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Incident Management Scenario Exercise
Tested on the ground, not just on paper.
An Incident Management Scenario Exercise validates your frontline response capability under realistic pressure. Fixinc designs operationally focused exercises that test your team's ability to identify, assess, escalate, and coordinate through an incident before a real one demands it.
Your frontline response sets the tone for everything that follows.
Incident management is where the response begins. The decisions made in the first minutes and hours of a disruption determine how effectively the rest of the organisation can respond. If your incident response team hesitates, miscommunicates, or fails to escalate at the right time, the impact compounds quickly. Yet most organisations never test this layer of their response in a realistic way.
Fixinc designs incident management exercises that focus specifically on operational response. We research your organisation, review your Incident Management Plan, and build a scenario that tests the practical decisions your team will face during a real event: identifying and classifying the incident, assessing its severity, activating the right people, coordinating resources, and escalating to crisis management when thresholds are met.
The exercise is delivered in two parts. The morning session is a facilitated walkthrough where participants work through the scenario step by step, reinforcing their understanding of the plan and their roles within it. The afternoon session is immersive. The team responds to an evolving incident with minimal guidance, facing dynamic injects that test their decision-making, coordination, and ability to work under pressure.
These exercises are not about passing or failing. They are about exposing the gaps that only appear when people are put under realistic pressure and giving your team the experience of working through them in a safe environment. A post-exercise report captures findings, observations, and recommendations, providing a clear benchmark of your incident response maturity and a roadmap for improvement.
Respond with confidence
When things go wrong, this phase activates. The Diamond’s top layers focus on structured, coordinated response, from executive decisions down to team-level action. Here’s where tools like F24, defined roles, and real-time communications bring planning to life under pressure.
A stronger return to BAU
The end goal isn’t just recovery, it’s learning. After every disruption, this phase ensures lessons are captured, plans are updated, and culture is strengthened. It’s about returning to operations quickly, but better prepared for next time.
Planning made practical
This phase includes disciplines like business continuity, crisis management, and IT disaster recovery. It’s where the bulk of the work happens, through structured validation, simulations, and repeatable testing. For those looking to lead in their sector, it can also align with ISO accreditation and industry standards.
Incident management Exercise
You don’t want the first time your team manages an incident to be during the real thing. This module simulates live response pressure in a safe but high-stakes environment, testing coordination, communication, and clarity under fire. We don’t just test the plan, we show your people how to lead through it.
Incident Management Team Training
A response plan means nothing if the people running it haven’t trained for it. This module turns incident response roles into real-world capabilities, focused, confident, and ready to lead under pressure. We train your people for what their job actually looks like in a live event.
Incident Management Training
CIMS gives you the structure, but structure only works if people know how to use it. This module equips your team to confidently apply New Zealand’s Coordinated Incident Management System (CIMS) in real-world scenarios. We bridge the gap between theory and practical response, tailored to your operations and industry.
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What types of incidents will the exercise cover?
The scenario is tailored to your organisation and can cover a range of operational disruptions. Fixinc researches your environment and threat landscape to select a scenario that is realistic and relevant to the types of incidents your team is most likely to face.
Who should participate in the exercise?
Incident management exercises are designed for the people who would be activated during a real incident. This typically includes your Incident Response Team, site-level managers, and operational leads responsible for assessment, escalation, and coordination.
How does this differ from a Crisis Management exercise?
An incident management exercise focuses on the tactical and operational response — the frontline. A crisis management exercise tests strategic leadership and cross-organisational decision-making. Both are valuable and can be run independently or as an integrated exercise.
Do we need a completed Incident Management Plan before running an exercise?
Ideally, yes. The exercise validates the plan and the team's ability to use it. However, Fixinc can run an exercise against draft plans or existing procedures to benchmark your current capability and identify where to focus plan development efforts.
What happens if our team performs poorly?
That is exactly why you run exercises. No organisation performs flawlessly, and the purpose is to surface gaps in a controlled setting rather than during a real incident. The post-exercise report provides clear, actionable recommendations for improvement.