If you don’t practice your Business Continuity Plan, how do you know it will work for real? One of the few statutory Emergency Response Plans that an employer must have is a Fire Evacuation Plan. This plan details: how to alert staff to the existence of a fire; how staff should react and leave the…
If you don’t practice your plan, how do you know it will work for real? One of the few statutory Emergency Response Plans that an employer must have is a Fire Evacuation Plan. This plan details: how to alert staff to the existence of a fire; how staff should react and leave the building; where…
Processes change over time: make sure your plans adapt to that change The incident that affected my website last week brought into focus the need to keep Business Continuity Plans up to date with changes in the business. Over the past few months, I have been changing the way my website runs. The main change…
Knowing where the controls for your utilities are could save the day, but make sure you can continue without power. We are always told to familiarise ourselves with where the gas and water taps are in our own houses. Do you know where the utility control points are in your building? Could you turn off…
Survey shows that small businesses need to take Business Continuity more seriously than they currently do The Chartered Management Institute (CMI) recently published its annual survey of disaster preparedness in the UK, and it doesn’t make good reading if you are a small business. Produced in association with AON, the Business Continuity Institute (BCI), The…
Until you practice, or exercise, your Business Continuity Plan; you cannot know whether you have covered all the bases. I’m sure everybody has heard the quote attributed to Gary Player: “The more I practice, the luckier I get”. The converse of this is “If you don’t practice, how can you expect to succeed” and the…
Introducing the concepts and practices of business continuity planning needn’t be a massive undertaking. All you need to do is follow a structured process and proceed at your own pace. I have prepared a simple 10-step process that will guide you, but the key is to understand why it is important and to appreciate the…
When was the last time you tested your business continuity plan(s)? I am writing this on my laptop and connected to my website via my 3G modem. I mention this because currently my office has no communications, voice or data, because BT has disconnected the lines to fix a fault that has been present on…
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder famously said that “No Battle Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy“. Whilst business continuity should not be a battle, the point is that plans often need to be revised after being put into action. As it is not a good idea to have to do this during a real…
I’ve seen this video clip many times before. Take a look and then ask yourself what you’ve learned. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd57bR8FKKQ] For me, the most interesting aspect is that, apart from the initial expletive and the increased breathing rate, there was no panic. Both aircrew knew exactly how to cope with the emergency and followed the pre-prepared…
