Sudden and unrecoverable loss of market share, degraded customer or vendor relations, negative public perceptions or damage to your reputation, legal or regulatory prohibition, massive unanticipated lawsuits, stockholder or advocacy group actions - all sounds like a nightmare, but it could happen to you!
Disasters come in all shapes and sizes and, while they may not bring your organisation to its knees, they will certainly cause disruption to its operation and divert valuable time and resources from its core activity.
Many of the risks that threaten your earning capacity can be mitigated, if not eliminated, through risk improvement and good business practice. Some improvements may seem too costly to contemplate, but these must be considered carefully against the potential consequences of a major incident.
Where your risk management programme cannot eliminate risks or at least reduce them to an acceptable level, there is unavoidable exposure to business interruption.
You can insure against the consequences of a certain risk events arising or perhaps seek legal remedy from a third party. Both these solutions may provide compensation for some of the financial losses incurred but are unlikely to ensure the timely recovery of the critical business processes that your customers (and therefore your customer relationships) depend upon.
So, regardless of the extent of risk management in your business... you should develop a business continuity plan.
 Degrees of Risk Business Continuity Planning
 Back
Further Links
UK Resilience
|
|
UK resilience
This site is run by the Cabinet Office's Civil Contingencies Secretariat. It's is a co-ordinating body and centre of expertise set up to improve the resilience of Central Government and the UK. It is also a source of public information during events of national importance, as well as emergency planning and advice. Guidance is available in the following areas:
- Air crash
- Civil contingencies
- Flooding
- Fuel situation
- Severe weather
- Train crash
- Chemical incident
- Epidemic
- Flood alert
- Nuclear accident
- Terrorism
- Web and internet alerts
The site is continuously updated with the latest information.
|
Emergency Planning College
|
|
EPC
The aim of the college is to educate delegates on Emergency and Business Continuity Planning. It runs a number of courses aimed at organisations, in either the public or private sector including:
- Introduction to risk assessment for emergency planning
- Emergency management and the environment - The impact of hazardous substances
- Safety at sports and entertainment venues
|
Control of Major Accident Hazards
|
|
COMAH
This provides a link to introductory HSE guidance on COMAH.
|
Environment Agency
|
|
EA
This provides a link to the Environment Agency Home page. The site provides up todate information on flood warnings, flood protection products and accidents involving substances hazardous to the environment.
It provides guidance on managing the hazards associated with dangerous substances including taking measures to prevent major accidents by undertaking a risk analysis to understand and predict the circumstances that might lead to a major accident and the potential consequences of such an accident. Examples of situations that should be considered include:
- Loss of containment accidents due to vessel or pipework failures
- Explosions, for example, caused by mixing incompatible chemicals in reactors; and
- Major fires - for example warehouse
You may have a responsibility to prepare an On-site Emergency Plan covering the actions needed in the event of an accident. Environmental issues that you should seek to cover in your plan include:
- The command structure for managing the on-site response in accordance with the Plan
- The actions which should be taken to control the major accident conditions or events, and to limit their consequences
- Arrangements to provide early warning of the incident to people on site and off site, and the emergency services
- Arrangements for training staff in the duties they will be expected to perform and, where necessary, co-ordinating this with the emergency services.
If you experience a significant leakage or spillage then contact the Emergency Spill Hotline on 0800 807060. This number should be widely distributed to staff.
|
BT Commsure
|
|
btcommsure
BT offer via CommSure an immediate temporary substitute for ACD and PBX telephone systems.
CommSure offer insurance covers for ACD & PBX systems in the event of a crisis.
Like many other workplace recovery providers BT Commsure also offer disaster recovery centres to replace a clients own facilities in the event of a disaster striking. These enable clients to resume business operations as quickly as possible. The centres are not only available in times of disaster, but also to carry out periodic tests and "walk through" rehearsals.
|
Survive
|
|
Survive
Survive is the industry-wide user group for business continuity planning and disaster recovery.
The site provides a directory of vendors of BCP serices and training courses run by survive.
|
Global Continuity
|
|
Global continuity
Global continuity provide a business continuity management portal. It provides access to information and published articles on BCP.
|
Iron Mountain
|
|
Iron mountain
Information is a company's most critical asset. and business cannot exist without it. Iron mountain provide a range of secure data vaulting services.
|
If you wish to be placed on this links section please contact Degrees of Risk.
Back
|
