14,500 commercial insurance claims with an average value of £90,000 starts to convey the scale of disruption caused by the floods in the UK throughout June and July. Business continuity planners already consider flooding as a significant risk and prepare accordingly, but how aware were they of the unexpected consequences: denial of access through road closures; facilities unusable through lack of water supplies; key staff not available as a result of domestic crises; the difficulties of relocating to recovery centres?

On the 21st November, the Business Continuity Institute is hosting a Workshop, at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull, where the business continuity lessons to be learned from the various flooding incidents will be discussed and documented through a combination of presentations and exercises.

The workshop will comprise three main sessions:

• What happened? How much warning was there? What is pluvial flooding and why is it a continuing threat this coming winter? What were the unexpected consequences? What were the priorities for the emergency services? How did organisations communicate with their employees?

• The response. How effective was the response? What were the roles of the key agencies involved? What support was provided to the business community? Was it appropriate; and was it sufficient? What problems did the scale of the event cause?

• The challenges and lessons learned. What were the major challenges; and what lessons can we all learn? What did and didn’t work? Which elements of the business continuity planning process need to be improved? Why is insurance only a part of the recovery plan?

Full details and a booking form are available on the BCI website at www.thebci.org/floodworkshop.htm

•Date: 25th Sept 2007• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: Events
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