'Alternative Worlds' team helped to draft PD 25666.

• Simple table-top or seminar exercise scripts can be prepared within minutes using pre-set patterns.
• For more complex exercises, including role players and simulation, detailed exercise orders can be prepared, for the different types of participant.
• Setting up or changing the exercise date, as well as the scenario, the degree of severity are easily achieved from your PC screen.
• Intelligent algorithms sort and present data to meet your training needs.
• The site can also manage shared or joint exercises between your organisation and others.
• Keeps track of details, even if these change at the last minute! (Who is on which phone? what if the start time has to slip by an hour?)
• 'Web 2.0' features (such as automatic emails) simplify contact with others inside and outside the organisation, to arrange and track dates, participation agreements, and so on.
• Data remains available for later analysis and statistics. Management information is always available when you need it, for instance to show regulatory compliance.Subscribers have one central record and overview of all the exercises they have done.

The system produces a better exercise, in a shorter time, and requires less expertise, than most old-fashioned 'hand-written' exercises.

It's one thing holding an exercise. It's another to be able to demonstrate to regulators, senior managers, and key stakeholders that you have identified lessons from the exercise, and learned them. All too often, companies identify lessons in an exercise, then a year or two later, when another exercise is held, often after key people have moved on, the same lessons re-appear in the next list of 'lessons learned'. They may have been identified, but clearly they have not been learned!

'Alternative Worlds' helps you to learn lessons in several ways:

• Exercises are more systematic, and therefore it is easier to compare them over time and between different units of your organisation
• The system keeps records and can present reports quickly: which unit has done which exercises? What scenarios have been used (or not been used?) What comments have been made?
• All recommendations are stored and can be reviewed at any time. The system allows recommendations to be allocated to named people for action, and for the action to be recorded. So you can quickly see what work is outstanding.

This systematic approach allows you to build on the results of your exercise programme, and to demonstrate clearly that you are doing so. (The system can produce customised reports in formats to suit your internal auditors, for example.)

Setting up an exercise involves a lot of communication - to agree objectives, to select scenarios, to fine-tune injects, and to book and then brief participants. 'Alternative Worlds' makes this easier, for example by preparing emails at various stages of the process for you to send, complete with addresses and content, to perform many of these tasks. The programme can also be set to allow other exercise authors to view the exercise, and even contribute to it, as it develops on the site. This is ideal if several organisations are collaborating on an exercise. However, the 'Alternative Worlds' client which operates the site always has the final choice as to who can see what!

With these features, you need fewer physical meetings. Other exercise authors are automatically kept up to date and can view the 'work in progress' whenever they want. So you save time, you make sure that all stakeholders are fully consulted, and you produce a better exercise.

Yes. A specified amount of training is included in every subscription. In addition, we like to visit sites where possible, and to observe exercises built with the system. This is partly to ensure that we keep in touch with our clients' needs, and also to identify ways in which the system can be improved. However, it also allows us to provide informal training and guidance to system users.

Only one or two people in your organisation will need to understand how 'Alternative Worlds' works. Most of your staff will not notice the difference between exercises written on our system and old-fashioned 'hand-written' exercises.

You choose which named users have password-protected access to the site. SSL sites are available on request.

Your 'Alternative Worlds' site is a separate installation to all other 'Alternative Worlds' sites, and there are no common elements between them, so there is no risk of cross-over from one client to another.

Your 'Alternative Worlds' site is a separate installation to all your other sites, and there are no common elements or connections between them. You choose which named users have password-protected access to the site. SSL sites are available on request.

All 'Alternative Worlds' sites are hosted by a third party hosting company with whom we have developed a good working relationship. They offer (and usually provide) 99.9% up-time, and we regularly monitor them.

The service is not intended to be used for real emergencies or incidents, or to be 'mission-critical' software. However, we offer an email help line in case you encounter difficulties.

Access to data stored on the site is limited. All data is regularly backed up and securely stored off-site. If you want copies of your data, these are available at short notice, in a variety of formats.

'Alternative Worlds' is distributed under license by Stirling Reid Ltd in the UK, a consultancy with a 20-year track record in providing emergency response exercises, for some of the world's largest companies in every possible environment.

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Telephone +44 (0) 7957 597904

102 Church Road

Teddington, Middlesex TW11 8PY

United Kingdom