COOP tests ARPC capabilities

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Rob Hazelett
  • Air Reserve Personnel Center Public Affairs
BUCKLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. --  A three-member team from the Air Force Personnel Center's Total Force Service Center-San Antonio was evaluated during a Continuity of Operations exercise at the TFSC-Denver located at the Air Reserve Personnel Center here Oct. 11-14, 2011.

"Part of the Personnel Service Delivery Transformation program was to have a COOP capability between the two total force service centers," said Jan McIntosh, deputy director, TFSC-SA. "If there is a catastrophic or natural event, one center will fill in for the other for a period of time until the other center is back in operation."

The COOP exercise was designed to test those capabilities. In this case, the scenario included a simulated train derailment and major chemical spill leading to the evacuation of Randolph AFB for a period of four to six weeks.

McIntosh, who was the project lead for two years, said the COOP is a culmination of two years of planning required by DoD and Air Force Instruction.

The COOP exercise was performed on a limited scale where each TFSC answered each other's calls allowing evaluators to see how well ARPC balanced operations during the simulated outage.

"The COOP evaluation was excellent," said Mr. Dan Brandenburger, contact center operations chief, TFSC-Denver. "We responded well. We were able to clearly identify our strengths as well as areas that needed some improvement."

The exercise was conducted during two 90-minute tests, which evaluated several mission essential tasks to include; separations, retirements, deployed career status bonuses and retraining.

"During the tests, 198 calls were received. 35 of those were MET calls from TFSC-SA", Brandenburger said, "The evaluators were impressed at how easily and effectively the ARPC agents handled the calls."

TFSC evaluators say they plan to re-attack job aids, discuss blanket access for both service centers to have equal acess to each others records and schedule additional exercises to test the capability.

According to McIntosh, the testing will continue later this month when ARPC will send a group to San Antonio to do a reverse test to see how well AFPC responds on systems, documentation and planning. Officials will make any additional adjustments based on that visit.

"There's not a doubt in my mind that ARPC can handle the MET's," said McIntosh. "At the end of the day, I'm pretty confident that COOP works."