November 2015

Review of Emergency Management Exercise Program

The U.S. Department of Energy’s independent Office of Enterprise Assessments (EA) conducted a review of the emergency management exercise program at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico (SNL/NM).  This review complements EA’s severe event response review performed at SNL/NM in 2014 to allow conclusions based on a more complete evaluation of the exercise program.  The purpose of this EA assessment was to evaluate the exercise program’s effectiveness in validating, through tests and demonstrations, all elements of the SNL/NM emergency management program and fostering continuous program improvements.  EA performed this review from May 5 to June 4, 2015.  EA also drew on its observations of SNL/NM exercise planning and execution activities from the 2014 severe event exercise to reach conclusions for this review.