It is better to be prepared for an emergency than have to explain why you weren't.

Staying open for business

Most organisations will have procedures in place for specific short term emergencies like fire or similar occurrence. But how prepared are you to cope with a temporary outage that may last from a few days to a few weeks?

We can work with you to put together a comprehensive business continuity plan, together with a structure within your organisation to manage short to medium term crises, which would otherwise make it difficult to continue to operate.

Examples of situations that can occur are:

• local flash flooding or other storm damage with consequent loss of electricity, water, telephone services, IT systems or access to your motor vehicle fleet
• rationing of power supplies such as occurred during heat waves in recent years
• damage to a gas pipeline (eg the 1998 Longford Esso gas explosion), resulting in gas restrictions lasting days to weeks.

By having a plan in place to respond to such events, you are more likely to be able to continue to operate in the event that recovery takes longer than a few hours. A typical planning process includes:

• agreeing essential and priority business activities
• identifying essential goods and services (including utilities)
• considering possible events that could occur and agreeing how they would potentially affect ongoing operations
• examining your existing procedures for managing short term interruptions to essential services and supplies (lasting from hours to a day or so), and adapting them as needed in the event the interruption lasts longer
• filling gaps in procedures
• agreeing structures and key personnel and their roles in the event of a potential business interruption
• putting together a comprehensive business continuity plan and associated procedures, checklists, essential documentation, contact details of key personnel and outside agencies, communication strategy and other information
• setting up a process for ongoing monitoring and review of the business continuity plan.