Exercising and Lessons Officer

Are you able to rapidly familiarise yourself with new skills, including those needed for crisis response, debriefing, or exercising? Can you think innovatively and strategically to analyse complex information and data? Have you built and maintained effective working relationships with a wide range of stakeholders? If so, we’d love to hear from you!

The Transport Resilience, Analysis, International and Sanctions Directorate within the Department for Transport (DfT) houses the Resilience Division, whose primary objective is to ensure the Department can prepare for, mitigate, and respond to major incidents affecting the UK transport network and wider government interests. As part of this Division, you will collaborate with partners across DfT, other government departments, and industry to strengthen resilience against future threats and hazards. These could range from terrorist incidents and cyber-attacks to severe flooding or volcanic eruptions.

The post holder will join the Major Events preparedness (MEP) team, who’s role is to ensure the department is well prepared for both planned and unplanned major events. This includes:

• Leading the Department’s exercising programme to ensure departmental emergency plans are effective, and officials have the appropriate skills to respond effectively to unplanned emergencies
• Lead the departments lessons-identified portfolio post major events or exercises to ensure the department continually improves
• Coordinate the transport provisions for one‑off, high‑profile government priorities such as ceremonial, political, and sporting events (G7 summits, Tour de France, Euro 2028 etc.)

In this role, you will oversee the Department’s lessons identified and exercise programmes, ensuring both processes enhance resilience and preparedness. Following significant events, you will facilitate debriefs, capture participant feedback, and conduct research to produce clear, evidence‑based reports with actionable recommendations.

Alongside this, you will design and deliver departmental exercises, working closely with policy leads to define objectives, coordinate logistics, and assess feasibility. This includes meeting departmental exercise commitments and contributing to the Government’s annual national exercise programme. Together, these activities are critical to testing plans, mitigating future risks, and ensuring the Department can respond effectively to major incidents.

Key Responsibilities

• Coordinate the Department’s Exercising and Lessons Programme; take ownership of planning and delivering exercises and lessons learned activities that strengthen resilience and preparedness across the Department
• Lead the DfT’s Lessons identification processes; deliver structured debrief sessions with stakeholders, capture feedback, and produce evidence‑based reports with actionable recommendations that will drive business improvement and mitigate risk
• Design and Deliver Exercises; work with policy leads to define objectives, coordinate logistics, and assess feasibility for departmental exercises
• Collaborate with modal policy experts to understand the impacts of different risks facing the department, and escalating appropriately to senior leaders
• Support the development and subsequent implementation of the Transport Resilience Strategy
• Support the planning for major events to ensure transport is factored into central government Concept of Operations
• Deputise for the Head of Major Events Planning, Exercising and Lessons at internal management, cross‑Whitehall and external meetings

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