Exercises & Crisis Simulations

Inspire confidence and competence with realistic and challenging crisis simulations

Many organizations spend valuable resources developing plans, procedures, and checklists to respond to emergencies, only to discover in the midst of a crisis—when it is too late—that the plan did not anticipate the reality. Failure to prepare is often the result of failure of imagination. To be resilient, organizations must be able to adapt rapidly to changing environments, collaborate efficiently across their stakeholder communities, and communicate effectively with constituents while applying what they know to new and unrehearsed situations.

Through exercises and crisis simulations, Cadmus helps a wide range of clients unlock their organization’s ability to think creatively and resolve complex challenges. We employ leading experts in emergency management, law enforcement, and crisis decision-making. In every unique situation, we take time to understand your values, situation, capabilities, and plans—and create scenarios to challenge them, working through a range of operational and policy implications.

Since 2010, our team has coordinated and executed more than 300 exercises, special event preparations, and emergency simulations across the full spectrum of threats and hazards, including leading exercises for executive leadership around the globe. From Fortune 500 CEOs to the president of the United States and his Cabinet, Cadmus has earned the trust of executives around the world to work through some of their most sensitive problems. Our diverse experiences allow us to bring substantive insights into testing and improving an organization’s overall preparedness posture.

Explore our expertise and the extraordinary results we have helped clients like you achieve.

Planning, Training, and Doctrine

Plan for the future, not the past

It is human nature to assume–or hope–that the next crisis will unfold much as the last one did. Yet, when people prepare for incidents that have already passed, they fail to imagine the ways that threats and hazards might evolve. More than ever before, we face increasingly complex and multifaceted challenges that require preparing for the unthinkable. In this environment, uninspired planning or training that too closely adheres to the past immediately can become a catastrophic weakness.

Cadmus is proud to bring not only a deep understanding of best practices and analytical rigor in preparing for natural disasters and terrorism, but innovative thinking that supports readiness at all levels and ensures that our clients’ planning, training, and doctrine are suited for increasingly complex and demanding environments.

Explore our expertise and the extraordinary results we have helped clients like you achieve.

Policy, Program, and Risk Assessment

Use data and analysis to point the way to your desired outcomes

Sound policies and effective programs form the foundation of the essential task of safeguarding security, but how do you determine the effectiveness of policies and programs in a rapidly changing threat environment? In this landscape, data-based decision-making helps identify the most critical risks and prioritize the most urgent needs.

Cadmus helps federal, state, and local governments understand policy implications and program effectiveness by employing rigorous, data-driven analysis. Combining knowledge of real-world hazards with expertise in quantitative and qualitative analytical methodologies, Cadmus has developed a suite of custom tools and techniques to objectively evaluate security-related policies, programs, and risks.

Explore our expertise and the extraordinary results we have helped clients like you achieve.

All-Hazard Preparedness

Be decisive and effective during the next crisis

How prepared are you? Whether faced with terror attacks, cyber threats, extreme weather events, viral outbreaks, or another of the many potential hazards that may hit next, once an incident occurs, it is too late to determine your vulnerabilities and craft an optimal response plan.

To ensure readiness and resilience, Cadmus works with leaders at all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and private companies to understand their risks, develop training and exercises, engage partners, and conduct effective, comprehensive planning. Our multidisciplinary expertise helps our clients confront the full range of threats and hazards: cyber challenges, complex coordinated terrorist attacks, climate adaptation, health security, insider threats, natural hazards, business continuity, as well as planning for individuals with access and functional needs.

Explore our expertise and the extraordinary results we have helped clients like you achieve.

Resilience

Adapt strategically to enhance your resilience

The rising frequency and severity of droughts, floods, wildfires, earthquakes, and other natural disasters is leading to cascading impacts such as increased global instability, conflict over essential resources, disruptions in supply chains, and mass migrations of entire populations. Effectively preparing for and adapting to these climate and extreme weather events means operating at the nexus of security and the environment, a task that requires knowledge and experience that has traditionally resided in isolated disciplines.

Cadmus provides a full suite of strategic, technical, and stakeholder engagement expertise to enable our clients to evaluate and address risks and vulnerabilities across a wide range of sectors and impact categories. These include water and energy security, green infrastructure, building codes and design standards, community, business, and infrastructure resilience.

We help our clients identify the most appropriate solutions and develop robust implementation plans that consider the financial, human, and technical details needed to prepare, adapt, and thrive in an evolving landscape. Our multidisciplinary approach helps clients enhance resilience to potential climate shocks and stresses on continuity of operations, infrastructure, energy supply, health, policy, and investment decisions.

Health Security

Advance health security and resilience to save lives

Our modern era is rife with countless and growing threats to public health. From naturally occurring and human-caused events to cyber attacks, empowering communities to address multifaceted health security issues requires comprehensive insights, a deep understanding of program impacts, and effective coordination with stakeholder communities. At the same time, preparation for scenarios as diverse as bioterrorism, nuclear radiation, and the outbreak of a life-threatening pandemic requires a complex network of biosurveillance, data identification, medical countermeasures, health security, emergency management, and healthcare plans and assets to be developed and shared across multiple partners.

Complex challenges demand multidisciplinary solutions. Cadmus supports clients with teams of experts in public health and healthcare emergency preparedness, emergency response, data science, economic analysis, communications, and homeland security. Our experts have tactical and operational experience on the ground in addition to policy and strategic experience at the highest levels of government and industry. We are proud to have helped clients from all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector achieve success in all aspects of public health by crafting realistic and effective plans, training, exercises, strategies, doctrine, and communications campaigns that take all critical perspectives into account.

Business Resilience

Be ready for the next crisis

From natural disasters to terrorist attacks, from cybersecurity breaches to the impacts of a changing climate, today’s corporate business leaders, government executives, and international organizations face an unprecedented number of threats and hazards that pose risks to critical infrastructure, safety, security, and reputation. These complex and expanding challenges demand an enterprise-wide approach to building and sustaining resilience.

Cadmus helps business and government leaders explore, develop, and improve their preparedness posture through response planning, practical training, crisis-simulation exercises, and comprehensive risk assessment. Our in-depth knowledge across the full range of hazards, coupled with exceptional capabilities, enables our clients to make measurable improvements in their preparedness and resilience. Our decades of experience across fields including energy, emergency management, transportation, homeland security, water, public health, and business resilience position Cadmus to deliver novel solutions in an increasingly complex world.

Explore our expertise and the extraordinary results we have helped clients like you achieve.

Organizational Change Management

Becoming adept at change is critical, yet few things are more challenging

Effective change management is about navigating a moment in time, and then creating the organizational will, resilience, and muscle memory that encourage individuals and teams to embrace and adopt new ideas.

When we approach a change management project, we look beyond the initial catalyst for change. We know that change has a lifecycle and does not happen in a vacuum. A problem with change today could be a problem with communication or team dynamics or training tomorrow.

Our proprietary methodology enables us to help our clients strategically navigate their change initiatives so they can thrive and build a team who is adept at navigating change.

• How an organization manages change—the strategies, approaches, and messaging used —can take a team who is resistant to change, and help them to embrace new ideas and become high performers.
• The key to designing the right change management approach is to gain a deep understanding of the motivations and concerns of the various stakeholder groups. Effective change management creates a shift in behaviors, greater employee engagement, and enthusiasm for new, shared initiatives.

What we offer:

• Strategic planning
• Organizational assessment
• Culture change
• Organizational design
• Change readiness
• Change management
• Employee engagement

Workforce Transformation

Skilled people, aligned with an inspiring vision, will create lasting, positive change

Workforce Transformation. It sounds like a huge endeavor. But at its core, it’s about assessing and developing the talent within your organization and ensuring the right people with the right skills are in the right positions to deliver on your mission. It involves engaging your talented staff and creating opportunities for them to envision and execute solutions to your organization’s most complex challenges.

We help organizations evolve—for the better. Without question, doing it is hard; and it takes more than the right tools, or expertise, or processes. It requires thinking differently about your challenges and how to approach them.

At Cadmus, we go deeper to diagnose the root issue, identify gaps, and develop a tailored program that will deliver the results you are looking for. We work creatively to align people, actions, and results — driving both buy-in and adoption— and building on decades of experience in successful workforce transformation initiatives.

What we offer

• Workforce planning and development
• Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA)
• Employee experience
• Executive training
• Organizational development
• Human capital IT solutions

Enterprise Optimization

Enterprise optimization is what we do and the outcome we deliver

No matter their size or mission, organizations are more effective and efficient when their strategies and goals—and the processes they rely on to achieve them—are well calibrated and well communicated. Enterprise optimization, therefore, is both a Cadmus offering and an outcome. It’s an integrated suite of services, tailored for an organization’s unique needs and designed to deliver results. It’s the way we help executives and their organizations define success, build the roadmap to get there, and meet the milestones along the way.

Too often, enterprise optimization is viewed as a rote process of metrics reporting and executive sign-off. Our methodology is effective because it encourages teams to surface issues and risks in a supported environment, engages people in collaborative discussion to resolve issues, and ensures accountability through the tracking of actions and a structured, consistent meeting cadence.

• Well-run organizations have a visionary strategy, shared goals, and a set of clear priorities.
• They put in place effective governance and performance measurement tools that drive collaboration and accountability—practices that become embedded in every aspect of their operations.
• They choose partners that expertly navigate strategic and tactical activities; partners that develop a strategy and then roll up their sleeves to make it happen.

We work creatively to align people, actions, and results, driving both buy-in and adoption and building on decades of experience in successful business optimization initiatives.

What we offer

• Strategic planning and roadmap development
• IT/business performance management
• Portfolio management
• Program leadership and governance
• Executive reporting

Inclusion and Accessibility

Building the society of tomorrow, today

Today’s leaders in government and industry are working together to build a future rooted in equity. Cadmus collaborates with our clients to create more diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible (DEIA) programs, services, and partnerships that support all people and the communities where they live.

We work across sectors to convene diverse stakeholders to co-create a shared vision. We then work together to dismantle barriers, prioritize equitable investments, provide technical assistance, and develop data-driven systems of accountability to measure success.

Additionally, we work within agencies and organizations to help build more diverse workforces, create cultures of belonging, and develop transparent systems that support career advancement. Through this approach, we help ensure that the products, services, and programs our clients create contribute to a more equitable future.

What we offer

• Equity frameworks
• DEIA culture building
• Inclusive workforce development
• Program and social equity
• Partnership and supplier diversity
• Accessibility services

Delivering Customer Experience

Creating the ideal customer experience is a marathon, not a sprint

Delivering exceptional CX requires passion, a customer-centric mindset, and deliberate planning and execution. Every experience, every touchpoint requires careful planning and execution to delight customers.

Companies such as Amazon, Apple and other innovators outpace their competitors because they relentlessly keep CX top-of-mind. They leverage best-in-class CX methodologies, personalization technology, AI and other tools that are changing customer expectations about how their experiences should feel. These companies understand that these investments will pay for themselves in reduced operating costs.

Federal agencies must keep pace by ensuring that their people, working in service of a compelling vision and a detailed CX roadmap, deliver the ideal experience time and time again. Together with your leadership team our experts will help define your CX vision, identify and engage with your customers, and design and facilitate journey mapping exercises using personas to pinpoint your most important customer interactions. We understand that designing successful CX campaigns isn’t about managing a checklist but producing a shift in thinking.

What we offer

• CX assessments
• Customer personas
• Tailored communications
• Removing barriers to service delivery
• Continuous improvement, based on the voice of the customer
• Tracking qualitative and quantitative metrics