Evaluation of Project Management During the Project Cycle of the Exercise

Particularly in the context of a cross-border Full Scale Exercises the conduction of a civil protection exercise is integrated into a project cycle that ranges from the planning and preparation of an exercise to its execution and post-exercise review. The evaluation of an exercise is usually a separate work package within the whole project, for which a part of the project consortium is responsible. Evaluation in this context goes beyond the observation of the actual exercise and also includes the formative evaluation of the project management and the course of the project. This can be done, for example, by evaluating the various planning conferences but also individual workshops in the course of the exercise preparation. In this way it is possible to discover problem areas and adjust goals or measures accordingly.

At the same time, it requires the evaluators not only to accompany the exercise itself and to understand the techniques and processes used here, but also to be actively involved in the course of the project from the beginning on. Thus, at this point, evaluation is less a matter of observation than of interviewing and surveying the project participants and evaluating their statements and needs. The findings can serve the exercise control as an additional basis for decision-making on the way to the actual exercise.