After a traumatic event, there is the responsibility to tend to the wellbeing of attending staff and individual personnel leading a command. This includes preparing for, giving evidence in and supporting staff post-inquest. Building a response capability and a workplace where relationships are positive, respectful and supportive are the cornerstone of good outcomes.

Dedicated to building resilience in workplaces and communities is this week’s guest, Allan Sicard, trained at a National level as a Police Forward Commander in Counter Terrorism.

Allan was the Police Commander for the Mosman Collar Bomb incident August 2011, the first real test of Australia's response to a potential terrorist incident.  Working with emergency partners, Allan assisted in forming a Trauma Plan should the worst have happened, allowing the rest of the non-incident community to function, while providing authorisation for the device to be removed. 

4 years later and Allan was Forward Police Commander for the first 2 hours of Sydney’s Lindt Café siege. Allan was responsible for setting up a staging area for emergency agencies to work in, whilst creating a traffic plan that allowed the rest of the city to function.  These first 2 hours saw the coordination of mass evacuations in the inner perimeter, all the while managing the evolving risk and briefing of relevant stakeholders.

Today, Allan prepares workplaces and communities for the next high risk event by leading large high risk event desktop exercises with 100+ stakeholders in an auditorium for a 3 hour immersion exercises, where key objectives are to learn capabilities and build trust and preparedness.

Tune in as Allan talks with me about his personal experiences in emergency response, and how we can build greater resilience and support across our different emergency service sectors.