Welcome
System Requirements
Exercise Builder Screen Areas
Customizing Exercise Builder to Your Facility/Site
Creating an Exercise
Viewing, Saving, and Printing Exercise Plan Documents
Assistance with Installation or Software
Giving Feedback

Welcome

Welcome to the How to Use section of Exercise Builder. If you're a first-time user, this section will give you pointers and tips on how to use this application.

Exercise Builder is an automated, Windows®-based application used for designing and developing emergency preparedness drills and exercises. The program allows your emergency management preparedness staff to create Drills and Exercise Plans based on information customized for your facility or site. Separate documents are created for each of the components that make up an Exercise Plan.

Exercise Builder helps you creates the following Exercise Plan documents:

Exercise Builder features:

• Provides step-by-step, prompted assistance in developing the documents required for an Exercise Plan.
• Stores site-specific information that is automatically inserted into the Exercise Plan.
• Suggests appropriate exercise objectives based on the scenario type and exercise participants.
• Allows for customizing exercise objectives and adding new objectives.
• Automatically generates a MSEL after times are assigned to response steps.
• Stores and links exercise messages to the MSEL, if the MSEL times change, the messages are updated and re sequenced.
• Generates entries for the Controller Directories based on message addressees.

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System Requirements

Exercise Builder is an application that must be installed to run on your personal computer (PC). You must install Exercise Builder before you can use it to develop exercise and drill packages. Exercise Builder was designed to run on the following platform:

System Requirements
Operating System	Windows NT®, Windows 2000®, or Windows XP®
Processor Speed	300 MHz or faster
Random-access Memory (RAM)	Minimum of 64 MB (128 MB recommended)
Available Disk Space	At least 1500 MB (1.5 GB)
Disk Drives	CD-ROM Drive
Other Applications	Word Processing Software* Adobe Acrobat Reader Web browser (I.E. or Netscape)

*Examples of word processing software are MS Word or WordPerfect®. Exercise Builder will create your Exercise Plan documents in a rich text format (RTF) and display these documents in whatever word processing software your computer has associated with RTF files.

Applications that come with the Windows operating systems such as WordPad®and Notepad® can be used but will greatly limit your document formatting capabilities.

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Exercise Builder Screen Areas

1. Menu Bar area. Menu Bar Items are as follows:

File:	View/Print:	Edit:	Manage:	Web Links:	Help:
New	Exercise Objectives Selection Logic	Objectives	Users	EMI SIG Web Site	About Exercise Builder
Import/Export	Exercise Objectives Database	Exercise Messages	How do I add new users?	Exercise Builder Web Site	Help Table of Contents
Open	Exercise Plan			EMI SIG Exercise & Drill Subcommittee	What is New in Exercise Builder 2007?
Save	Site Configuration Information			Developing Exercise Scenarios Web Based Training	Exercise Builder Acronym List
Save As...				Developing Exercise Objectives Web Based Training
Exit				DOE G 151.1-1, Exercises, Volume VII

2. Title of exercise. This is not the filename. It is the title given to the exercise in Step 2 - Scope.

3. Exercise Steps.

4. Link to Process Outline.

5. Help Area. Frequently asked context specific questions are listed and are linked to the answer.

6. User work area. This area is where the actual development of an exercise occurs. You navigate from screen to screen by using the Next and Back buttons.

7. Back button. Returns you to the previous screen in the Step in which you are working.

8. Next button. Moves you forward to the next screen within the current Step you are working. Links to user aid programs.

9. Link to the "To-Do" list for the current exercise. Additional items can be added to the To-Do list.

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Customizing Exercise Builder to Your Facility/Site

Exercise Builder allows the user to customize the facility/site emergency response organization (ERO) information used to develop their Drills and Exercise Plans. Step 1 – Site Info guides you through a series of data selection and input screens and questions that will configure Exercise Builder to create exercises using your site/facility specific information.

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Creating an Exercise

Exercise Builder is designed to guide you, step-by-step, through the Drill or Exercise Plan development process. The program consists of 14 sections or Steps.

Step 1 – Site Info allows the user to enter facility/site-specific information that can be reused each time an Exercise Plan is developed. You will only have to enter the facility/site-specific information one time but can go back and modify or add additional information, if necessary at any time.

Steps 2 through 13 are to design and develop an individual Drill or Exercise Plan. After you enter your facility/site-specific information in Step 1, begin developing your Exercise Plan in Step 2. The on-screen instructions will guide you through the completion of your Exercise Plan.

Step 14 allows you to construct an after action report.

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Viewing, Saving, and Printing Exercise Plan Documents

Exercise Builder generates the content for Exercise Plan documents by creating a file in rich text format (RTF). Near the end of each step you will find a link for saving and viewing the various documents that make up an Exercise Plan. Click on these links to open the RTF file. Exercise Builder will open the document using the word processing software that is associated with RTF files on you computer. All exercise documentation is printed through your word processor's print feature.

An Exercise Plan document link looks like this: Save & View document: (Name of exercise document)

A supporting document link looks like this: Review (Name of supporting document)

When opening an Exercise Plan document link, you must save the document before it can be viewed or printed. If it is a supporting document link, you can choose whether to save the document or just view it.

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Assistance with Installation or Software

For help installing or using this application, contact:

Jim Noey
Emergency Management Laboratory
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
P.O. Box 117
Oak Ridge, TN 37830-0117
Phone: (865) 576-7087
E-mail: Jim.Noey@orise.orau.gov

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Giving Feedback

Send questions and comments about this application to:

Dorothy Cohen
EMI SIG Manager
Emergency Management Laboratory
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education
P.O. Box 117
Oak Ridge, TN 37830-0117
Phone: (865) 576-2007
E-mail: Dorothy.Cohen@orise.orau.gov

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