TRAINING  &  COACHING  for  MANAGERS & LEADERS

Case Histories

Contingency Planning and Disaster Recovery

Contingency Planning

Management responsibilities include crisis recovery following a civil, natural, medical or criminal emergency, in a minimum time, with minimum disruption and at minimum cost. This requires thorough contingency planning.

Civil, Natural, Medical and Criminal Emergencies

• Civil emergencies include fires, gas or water leaks, and spills of chemical, biological or radioactive materials
• Natural emergencies include storms, floods, tsunami, forest fires and earthquakes
• Medical emergencies include physical harm, heart attacks, exposure to toxic agents and suicide threats
• Criminal emergencies include bomb threats, riots, hijacking, hostage taking and terrorist activity

Overall Emergency Plan

Contingency planning should be a high priority task - a crisis can occur at any time.

1. Form a team representing all departments to develop contingency plans.
2. Gain the support of upper management to make contingency planning a formal project.
3. Prepare a comprehensive list of potentially serious incidents that could affect normal operations.
4. Against each item, each project manager should note a probability rating and impact severity.
5. Discuss differences and form an overall emergency plan.
6. Reflect organizational needs and benefits into the emergency plan.
7. The overall emergency plan should contain milestones to move the organization from a disrupted status to normal operations.

Crisis Control and Recovery

1. Define the immediate aftermath of each type of disaster.
2. Involve emergency service staff and specialists who will control extreme situations.
3. Determine which critical business functions should be resumed and in what order.
4. Identify key individuals who should be familiar with their responsibilities under the plan.

Testing Contingency Plans

1. Test each contingency plan with emergency exercises and drills.
2. Plan and perform exercises in environments that reproduce authentic conditions as far as feasible.
3. Test each contingency plan with those persons who would undertake control if the crisis occurred.
4. Document the exercise goals and procedures, and record the results.
5. Use the results to fine tune the contingency plan.

Maintaining Contingency Plans

1. Audit each contingency plan, and the back up arrangements supporting it against the test results.
2. Inform all employees and contract workers of the plan, its contents and their duties and responsibilities.
3. Keep contingency plans up to date and applicable to current circumstances.
4. Reflect any changes to organization or to the relative importance of each part of the organizational process within the contingency plans.
5. Assign responsibilities to key people to ensure that each contingency plan is regularly updated.
6. Ensure that information concerning changes to the organizational process are properly communicated.
7. Test any changes or amendments made to a contingency plan.

Emergency Training

1. Motivate personnel to take disaster recovery planning seriously, even if the events which would trigger each contingency plan seem unlikely.
2. Identify which personnel should attend first aid and CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) training.
3. Provide experienced trainers who can recount personal experiences with each type of crisis.
4. Test staff to ensure that they understand their responsibilities and duties, particularly concerning their activities which interact with actions taken by others.
5. Keep personnel informed of changes insofar as the changes affect their duties and responsibilities.
6. Provide personnel with repeat emergency training every two or three years.

Emergency Training

Contingency Planning

• Emergency Preparedness
• Contingency Exercises
• Crisis Management
• Dealing with Trauma and PTSD
• Refugee Management

• Developing an Overall Emergency Plan
• Controlling each crisis
• Testing Contingency Plans
• Maintaining Contingency Plans
• Emergency Training