Planning for Success
Prepare for today’s challenges and tomorrow’s sustainable success.
Core Services
Who We Serve
We advise those responsible for planning and executing for their organization. We improve your operations, reduce your challenges, and increase your effectiveness.
All organizations, from government agencies to the private sector, face increasing challenges from a wide variety of disruptors: disasters, terrorism, cyber-attacks, pandemics and more. High Street Consulting’s team of practitioners can help your organization navigate and meet these challenges to ensure your mission’s success. We understand your issues because we have walked in your shoes.
Our experience spans each of the emergency management mission areas:
Mitigation
For a combined 75 years, our consultants have delivered services in support of organizational preparedness ranging from the implementation of a 14-week training academy to the design and delivery of globally distributed cyber exercises.
Response
Our homeland security and defense experts have deep experience responding to events ranging from Complex Coordinated Terrorist Attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan to providing support to state and local law enforcement during the Baltimore Riots.
Recovery
In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, our President, Zach Becker oversaw a team of 84 public assistance professionals who coordinated over $3.1 Billion of federal disaster relief funds to help rebuild Puerto Rico.
Prevention
Our team of cleared experts have on-the-ground experience working with law enforcement and intelligence community officials at all levels of government, including providing domestic threat analysis to leaders within the Department of Defense to deter threats against service members.
Protection
Our Senior Vice President, Matthew Stuhr, led a protective services detail for a senior Department of Defense official and secured venues at convention centers and military installations with participants ranging from dignitaries to politicians.
What We Do
Our consultants roll up their sleeves and help clients understand the root cause of the problem they are trying to solve. High Street’s value difference is helping clients get the results they need by asking the complex question: why?
This seemingly small word can yield powerful insights. By asking “why,” we’re able to dive deep to the root of the situation, clarify the challenge at its core, and generate new solutions that may not have been visible before… solutions that could deliver the same result at a fraction of the time and cost.
With our experts’ extensive disaster preparedness leadership experience, your team is provided the preparedness tools essential to managing any operation. High Street Consulting helps lead and manage your most complex and challenging disaster response and recovery efforts.
With our help, your team will be ready when disaster strikes.
Risk Assessment & Analysis
Your organization needs to be prepared for a broad range of emergency situations and all phases of the emergency management process. As practitioners, we have a deep understanding of the risk landscape and knowledge of emergent best practices that allow us to tailor a risk mitigation plan for your organization.
Highlights include:
Since 9/11, our Senior Vice President, Matthew Stuhr, has served in the National Guard as a military police officer, leading troops in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also served as a senior domestic threat analyst for the Chief of the National Guard Bureau. Matthew’s experience and direct knowledge of on-the-ground best practices aids him in developing customized and actionable threat assessments designed to enhance organizational preparedness for all hazards. Matthew is currently supporting the COVID-19 response as a leader in the National Guard, planning operations and overseeing unit personnel on the front lines of the response.
In the wake of the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook, HSC developed the Bay Village, Ohio Middle School Threat Assessment. It provided school administrators and city officials with actionable analysis, resulting in changes to school policies and procedures and physical protective measures, which remain in effect to this day.
Strategic Planning & Implementation
Beyond assisting our clients with strategic planning, we also help turn the strategic vision into implementation plans. Our experts are available to set priorities, focus resources, strengthen operations, and ensure everyone works toward a common goal. Our process begins with an evaluation, followed by setting metrics to determine success and making adjustments as needed.
Highlights include:
HSC’s experts have supported FEMA disaster workforce training development and implementation since the inception of the Incident Management Assistance Team Academy in 2012. We applied our deep knowledge of FEMA’s workforce and operations to develop a customized Strategic Plan and Implementation Plan for FEMA’s Curriculum Development Program. These plans are currently in use and inform how FEMA designs, develops, and implements curriculum and courses for their disaster workforce, comprising approximately 15,000 employees.
Workforce & Leadership Training Development
HSC has unparalleled expertise in emergency management training design, development, and implementation. We apply best practices to performance-based training on tasks, behaviors, and core competencies within the scope of emergency preparedness and disaster response. When coupled with hands-on experiential learning activities, our training development approach allows your organization to easily adapt your emergency management plan to changes in policy or doctrine.
Highlights include:
Our experts led the design, development, and delivery of three iterations of the 14-week Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) Academy at FEMA’s Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP). The team created over 1000 hours of original coursework, conducted 6 Full Scale exercises, coordinated 9 federal and state agencies, 10 FEMA Regions, 225 evaluators, and 150 simulators. During a three-year period, our team trained approximately 230 emergency managers to perform critical functions on three National IMATs and 13 Regional IMATs.
We have led creation of 40 Position Task Book (PTB)-endorsable courses with more than 600 hours of content and exercises for FEMA’s Field Operations Directorate (FOD) via the FEMA Qualification System (FQS) to ensure the operational readiness of their Incident Management workforce. This work spanned the full Assessment, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) model of instructional systems design, applying practical understanding of real-world emergency management challenges to advise and collaborate with FEMA SMEs to develop accurate, informative, and practical task-based course content and experiential learning activities, inclusive of summative capstone exercises. Courses spanned training for positions ranging from Tier 4 entry-level staff to Tier 1 senior field leadership. Instructional objectives were mapped to participants’ PTB requirements, experiential learning-focused instructional and exercise design replicated field actions as closely as practical for course participants to perform their tasks in the learning environment, and a rigorous evaluation methodology provided FEMA Coach & Evaluators (C&Es) specific criteria for participant evaluation and potential task endorsement.
HSC has designed, developed, and facilitated training for the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), which provides PK-12 instruction to approximately 73,000 students attending schools that serve the children of United States service men and women. Our asynchronous eLearning modules and synchronous instructor-led training courses have incorporated federal, DoD, and DoDEA emergency management and student services regulations and policies alongside industry best practices for K-12 school systems to deliver a comprehensive training program, preparing DoDEA School Emergency Management Teams (SEMTs) and District Protection Working Groups (PWGs) to keep DoDEA schools safe and students moving forward.
Easy access to learning in multiple environments is vital to our clients’ mission success. We provide robust eLearning capabilities, allowing flexibility to overcome challenges and restrictions, and ensuring training continuity. We also offer the ability to convert traditional on-site training to web-based delivery, either as instructor-led virtual delivery, or asynchronous self-paced eLearning.
eLearning Styles and Samples
Whiteboard eLearning Demo
3D Animation eLearning Demo
Exercise Design & Execution
Our consultants are experts in designing exercises that get to the heart of workforce development and evaluation. We design and execute the full range of exercises, from small workshops to full-scale exercises involving hundreds of participants.
Highlights include:
Since 2017, HSC has led over 100 stakeholders representing federal departments and agencies across law enforcement, the intelligence community, and the Department of Defense in support of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Storm Exercise series. In coordination with this stakeholder set, our experts have assessed and strengthened cyber preparedness; examined incident response processes to address ever-evolving threats; and enhanced both information sharing and partnerships among federal, state, international, and private sector partners.
We have designed, developed, and are currently facilitating Tabletop Exercises (TTX) for the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) to support their emergency management and Active Shooter training program. The TTXs simulate a school shooting event and include a module for prevention, protection, and mitigation; a module for the school, military installation, and EMS response; and a module for recovery and reunification. This allows DoDEA SEMTs and PWGs to practice response, implement emergency management and student services regulations and policies, and ensure they are prepared to keep DoDEA schools and students safe.
HSC is supporting FEMA’s National Dam Safety Program (NDSP) Collaborative Technical Assistance (CTA) series. CTA helps communities at risk of dam-related flooding to better understand their risk landscape and the potential consequences of dam-related emergencies. We develop HSEEP-compliant tools, templates, training, and exercises for CTA participants to create or refine, test, and validate dam-related incident plans and assessments such as emergency operations plans, emergency action plans, hazard mitigation plans, floodplain management plans, and business continuity plans.
After-Action Reviews & Improvement Planning
HSC’s seasoned subject matter experts, practitioners, and data analysts have real-world response and technical support experience for events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, wildfires, civil unrest, severe weather, cyber-attacks, and critical utility interruptions. We understand the unique dynamics of capturing real-world data from multiple sources and disparate groups while incorporating advanced statistical analysis and visualization to develop accurate After-Action Reports and actionable Improvement Plans. Our proven process results in maximum value to our clients while minimizing risk.
Highlights include:
In the ever-evolving pandemic landscape, HSC has worked with multiple state and county governments, hospitals, and healthcare systems to conduct After-Action Reviews and create Improvement Plans (AAR/IP) based on the agency’s or organization’s response and recovery operations. Our consultants work with government officials, emergency response officials, and public and private health staff to gather, analyze, and report findings for the AARs. We document concerns, successful practices, and lessons learned. We then develop an IP to address recommendations for closing gaps in identified areas of concern, such as response and recovery operational coordination, intelligence and information sharing, and staff emergency management and preparedness training.
HSC teamed to facilitate a Hurricane Ida After-Action Workshop for the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA). We helped RTA staff work through a review of their response to the storm, guiding discussion on preparedness, response, recovery, and resiliency activities surrounding Hurricane Ida and its impacts. This work will assist RTA as they begin the process of developing a more robust Emergency Management program and all-hazards plan to support transit operations in the New Orleans area.
