As the Emergency Management Coordinator for Homeland Security Region 3, I have had the pleasure to work with Wiland Associates, LLC. (Wiland) extensively in the past 6 months. Our region has a newly formed All Hazards Incident Management Team and in order to be ready for Washington's busiest hazard season, summer fires, we adopted an aggressive training and exercise schedule. Our team researched and contacted several different companies and in the end we chose to go with Wiland. We are very pleased with our choice.
Because resources everywhere are so tight right now, Region 3 collaborated with Region 4 to present all of the Command and General Staff position specific courses within a 10 day period. This meant running four (4) class rooms simultaneously. And, since all of the coordinators in our regions were taking the training we were unable to provide logistical support of any kind. Prior to holding this training, several of the team members were skeptical about the ability to get top quality training delivered in such a short time frame. These same team members later described the courses they attended as the best training they've attended .... EVER! The instructors had an astonishing breadth of knowledge and were extremely engaging and experienced, and being able to provide real world examples when answering questions went a long way toward giving the training credibility.
Wiland brought in an administrative support team along with the trainers at no additional cost to us. This speaks loudly about the professionalism of this company and the cadre of instructors that work with it. Wiland was able to support their own staff as well as provide certificates for the training on the spot, which was a much appreciated gesture.
After a one (1) week break our team reassembled to go through the six (6) day All Hazards IMT Course. Again, the instructor cadre was dynamic, well experienced, personable, professional, and well skilled at mentoring our team in its development process. Wiland has certainly set the standard from which we will measure training courses in the future.
—Jesi, Homeland Security Region 3