Business Continuation Management

One of the most vital aspects from both safety and economic reasons, if an event occurs, is that the business should suffer only minor interruption or preferably none at all. In the majority of cases, business interruption and asset replacement capital costs have outweighed the total cost of human injuries or fatalities, sometimes by several orders of magnitude, in serious industrial accidents.

HazRes specialises in helping its clients protect it’s people, community, neighbours, environment, the continuity of its business and protecting its assets. HazRes offers Business Continuity Management (BCM) services in order to assist its client to protect and mitigate risks associated with Business Continuation Plans (BCP), reduction of Business Interruption (BI) and the protection of its core assets and capital equipment. Business Continuation Management is critical; especially in today’s environment where identification of domino and off-site risks, such as potential terrorism threats. It is paramount in determining the overall risk to a facility and organisation as a whole.

BCM identifies potential impacts that threaten an organisation and provides a structure for building resilience and capability for an effective response that prevents or minimises BI and asset impacts, as well as peripheral or secondary issues such as preserving the interests of its key stakeholders, reputation, brand and value creating activities. This is conducted through a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) which is a interdisciplinary peer methodology used to create a practical logistical plan on how an organisation will recuperate and re-establish interrupted critical function(s) within a satisfactory time period after an event has occurred.

A BCP results in a formal LIVE document/manual which is available for reference before, during and after disruptions from an event have occurred. As such, a BCP should sit along side crisis, emergency response and disaster recovery management and planning documentation, and should be part of an organisation’s overall risk management structure. The development of a BCP manual can have five main phases which include:

BCP Risk Analysis. Risk Analysis which includes defining and quantifying the impact (hazard) and threat (likelihood) of an event in the form of risk scenarios.
BCP Design Solutions.This phase identifies the most cost effective disaster event recovery solution that meets the requirements identified in the previously risk analysis stage.
Implementation of the Design Solution.Implementation is the excitation of the design solution(s) identified in the previous stage.
Testing and Organisation Acceptance of the BCP. In order to achieve organisational acceptance, testing the business continuity solution and how it satisfies the organisation’s recovery requirement is paramount. Testing should be conducted regularly, and problems found should be implemented in the maintenance phase.
Maintenance of the BCP.Maintenance of the BCP includes, but not limited to the confirmation of information in the manual, testing and verification of both the technical solutions established for recovery operations and the documented organisation recovery procedures as a minimum.

If you would like to know more about how HazRes can help and assist you and your organisation by implementing BCM strategies or to create, develop and maintain your BCP, please contact one of HazRes’ consultants for an information discussion on +44 (0) 845 838 2026