Emergency Preparedness Consulting for Plans, Exercises, and Improvement
I’m Michael Messina, the founder of Forward Security Labs. I spent more than 20 years in emergency healthcare, including EMS leadership. I help healthcare, EMS, public safety, emergency management, and government teams turn preparedness requirements into plans and exercise work they can actually use. An engagement can focus on one defined deliverable or connect planning, tabletop exercises, after-action reporting, and improvement tracking into a practical work program.
Start with the problem you need to solve. We will confirm the scope, participants, source materials, deliverables, timeline, and boundaries before work begins.
Discuss your preparedness project or review tabletop exercise consulting.
When Emergency Preparedness Work Needs Outside Support
Preparedness work often stalls because the person responsible for it is also managing operations, compliance, training, staffing, or incident response. The plan may exist, but it no longer reflects current systems, vendors, facilities, response partners, or decision paths. The exercise may be required, but nobody has time to build a realistic scenario and document what comes next.
FSL provides focused emergency preparedness consulting when your team needs a defined piece of work completed, an outside facilitator, or added capacity for a larger program.
Emergency Preparedness Consulting Services
Preparedness and Emergency Planning
Review or development support for emergency operations, continuity, downtime, communications, escalation, and supporting procedures. The work begins with your actual operating environment and the requirements that apply to the engagement.
Tabletop Exercise Design and Facilitation
Objectives, scenarios, injects, participant materials, facilitation, evaluation, and after-action documentation for healthcare, EMS, public safety, cybersecurity, continuity, and government teams. See the full tabletop exercise consulting service.
After-Action Reports and Improvement Plans
Organized observations, strengths, gaps, corrective actions, owners, and target dates. The goal is a usable AAR/IP that supports follow-through, not a long report that nobody revisits.
Continuity and Downtime Planning
Identification of critical services, people, systems, vendors, facilities, workarounds, and recovery priorities. For a focused organizational review, see operational resilience consulting.
For a defined continuity or COOP plan-development project, see Business Continuity and COOP Planning.
Starting on your own? Home health agencies can begin with the Home Health Downtime & Continuity Kit, a $29 editable plan, checklist and workbook sold on Etsy. FSL can facilitate or review the plan as a separate, scoped engagement. See what is inside the kit.
Preparedness Documentation Support
Facilitator guides, participant materials, decision logs, checklists, contact structures, improvement trackers, and related documentation built for the agreed scope. If the need is primarily cybersecurity or compliance documentation, see cybersecurity documentation services.
Who This Is For
- Hospitals, health systems, healthcare coalitions, clinics, and public health programs
- EMS agencies, fire departments, and public-safety organizations
- Emergency management and government programs
- Prime contractors and consulting teams that need a defined preparedness work package
- Organizations that need practical continuity, cyber-incident, or operational-disruption exercises
What a Defined Engagement Can Produce
- A written scope, objectives, participants, assumptions, and delivery plan
- Plan review notes and prioritized gaps
- Emergency, continuity, downtime, or communications documentation within scope
- A custom scenario, injects, facilitator guide, participant materials, and evaluation tools
- A facilitated discussion-based exercise
- An after-action report and improvement plan with owners and follow-up actions
Deliverables depend on the engagement. FSL does not represent that a plan or exercise guarantees compliance, accreditation, funding, incident prevention, or a specific operational outcome.
How the Work Starts
- Define the decision or capability you need to test. A short initial conversation identifies the operating problem, deadline, participants, and likely deliverables.
- Review the source material. Relevant plans, procedures, requirements, prior findings, and known constraints are identified before substantive work begins. Appropriate handling terms are confirmed before sensitive material is exchanged.
- Build the work product. FSL develops the agreed plan, exercise, or documentation and reviews key assumptions with your team.
- Turn findings into actions. When the scope includes an exercise or assessment, findings are converted into specific improvement actions rather than left as discussion notes.
Emergency Preparedness Consulting Questions
Can FSL update an existing plan instead of starting over?
Yes, when the existing material is usable. The engagement can focus on reviewing current plans, identifying operational gaps, and updating the sections that no longer match the organization.
Can you design and facilitate a healthcare or EMS exercise?
Yes. Scope can include objectives, scenario design, injects, facilitation, evaluation, and AAR/IP development for healthcare, EMS, public safety, and related partners.
For a focused ePCR or dispatch outage discussion, use the EMS Downtime Exercise Guide to frame an exercise.
Do you use HSEEP?
Exercise work can use applicable HSEEP principles when they fit the engagement. FSL is an independent consulting firm and does not imply FEMA endorsement, accreditation, or certification.
Can FSL work under a prime contractor or another consulting firm?
Yes. FSL can provide a defined preparedness, documentation, or exercise work package with roles, client communication, deliverables, and boundaries confirmed in writing. See SDVOSB subcontractor support and partner support.
Discuss the Preparedness Work You Need
Describe the outcome, deadline, participants, and what already exists. Do not send protected health information, controlled unclassified information, credentials, or other restricted material through the initial contact form.