May 10, 2006 • 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Assessing Your Company's Readiness for an Emergency
Presenters
Mike Maxwell, Vice President, Strategic Services, POTOMAC ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY
Rob Stewart, Process Manager, Emergency Preparedness, PEPCO HOLDINGS INC.

When a military unit prepares for a mission, it assesses itself for readiness to engage the enemy - do they have the right weapons, ammunition, equipment, personnel, training, etc. Similarly, any utility that wants to prepare to do battle with Mother Nature (or any other cause of outages, including sabotage or system failure), needs to assess its readiness in a comprehensive and systematic way.

In this workshop, attendees will learn how to perform a detailed assessment of their organizations through the use of a self-scored readiness index for each different functional area, such as:

• Does everyone in the organization know their role in an emergency, and are they trained to perform it?
• Have drills been performed, lessons learned, and recommended improvements implemented?
• Are external contacts up to date, or will the first time your company meets a local official be at the joint press conference to explain reasons for restoration delays?
• Does your regulator know what to expect from you in an emergency? Do your people know what the regulator has been told and what is expected?