Outcomes
- Sector-side exercises delivered: Designed and facilitated a multi-threat resilience exercise involving more than 60 participants from across the UK energy sector.
- Critical response gaps identified: Exposed weakness in mobilisation, escalation and cross-functional coordination across operational, tactical and strategic response levels.
- PEAR framework validated: Demonstrated the value of the PEAR framework as a practical decision-making tool under operational pressure.
- Industry-wide insights generated: Highlighted a significant maturity gap between environmental and security mutual aid arrangements across the UK energy sector.
About the Exercise
Exercise Granite Resolve was a joint industry security and resilience exercise developed in partnership with OEUK, DESNZ and other specialists in their field. It was held in Aberdeen in April 2026, ahead of the OEUK Security & Resilience Conference. The exercise brought together 60+ participants from across the UK energy sector – operators, supply chain, emergency responders, regulators, security agencies, government, Police, Coastguard, and the HSE.
Situation
The UK energy sector faces a converging threat environment. Physical intrusion, drone activity, OT cyber compromise, and communications disruption no longer occur in isolation – they combine, and they evolve in real time.
Most emergency exercises do not reflect this. They address single threat vectors, follow predictable paths, and give participants the answers too early. The sector needed an exercise that replicated genuine operational ambiguity.
Impact
Without stress-testing multi-threat response, organisations carry hidden gaps in their escalation frameworks, information sharing pathways and activation criteria for tactical and strategic teams. The exercise revealed five critical areas of exposure:
- Mobilisation thresholds: unclear criteria for when to formally activate ERT, IMT or CMT.
- Information sharing: lack of clarity for suspicious activity.
- Government support: limited understanding of what support industry can expect from government during hybrid threats.
- Cyber-physical integration: insufficient joined-up planning across physical and OT security domains.
- Mutual aid maturity: security incident mutual aid significantly less developed than environmental response frameworks.
What Participants Said
“Exercising to test our capability and identify improvement areas is vital industry practice. Restrata’s broad experience and expertise across emergency planning and response was hugely impactful in the exercise throughout development, preparation, and facilitation. Individual participating companies were empowered to take immediate lessons into their own organisations and the event had a strategic impact across industry stakeholders and government partners.“
— Graham Skinner, Health, Safety & Security Manager, OEUK
Resolution
Restrata partnered with OEUK to design, deliver and facilitate Exercise Granite Resolve end-to-end.
Key elements included:
- Scenario design: multi-vector threat combining maritime, drone, protestor, OT cyber, and comms disruption threads.
- Response structure: three separate teams (ERT, IMT, CMT) with controlled information flow to replicate real-world conditions.
- Deliberate ambiguity: no clear incident presented upfront — teams required to read and interpret a developing situation.
- Post-exercise analysis: structured findings report with gaps, recommendations and strategic observations for industry and government.
Work With Us
To speak with our team about exercise design, facilitation or resilience programme development, contact us.