Training Needs

    TEMA will often query the county and municipality emergency management agencies in order to determine training requirements and jurisdcitiional needs for training in an upcoming training year. This assists TEMA in knowing what types of training are important to the local community. This assessment is used in combination with the TEMA Director's training priorities to prepare a training calendar for class-building, budget planning and instructor assignment.

    The annual Training and Exercise Planning Workshop (TEPW) provides an opportunity to identify training, exercises and planning requirements for the coming year. This planning process assists the State of Tennessee in defining training exercise gaps, executive stakeholder priorities and identifying the core capabilities on which to focus for the next year.

    The cyclic process on which the methodology is built is Planning, Organization, Equipping, Training and Exercise (POETE). The cyclic POETE method of establishing a flow or sequence from one step to another and prioritize efforts is critical in the overall process.

    In order to develop an appropriate Training and Exercise Plan for the State of Tennessee a review of the core capabilities from previous after action documents and overall strategic planning goals and requirements is a prerequisite. Using that information, the Training and Exercise Plan is developed defining the annual projected activities for training and exercises.

    Capabilities-based planning provides the foundation for developing overall program priorities, identifies sets of capabilities to exercise, and determines the conditions and scenarios that should be included and addressed for both training and in exercises.

Purpose

    The purpose of the Training, Exercise Planning Workshop (TEPW) is to use the guidance provided by state senior stakeholders and identify a plan for, and develop the Training, Exercise and Planning (TEP) program priorities and develop a multi-year schedule of training and exercise events while supporting activities to meet those priorities for the up coming planning year.   In addition to the above, the State TEP coordinates federal, State, local, non-governmental organizations, and private sector training and exercises and to reduce duplication of effort and over extension of limited resources. 

    The Multi-Year Training and Exercise Plan (TEP) is an annual plan designed to support the strategic guidance of the agency, state emergency management and the needs of the State of Tennessee. The purpose of the TEP is to provide a roadmap for TEMA and the emergency management community of Tennessee to follow in accomplishing the priorities described and to support overall mission readiness as defined in the Tennessee Emergency Management Plan (TEMP) and the State of Tennessee Mitigation Plan. Each priority is linked to an associated capability and the training and exercises that will help Tennessee obtain those capabilities and achieve that priority. Capabilities-based planning provides the foundation for developing exercise program priorities identifies sets of capabilities to train for and to exercise, determines the conditions and scenarios that should be included and addressed in exercises, and sets the performance threshold training and exercises work to evaluate and validate.

    Understanding and including the “Whole of Community” not just the typical response disciplines but also the private sector partners and volunteer and civic organizations are critical to success in the overall task. The use of all response resources including public, private and volunteer is of utmost need to help ensure success on the mission task of responding to disaster and protection of the public. This all-inclusive thought process will speed recovery and help expedite economic resilience.