What
can you do if your organisation doesn’t yet have a BCP,
but you want to prepare for emergencies? Forbes Calamity's Nathaniel
Forbes offers some advice.
Having a business continuity plan is important
but as business continuity consultants we are often asked if there’s
anything an organisation can do to prepare for emergencies or
disasters, even if it doesn’t yet have a BCP. Forbes Calamity
Prevention (FCP) has prepared this list of actions you can take
for little cost and a small amount of time, whether you have a
BCP or not.
1. Appoint a crisis management team
(CMT)
The single most effective step you can take is to get senior management
of your organisation involved in thinking about your organisation’s
response to crises.
You can do that in many ways, but we’ve found that establishing
a CMT - without specifying the kind of crisis that might occur
- gets management’s attention. With today’s news,
it’s hard to argue against this simple step.
We recommend that a CMT have five or seven
members: you don’t want any “tie votes” in a
crisis. Every division or business line does not need to be represented.
You want decision-makers with a broad perspective on the business
priorities of your organisation. The CMT should include representatives
from information technology, human resources, corporate communications
(public relations), and facilities (property manager), either
as full members or as ex-officio members.
2. Schedule regular meetings of the
CMT
Your CMT should meet at least four times per year (approximately
quarterly), and more often if they are serious about planning.
What should they do at the meetings? Read the rest of this article!
You’ll want to get the PA’s or secretaries of the
senior managers to help set up these meetings.
3. Succession plan
Each member of the CMT should have a designated successor –
an individual who can make decisions for the CMT member if he
or she is unavailable in a crisis. This can be a sensitive subject;
it is best discussed before a crisis. The members of the CMT should
fill in the succession form in the attached
document and each member of the CMT should keep a copy.
4. Quorum
How many members of the Crisis Management Team are necessary to
make decisions for the CMT? We recommend that the consent of at
least two members of the CMT be required to activate your organisation’s
plan (for example, to relocate employees or to activate the computer
systems at a backup site). Any two members of the CMT should be
able to make the decision to declare a disaster and activate the
recovery plan; the decision should not require the participation
of any particular member of the CMT.
Only the managing director (president, CEO)
should be able to make the decision to activate your organisation’s
plan by herself or himself, and only if no one else is around
to participate in making the decision.
It should be possible for one or more members
of the CMT to participate in the decision without being physically
present at your organisation’s facility; they may be on
a business trip, for example. FCP recommends that no decision
to activate any recovery plan be taken without consultation with
the IT Manager, HR manager and facilities (property manager) or
designated successors.
5. Travel policy
We recommend that your CMT establish and observe a travel policy,
such as: no more than two CMT members may travel in the same conveyance
(e.g., airplane, taxicab) together at any time. Remember: many
more people are injured in automobile wrecks than perish in plane
crashes.
We suggest the policy also require at least
two members of the CMT to be present at your facility –
or at least in the same city as your facility - at all times.
Note: Air travel was temporarily suspended
in September 2001, even as far from New York as Australia. You
can’t be sure CMT members will be able to get home.
Someone must be responsible for ensuring compliance with these
policies – another good reason to have the PA’s and
secretaries of the CMT members helping you.
6. BCP activation triggers
Speed of reaction and decision-making is often critical in an
emergency. We recommend that the CMT collectively decide certain
“trigger” points – conditions or times after
which some action (such as activating your BCP) will be taken.
For example, how long can the company sit
idle if electrical power is lost, before the CMT decides to move
some people to a location that has electrical power?
We’ve included suggestions in the Declaration
or Activation Triggers table in the attached
document. Use these as ideas to get your CMT thinking.
7. Notification call tree
Upon declaration, CMT members should notify selected individuals,
who in turn notify other individuals, who notify other individuals,
until everyone has been contacted. This is a ‘notification
call tree’. It is time-consuming to update a large call
tree with current phone numbers, but it costs almost nothing.
It’s a good way to get the human resources department involved;
they are most likely to have accurate phone numbers for employees.
Note: don’t list only employee’s office numbers. You
need mobile phone numbers, home numbers and pager numbers.
Testing the speed and accuracy of your organisation’s call
tree can be conducted even without a BCP. This test should be
scheduled each calendar quarter.
Automated alternative: Automate the notification
process, using a computerised system. There are many emergency
notification systems and services available, though not many in
Asia. The initial cost is offset by much higher speed of contacting
everyone in an emergency, because automated systems can reach
multiple employees simultaneously by phone, SMS and pager.
Alternative: ‘call pool’: Instead
of trying to reach everyone, give all employees one phone number
to call, and give them permanent instructions to report in to
that number as soon as they can after an evacuation or other emergency.
We call this a ‘call pool’. The number should be in
a telephone exchange well away from your office, in case the phone
network near your facility isn’t working. The number can
be staffed, or be answered by voice mail. The sole purpose is
to account for all employees as quickly as possible by having
them call a phone ‘pool’.
8. ‘Disaster’ phone number
A call tree may not reach everyone if phone lines are unavailable,
or if one ‘branch’ of the call tree isn’t contacted.
We suggest that, in addition to a call tree, you establish a dedicated
telephone number for employees to call if your building is evacuated.
This number, unlike the call pool, is outbound - for the CMT to
distribute information to employees.
Employees can call the number to obtain periodic
updates about the emergency.
Give all employees the number the day they are hired.
* Standard, non-emergency message to be recorded when number set
up
* Activation message can be recorded by CMT member on activation
* Maximum time between recorded updates; we recommend four hours
initially, later reduced to two times a day
9. Assembly point
In an evacuation, employees should know where to go and how to
get there. They need an assembly point, at which they can be counted
and given instructions. As a guideline, your assembly point should
be a distance from your building equal to one-and-a-half times
the height of your building. You don’t want your colleagues
standing under any falling debris. The big danger you’re
trying to avoid: flying glass from broken windows.
The Assembly Point must not be where emergency
responders (police, fire, ambulance) are going to set up their
command post if there is an emergency at your building.
10. Emergency cards
To help employees remember the phone number and the location of
the assembly point, you can print and distribute issue plastic
cards – the size of credit cards – to all employees.
The cards can show the call pool and disaster telephone numbers,
a rough map to the assembly point, and the names of CMT members
and their mobile phone numbers. Making and distributing the cards
is a task the CMT can assign to human resources.
11. Evacuation rehearsals
Do you know how long it really takes to get all your employees
out of the building? A fire drill doesn’t tell you: it’s
often announced in advance, and not all employees participate.
Evacuating and marshalling at the assembly point is a good activity
in which to involve the facilities (property) manager. Hint: if
the CMT doesn’t participate, you can’t be surprised
if employees don’t participate.
12. Site assessment team
If your facility is damaged – or if you don’t know
if it’s damaged - the CMT will want to know the condition
of the building as quickly as possible. We recommend that the
CMT assign facilities (property) to form a site assessment team,
staffed by individuals who can assess the condition of the building,
and the condition of computers and networks. These individuals
do not need to be employees; they should have structural or IT
engineering expertise. Without these people, your CMT will be
forced to depend on public authorities (fire, police) or insurance
claims adjusters.
The CMT can contract with a suitable vendor
for damage assessment, emergency stabilisation and equipment inventory.
14. Your building or property manager
Your organisation depends on the building or property manager
to maintain the facility’s infrastructure, and to act as
a representative to the public authorities in an emergency at
your building. It is a good idea to establish a good, working
relationship with the building management – before an emergency.
Topics to talk about with the property manager
for a building in which your organisation has a strong interest
include:
o Electrical power
o Emergency electrical generator
o HVAC (heating, ventilating & air conditioning)
o Telephone
o Security
o Refuse removal
o Parking
o Water (potable & non-potable)
o Building automation system
o Fire detection & suppression
o Evacuation
o Property insurance
Your organisation can undertake some or all
of these tasks, even if you don’t yet have a business continuity
plan. All of these are part of preparing for an emergency or disaster,
so by starting now, you will have made a good start on your BCP.
If you have questions on the above please
e-mail info@calamity.com.sg
www.calamityprevention.com
Click
here for a PDF showing a template ‘Succession Plan for
CMT Members’ and an ‘Activation or Declaration Triggers’
checklist.
•Date:
19th March 2004 •Region: World •Type:
Article •Topic: Crisis
management
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