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Business Continuity Planning
How resilient is your business / organisation to disaster?
We can all recall events that have seriously impacted businesses over recent years: Manchester City Centre bomb, flooding in Boscastle and the Buncefield explosion and fire are just some examples of recent major incidents that have had a devastating effect on small, medium and large businesses.
Nearly one in five businesses suffers a major disruption every year. How quickly – and painlessly – you manage to get back to ‘business as usual’ depends on how effectively you can devise, and put into action, your own business continuity management. Major disruptions could include fire, flood or other natural disaster, a terrorist attack or flu pandemic. It has been assessed that businesses affected by a disaster that do not have business continuity arrangements in place only have a 50% chance of surviving the next 12 months.
The fire at the Buncefield oil storage depot in Hemel Hempstead is one such example of a major disruption that has affected Hertfordshire. The Mayland Industrial/Business Area adjacent to the Buncefield site is the largest business/industrial area in the East of England.
- 370 businesses out of a total of approximately 630 were evacuated during the incident.
- At least 6 of these buildings have been designated for demolition and 30 more required major repairs before they could be reoccupied.
- 290 other businesses were disrupted for up to 3 days due to the emergency response and minor damage.
- 88 companies with 4,000 employees were still without their premises five weeks after the event.
- The short-term business recovery costs have been estimated as £2.2 million and the longer-term costs as £100 million over 10 years.
What is business continuity?
Business Continuity Management (BCM) is about preparing in advance to survive the impact of a critical incident or disruption. BCM is a generic management framework that is valid across the public, private and voluntary sectors. It is an ongoing process that helps organizations anticipate, prepare for, prevent, respond to and recover from disruptions. In essence, effective BCM helps build resilience and safeguard the interests of key stakeholders, reputation, brand, profit-creating activities and service delivery.
A business continuity plan is a key element of business continuity and, as the name suggests, is simply a plan to keep the business in operation when an incident threatens to impact it.
Who needs a plan?
All businesses, organizations, services and voluntary groups need a plan. The plan does not have to be complicated, especially for small businesses. The essential is to have prepared for the worst that could realistically happen and have identified what would help you survive - being prepared is the key.
Where can I get further information?
North Hertfordshire District Council is working together with the other district and borough councils and Hertfordshire County Council to promote business continuity planning. Further information is available on Hertfordshire County Council's website.
Whether or not your company is able to survive an emergency will depend on a number of factors, one of which is whether or not you have planned how you will recover after the emergency has happened. The speed at which your company will recover will also depend on the planning you have undertaken today.
“By starting to plan today you will improve the likelihood of your company’s survival and it’s recovery.”