Operational Incident Simulation

The problem with assumed readiness

Most operational teams have a plan for when things go wrong: a driver down, a depot backed up, a system outage mid-shift or a weather event disrupting the schedule.

These plans usually work pretty well, but you still have to improvise.

You get through the shift thanks to some clever thinking, teamwork, and perhaps breaking a rule or two.

This is the daily reality of Operations.

But nobody’s actually pushed that past the point where clever thinking and teamwork run out to see what happens next and what you’d need to hold it together 

That’s the gap this closes: not catching you out, but showing you and your leadership exactly what support is missing before a real event forces the same breakdown to repeat.

What the simulation does

The scenario evolves in real time, the way a real disruption does, not a single hypothetical talked through around a table.

The conditions it introduces:

• Compounding problems
• Time pressure
• Incomplete or conflicting information
• Escalation complexity
• Leadership wanting updates before you have answers.

What usually stays hidden becomes visible.

• How decisions get made and prioritised under time pressure
• What gets escalated, to whom, and how fast
• How communication holds up between shifts, sites, or teams when information is incomplete
• Whether the team works as one or fragments under load
• What keeps running, and what quietly stops, while attention is on the disruption
• Where the team is depending on one person more than it realises

This is behavioural validation, not theoretical discussion.

The simulation process

• SOP and plan review. A read of your current procedures and plans, to understand what the organisation believes the operations team should be able to handle, and where those assumptions sit.
• Operational context briefing. A short session identifying the disruptions most likely to hit this team (staffing gaps, system failures, weather, supplier or schedule breaks) and what “good” looks like day to day.
• Structured disruption scenario. A realistic, evolving exercise run with the actual team, with real-time observation of how they respond.
• Team debrief. Observed behaviour mapped back to the team using the Crocodile River Model, plus TRUSTED and SAFE where the gaps are about trust, coordination, or immediate physical response.
• Operational performance report. A short, practical report covering what held, what broke, and what to strengthen first, written so your team can take it straight to leadership as the case for the support and resources you need.

Once the simulation is complete

Now that a baseline has been established, we can work on a targeted training programme based on what was found.

This can include:

• Incident management training for shift leads, depot managers, or the wider operational team
• Design of targeted drills or walk-throughs that rehearse the exact decision points that broke down. These can be run by Dave or created so they are run in-house.

Why trust Dave with this

For 25 years, I served as a crewman with the Westpac Rescue Helicopter, responding to more than 4,000 missions across New Zealand. Those environments demanded disciplined decision-making, clear escalation, and calm communication under pressure. During Covid-19, I worked as a Response Manager and Acting Controller on the Ministry of Health National COVID Outbreak Response Team. This experience gave me a new understanding of the challenges faced by leadership teams and governance.

This depth of experience led to writing and facilitating incident and crisis exercises for government departments and a range of organisations spanning the Utilities, Construction, Finance, Health, Transport and Education Sectors.

My experience working in high-risk and high-pressure operational environments, combined with the experience during COVID, ensures that I understand the challenges of an operational team as well as the expectations of leadership and governance.

My simulations are structured, private, and direct. Performance must be observed before it can be strengthened.

Operational case example

I ran 100s of operations simulations over my rescue helicopter career. 

This experience helped me write and facilitate a very successful scenario for a courier company.

What began as a routine day, with one person away on leave and another off sick, quickly escalated due to severe weather, a van being involved in a serious accident, media enquiries and several other twists. Any of these on their own could have been handled as business-as-usual, but the combination led to this being an incident.

The team debrief was open and honest. People identified problems with their own behaviour as well as with others. Using the Crocodile River model to debrief allowed them to discuss the problems systematically, without making personal attacks. My follow-on observation report identified some gaps between their assumed readiness (what the plan said) and how they performed in the simulation (observed behaviour).

The operations manager identified specific things they needed to ensure a better response next time. Their leadership team supported the manager in putting new procedures and things into place.

They brought me back six months later for another simulation. It was clear that the “lessons identified” in the first simulation had been addressed and had become “lessons learned”.

The second simulation ran more smoothly, but identified another set of lessons which needed to be addressed, as expected.

Most organisations only learn about the gap between their assumed readiness and actual performance during a real event.

A simulation allows you to learn, and improve, before a real event hits.