The planning team will need to hold a series of meetings or work sessions during the planning process. The first meeting of the planning team, or the plan kickoff meeting, should focus on introducing team members, describing the overall purpose of the plan, defining the team’s responsibilities, validating the project scope and schedule, and brainstorming who else should be involved in the planning process.

Initial tasks include:

• Review the current mitigation plan (if you have one)
• Determine plan scope and schedule
• Gather data, plans, reports, and studies
• Develop an outreach strategy

Tips for meetings and engagement:

• It may be helpful to hold planning team meetings at a restaurant or to schedule the meeting at lunchtime and provide food to ensure a good level of attendance/participation.
• Planning team meetings can be working sessions or opportunities to review developed content, but it’s important to keep the planning team working together to build the plan.
• Partner and public engagement events – You can go to your partners and the public, or they can come to you. Remember that you must provide opportunities for participation in the planning process while the plan is being developed and prior to plan approval. Another aspect of the schedule is the review period(s). To maintain continuous grant eligibility, build in time for FEMA’s review of the plan before adoption by the Tribe.