An emergency plan rarely depends on one action. It depends on communications working, site access remaining available, equipment being operational, staff being present and outside support arriving when expected. That creates dependencies. A tabletop exercise should test them.

The lessons from one exercise can provide the most useful starting point for designing the next.

Emergency response training is rarely one activity.

The purpose of a tabletop exercise is not to confirm that an emergency response plan exists. It is to discover how well that plan performs when assumptions are challenged.

A tabletop exercise only becomes valuable when it reveals weak points clearly enough to improve the next session.