New Chartwell Guidelines Explore Training Excellence and All-Hazards Resilience
By Russ Henderson, Director of Research
As utility risk environments become more complex, resilience depends on more than plans and procedures. It requires organizations that are trained, exercised, and prepared to respond to a wide range of operational challenges.
To help utility leaders strengthen readiness, Chartwell has released two new guidelines developed through discussions with members of the Emergency Management Leadership Council and the Organizational Resilience Executive Council. Together, these publications explore how utilities are evolving both their emergency management capabilities and broader organizational resilience strategies.
Training and Exercise Programs*, the latest Emergency Management Leadership Council Guideline, examines how utilities are moving beyond compliance-based training toward programs focused on measurable readiness and operational capability. The guideline highlights emerging practices such as role-based training, executive participation in exercises, multi-day simulations, readiness scorecards, and stronger integration of lessons learned into planning and preparedness activities. It also explores how utilities are adapting training programs to address emerging risks, including cybersecurity threats, wildfires, and AI-enabled challenges such as deepfake impersonation.
Meanwhile, Operationalizing an All-Hazards Approach to Organizational Resilience*, published by OREC, focuses on how utilities can prepare for an increasingly interconnected risk landscape. The guideline outlines the benefits of a single, scalable response framework that can be applied across storms, wildfires, cyber incidents, supply chain disruptions, public safety power shutoffs, and other complex events. It emphasizes the importance of executive engagement, cross-functional planning, public-private partnerships, and exercising low-probability but high-consequence scenarios before they occur.
While the two documents address different aspects of resilience, they share a common message: Preparedness is no longer about developing plans for individual threats. Leading utilities are building adaptable organizations capable of responding to multiple hazards, making informed decisions under pressure, and continuously improving through training, exercises, and collaboration.
Both guidelines are now available to Chartwell council members and reflect the collective insights of utility leaders working to strengthen resilience across the industry.
*Requires active council membership for access.
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