Formative Experiences

My earliest exposure to what is now called “exercise” began in a sandbox with Tonka trucks during the 1970s. Those simple toys inspired countless days of imaginative play. Today, as a grandparent, I’m careful to keep the sandbox covered (thanks to neighborhood cats), but in my childhood, such precautions never crossed our minds.

Cub Scouts later became a significant part of my upbringing. One early assignment—drawing a map of my neighborhood—proved unexpectedly useful, foreshadowing the mapping skills that would later aid me in exercise design. In fact, during professional meetings, I occasionally quip, “Weren’t you ever a Cub Scout?” when mapping challenges arise.

Building Skills Through Experience

As a young Marine, I learned the importance of navigation and land orientation, especially in my role as an artillerymen. Mastering practical math also became essential. My first large-scale wargame, a Combined Arms Exercise on the West Coast in the 1990s, involved coordinating ground and air components using live ammunition and real jets—a milestone in my development.

Transitioning to law enforcement, I aspired to join the SWAT team and serve as a range officer. SWAT training required designing scenarios, establishing objectives, allocating resources, and managing communications—core capabilities essential for tactical operations. Situational practice on the range also became the norm, and I was soon introduced to Firearms Training Systems (FATS), a technology combining computers, video, and simulated weapons to deliver realistic, assessable training scenarios—commonly known as “shoot/don’t shoot” exercises. My first experience with FATS was in the Marines, who used their own version, the Weaponeer, a marksmanship simulated shooting tool.

By the mid-1990s, I was so impressed by FATS that I became the first private citizen to own one, integrating it into a company I owned at the time, Precision Shooting Concepts, LLC. The Columbine tragedy—occurring just seven miles from my office—deeply impacted me and my colleagues and the entire Law Enforcement Community Nationwide, changing basic tactical concepts.

New Directions in Public Safety and Training

After 9/11, I sought to serve public safety in a new way, turning my focus toward exercise design. This led me to study and teach the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and Incident Command System (ICS), starting with online courses, then quickly moving to in-person instruction. With encouragement from a former law enforcement colleague, I began teaching for the Colorado Division of Fire Safety, after completing several trainer programs.

ICS courses, particularly ICS 300, are demanding—they condense a semester and a half of college-level business management into just three days, often for resistant participants. For two decades, teaching ICS remained at the core of my career. In 2009, I founded The Blue Cell, LLC, and in 2012 we acquired Command School TTX in Lancaster, PA. Command School’s history dates back before the Oklahoma City Bombing and includes Don Abbott’s Abbottville, a diorama-based exercise system renowned for decades and featured in the 2004 Department of Homeland Security review of Models, Simulations and Games for Domestic Preparedness for Training and Exercise .

Innovation and Growth in Exercise Design

In 2010, The Blue Cell launched the Advanced Planning Concepts: Developing Incident Action Plans (NE-001-COMM) course, which remains a unique private-sector training offering. This course fills a training gap in ICS 300/400 by requiring students to produce a graded Incident Action Plan (IAP) and conduct all meetings and briefings in real time, using Chelsea County USA—a fictional locale modeled after Arapahoe County, featuring extensive resources, maps, and planning documents.

The Blue Cell experienced five consecutive years of growth in training and then expanded into exercise products, like tabletops and functionals. Acquiring Command School provided access to a vast exercise archive, inspiring our TTX Vault product line—a collection of pre-designed HSEEP templates now offering over 100 scenarios nationwide.

Expanding Horizons and Embracing Technology

By 2020, The Blue Cell was active in all 50 states. My experience as a planning section chief and in wildfire incident management opened doors to advanced training and simulation design. I also gained exposure to sand table exercises and managing planned events with an Incident Management Team (IMT). The COVID-19 pandemic prompted us to deliver ICS 300/400 training virtually via Microsoft Teams, reaching clients worldwide—including the US Navy and organizations / students in 17 countries.

I am frequently asked if I’m a Master Exercise Practitioner (MEPP). I am not; instead, as an entrepreneur, I hire MEPPs. The emergency management field is rediscovering games as exercise tools—a concept dating back before World War II. In 2022, The Blue Cell began developing a board game that merges disaster wargaming with national planning scenarios and resource management, all set in Chelsea County USA.

The EOC Board Game: Looking Ahead

In 2025, The Blue Cell LLC, in partnership with Simental Industries LTD, released the EOC Board Game: Complex Coordinated Attack 8 in Chelsea County USA. This force-on-force board game blends ICS, EOC structuring, resource management, and the unpredictability of chance and consequence. Designed to foster evidence development and decision-making, it is practical for writing IAPs, activating EOCs, training staff, and engaging officials. Based on the National Planning Scenarios, the game is currently under Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Division review.

Growing up in Annapolis, Maryland, near the US Naval Academy, instilled in me an appreciation for excellence. While maintaining high standards—especially in government—is challenging, training and exercise remain vital for improvement. Through repetition and scenario-based drills, exercise serves as the “superfood” of preparedness.

As the saying goes, repetition and exercise turn even the toughest circumstances into success—transforming “chicken shit into chicken salad.”