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 James McAlister explains how his disruption management model is helping BCM within Merseyside Police.
Within the police service, as with all other major organizations, business continuity disruptions present a set of dilemmas that officers in charge may not have dealt with before in their normal day-to-day duties. Officers are trained and practiced to deal with a vast array of civil protection related problem solving activities but I have found through observation that some of them can falter when required to turn their attention from looking externally towards public safety to internally to force resilience issues. This difficulty is intensified within the central service departments, as their managers are generally not police officers but police staff who have little or no crisis command experience.
To address this concern I devised a series of crisis management training sessions with the aim of developing the expertise of commanders and their staff by guiding and rehearsing them through set scenarios specifically focused on their own work areas. It was during this training that I conceived the ‘disruption management model’ to assist business continuity management teams make good crisis command decisions in a coordinated, clear and concise manner. It is also equally important that commanders’ crisis decisions withstand post event scrutiny. The model provides a framework for recording the rationale and justification for each problem encountered to satisfy either inspection or an inquiry.
Information
Information should be collected from all available internal and external sources as quickly as possible. It is important for commanders not to hide behind the comfort blanket of information gathering to the detriment of timely decision-making; as waiting for more and more information before committing to decisions is a gamble that rarely pays off.
Impact
Consideration must be given to the impact of the disruption on each critical activity within the commander’s area of responsibility. The team should take into account their business continuity plans and any unique circumstances that exist at the moment of crisis, which would not be covered by their generic business continuity plans but could intensify the impact of the disruption. Within policing services these circumstances change daily and might include a counter terrorism operation, royal visit, major criminal investigation or mundane non-regular functions for example a command team away day or large-scale training event.
Options
Having critically analysed the impact of the disruption on key activities the command team now need to consider a range of suitable tactical options. Business continuity plans should provide the skeleton control measures for successful resolution of the disruption. However, depending on the specific incident, its scale, expected duration and many other factors, it is preferable to set out a series of options to be considered by the group rather than rushing in and making an ill conceived decision. Generally police officer training focuses on spontaneous decision-making; by using this model, officers are forced to analyse intelligence more effectively and make better decisions because of it.
Actions
Once commanders have outlined a range of choices the team should then consider the strengths and weaknesses of each option finally selecting the most appropriate solution, which fits the current circumstances. Having chosen the appropriate action the team need to decide how this is to be achieved and task the relevant people / departments with implementing the option.
In conclusion, the disruption management model is cyclical in design; therefore if information or conditions change the team will need to re-evaluate their decisions by revisiting each stage of the model in sequence.
The disruption management model has been incorporated into the Merseyside Police business continuity management system for almost two years and has helped commanders to successfully resolve many disruptions to the forces key services.
About the author
James McAlister is a serving police officer with 25 years experience in firearms, public order, emergency planning and business continuity. He has advised and contributed to many policing operations throughout the UK including major sporting events, VIP visits, counter terrorism operations and the G8 Conference at Gleneagles. Whilst seconded to the National Centre for Policing Excellence he wrote the Police National Mobilisation Plan and developed / delivered a Critical Incident Command Course, for the United Arab Emirates Police. In 2005 James was chosen by the Cabinet Office to become a member of the European Union Civil Protection Team and was the first UK member to be deployed on an international mission - China Earthquake 2008. He has a Masters Degree and Diploma in Business Continuity Management, is a BSI Lead Auditor and Chairs the Police North West Region BC Managers Group.
•Date: 21st May 2009• Region:UK/World •Type: Article •Topic: BC general
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