Situation:

The State of New Hampshire’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (HSEM) asked Hagerty Consulting for technical assistance and guidance to ease local stakeholders, many of whom did not know one another, through the development of the state’s first Disaster Recovery Plan. The State also requested a base Recovery Plan and six supporting Recovery Support Function (RSF) Annexes.

Need:

To kick off the four-month project, Hagerty worked with HSEM to develop a list of stakeholders essential for this planning effort. The recovery phase of emergency management often involves non-traditional emergency preparedness and response partners. Hagerty, in coordination with HSEM, held a kick-off webinar for recovery stakeholders to provide a workshop on pre-disaster recovery, discuss an overview of the State’s current planning process, and identify where the stakeholders would fit into the process.

Working closely with HSEM, Hagerty organized individual RSF planning groups. Hagerty held virtual meetings with the designated lead of each RSF’s planning group, as well as with other stakeholders. These meetings provided the Hagerty team with a strong understanding of each group’s capabilities to provide disaster recovery support. This information was used to establish both the base Recovery Plan and the RSF Annexes.

Solution:

Hagerty utilized best and emerging practices around the country including the National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF) to develop the baseline content of the plan. The Hagerty team held various virtual stakeholder meetings to ground-truth the plan’s content, identify common recovery practices that typically occur within the State, establish roles and responsibilities for specific agencies, and point out gaps in the State’s current processes.

The Draft Recovery Plan and Draft RSFs were provided to HSEM and RSF stakeholders for comment, followed by a closeout workshop to present and validate the plan.  At the conclusion of the project, Hagerty provided HSEM with a Next Steps Memo, prioritizing tasks associated with mitigating the gaps identified throughout the planning process.

Outcome:

Under a separate contract, Hagerty also developed a tabletop exercise (TTX) for the State of New Hampshire to exercise its new Recovery Plan. Using an earthquake scenario, exercise players split into the six RSF groups to discuss how the State’s response operations transition into recovery operations, and the challenges that may arise in coordinating within and across the RSFs. Additionally, as part of the TTX, Hagerty facilitated a resilience workshop, which outlined the relationship between recovery and resilience and started the process to define resilience specifically for the State of New Hampshire. An After Action Report outlines observations and recommendations from the TTX, as well as next steps in the State’s resilience planning efforts.