As business continuity complexity increases, don’t forget the basics…
I worked on a business continuity project in Texas earlier this year in a 40 storey tower. I started with the basics: where do you evacuate to? How long does it take? Where is your secondary rendezvous point if a large scale incident occurs? What is your plan for people with disabilities? Where will the crisis management team control the incident from? Etc. The baby food of business continuity. I was met with blank faces. The company had evacuated the building 19 years ago but had no more of a plan than that. Are we in danger of over complicating what is quite a simple industry and in doing so missing the point of what we are trying to achieve? The quality of your BIA and the cleverness of your RTO or RPO calculations matter not a jot if you can’t protect your staff; if you can’t get the basics right in a crisis situation. Should we step back and look at our business continuity plans and ask ourselves “If it happens now, this instant, can we really react in a controlled manner, does every employee understand what is expected of them? Can we evacuate and protect our staff?” If not, then even the most ingenious, well thought through, well crafted, business continuity plan will fail at the first hurdle. Reader comments Tim Armit is absolutely right in getting back to basics. There are too many clever BCM professionals who continually try to complicate a very simple process. They do this for a number of reasons; to show how clever they are; to show how stupid the rest of us are (or are perceived to be); and to try and sell some form of exquisitely priced BCM product, service or software. Lets keep it simple and keep our feet on the ground. Bravo to Tim on this article. I continue to encounter firms that have in place complex data center backup/recovery plans at duplicate or hot sites, but get that blank stare when I ask about evacuation drills and primary (as well as secondary) assembly points. And what about the reliability of the infrastructure of large buildings – power and water for example? The worst case I saw was a Class A building in Manhattan that was just short of 20 years old. Its electrical infrastructure has never once undergone normal maintenance. You can bet it is more fragile now that when the building opened. Just a note on the evacuation of buildings with more than 40+ floors. Not only do you need to plan for assistance for permanently disabled people, but also for those who have a temporary disability, such as pregnant women and those with ‘walking’ casts from skiing accidents or whatever, and for those with invisible but serious medical conditions. Even under optimal conditions, it takes a LONG time to evacuate such a building, even assuming that all stairways are available and are used equally (which is not likely to be the case). So it is probably NOT A GREAT IDEA to have assembly points in outside locations, as it will be difficult to hold people there for such a long time in inclement weather. While effective and safe evacuation is certainly a very basic task of business continuity, I tend to disagree that it is baby business continuity. It can be quite challenging to get cooperation from all of the involved parties, and it is not always easy to find appropriate primary and secondary assembly locations. Getting senior management to follow the rules and not just make decisions off the top of their heads can also be difficult, especially when they refuse to participate in evacuation drills. I have a sneaking suspicion that many BC people do not address this critical area because it is in fact very difficult. Not because they think it will take care of itself. Or perhaps they have not thought about it at all!
•Date: 6th October 2006 • Region: World • Type: Article •Topic: BC general |
