Designing, delivering, and evaluating objective-based exercises and training readiness

Exercises have become much more complex. Often utilising a blend of live, virtual and constructive simulations and involving a broad range of actors in support of the primary training audience. Training objectives need to be mapped to the training audience and to activities which is a complex and time consuming task. Whilst this can be managed in office type tools, version control across multiple sites is difficult to control. Exonaut® is specifically designed to facilitate this process, provide a single version of the truth and allow rapid re-use of existing exercise data.

Exonaut® can manage a broad range of Objective types.

• Training Objectives can be managed supported by enabling objectives to specified tasks, conditions and standards and, where appropriate, supported by Checks for Trainers to ensure that Observer/Trainers have a common standard against which to judge performance.
• Exercise Objectives can be measured to ensure the exercise is delivering the required level of training.
• Evaluation objectives can be managed again supported by appropriate Force Standards against which evaluators can make objective assessments.
• Experimentation objectives can be entered to support an experimentation plan or trial plan to ensure there is a uniform method of data capture and a single repository for the experimental data.

Exonaut® can be configured to support both individual, team and larger collective training events.  The system has been used to support training at every level from platoon up to corps HQ level and on multinational, inter-agency and widely distributed training events. Exonaut® is highly scalable and can manage multiple objective, entity (those doing the training) and activity (the exercises or training events) sets simultaneously. A unique aspect of Exonaut® is its ‘primary-secondary’ configuration which allows exercise/events to be planned in a central location, executed in a remote site and then analysed/exploited back at the central location whilst maintaining full data coherence.

Exonaut® can allow you to record training performance, but it can also easily be configured to simply record training that has occurred and training that has not. In this way it allows the chain of command to understand what training risk they hold without impinging on the field commander’s ability to grade his own formations.

Aside from training, Exonaut® also provides a world leading end to end risk management platform. Whether programme, security or organisation wide, risks and assumptions can be managed in Exonaut® following the ISO 31000 methodology for risk management. Risk Registers can be set up according to any number of parameters e.g. unit, locations and resources.

Exonaut® takes users through the process of identification, assessment, evaluation and treatment, allowing dispersed users to collaboratively manage risk and ensuring a single version of truth risk picture. This delivers a real time visualisation of all risks and assumptions in relation to specific impact criteria. These impact criteria are configurable in the software and can differ from register to register as required. The system also provides a dynamic workflow for monitoring the status of tasks issued in order to reduce or limit training risk. The aggregation functionality enables users to consolidate data contained within several risk registers and analyse problem areas and key mitigation requirements.

A wide range of objective data can be readily analysed providing commanders with transparent, auditable and assured evidence on which to base decisions. Exonaut® is supported by a range of analytical tools that can provide a series of configurable dashboards to facilitate the visualisation of complex data. Such dashboards can be configured to support a wide range of users displaying for example, performance, progression and training readiness data.

The core Exonaut® Training and Exercise Management solution is NATO accredited at both NATO Unclassified and NATO Secret. The solution is on the NATO Approved Fielded Purchase List (AFPL).

Exonaut® has both back-end and user configurable permissions to prevent those without the requisite permissions from seeing or editing data in the system.

Exonaut® has a built-in integration framework supporting two way communication with simulation systems HLA and DIS interfaces are supported. Other plugins are available (e.g. social media) and can be created easily. The integration enables display of the exercise common operating picture in Exonaut® as well as the ability to inject commands into the simulation from the exercise management tool.

In accordance with our ISO 9001 certification, we have developed a well-defined quality assurance methodology. It is based on commonly agreed Rational Unified Process (RUP) for project management. 4C Strategies have several experienced quality controllers whose mission is to evaluate and assure the quality of all our deliveries. Our business continuity and crisis management methodology also follows the international standards ISO 22301 and BS 11200.

To provide our Military expertise, our consultants are largely recruited, either directly or indirectly from the military, for their subject matter expertise and experience. They remain up to date through the wide exposure they get to various military clients on delivery. We have found that most military staff change roles every 2 or 3 years so continuity is difficulty to maintain; 4C Strategies provide that continuity.