We continue to work across the globe!

It was the end of September and it had just gone midnight.  I sat at my kitchen table, poured myself a double-strength black coffee and settled in for my first nightshift in a long time.  I wasn't alone, the rest of theSpillConsult team were also awake and gearing up for our largest incident management exercise with bp in Australia to date.  For them of course, it was office hours.

It was a full day (or night, hemisphere-dependant) of exercising the newly trained bp Incident Management Team in Perth, WA.  The exercise scenario was a serious well control incident - an uncontrolled release with massive worst-case potential (not something anyone wants to think about, but essential to prepare for).  As well as the team in Perth, there were participants from the United States and Singapore.  Each participant had a crucial role in to play and brought specialist knowledge, experience and expertise to the team which would be critical during an incident such as the one posed by our exercise scenario.

How did we, here in the UK, facilitate an exercise in Australia with participants on four different continents?  We used a SpillConsult Virtual Incident Command Post (VICP).  The VICP we used, like each of the others, had been designed and built especially for that team based on their exact requirements.  All SpillConsult VICPs encompass the functionality of a 'physical' Incident Command Post (think posters, plans, whiteboards, that sort of thing) but in a virtual space.  And the best bit?  It works for an in-person team and a virtual team.  This means that the team in Perth (who were in the office at a safe distance from one another) were able to collaborate with and respond alongside their remote colleagues who were using the same system.

As day broke and the exercise drew to a close the team left feeling satisfied that, should the worst occur, they are prepared to respond.  It was very rewarding to see a team develop their incident management capabilities and learn from other colleagues across the globe, even more so at the moment where it's not possible to be there in-person.  We've developed a tool which lets us continue to do what we do best and we're committed to helping our clients increase their preparedness for the unexpected.

But I still don't miss nightshifts.