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Executive Summary
Exercise "Barossa"
- Adelaide
11 June 1998
Exercise " Barossa" successfully achieved its primary objective of testing the response to an oil spill, which threatened environmental damage to the seas and coastline of South Australia. In achieving its primary objective, the state oil spill contingency plan was exercised and the relationships between the key response agencies were fully tested.
A range of factors contributed to the success of the exercise, including:
Exercise Planning
The exercise control team, comprised individuals with a broad range of skills and experience who had met several times in the three months prior to the actual exercise. Their individual and team contribution led to the development of a comprehensive scenario and set of inputs aimed at testing the key areas of an oil spill response.
Exercise Scenario
The exercise scenario was relatively simple, could have occurred in real life, and focussed on the relationships between the key response agencies. It was comprehensive enough to test the collective response from these various agencies.
Exercise Control
The exercise control team was located in a separate centre to the response team but was close enough to the action to monitor progress. At one stage it became necessary to call "time out" from the exercise in order to focus the response team on the task at hand. The time out was handled well and with minimum disruption to the work of the response team.
Exercise Value
A number of Exercise "Barossa" participants had well developed oil spill response experience. However, the true value of the exercise will not become fully apparent until the majority of individuals involved in "Barossa" have to respond to an actual spill of the type depicted in the scenario. Exercise controllers, players, umpires and observers all had the opportunity to learn from the experience. Conversations with numerous people at the debrief, and the debrief comments themselves, indicate that all personnel involved had taken full advantage of the opportunity presented to them.
The range of collective backgrounds and geographic spread of all personnel involved in the exercise meant that the learning experience was not limited to personnel from South Australia, and that full advantage had been taken of the learning opportunity for persons from out of State and overseas.