Making your own plan
Development of a business continuity plan will identify areas that you can improve your ability to deal with and recover from any disruption.
A business continuity plan should include:
- Identifying who will lead on business continuity within your business
- Defining who does what, including who makes the decisions
- identifying what parts of your business must be maintained to keep your business going
- considering the types of disruption / risks your business could face
- prioritising what functions will be reinstated first and what resources you will need, including staff, equipment, IT, premises, external suppliers, etc.
What sort of risks should I consider in my business continuty plan?
There may be a number of risks you may want to consider, these could include:
- large-scale temporary absence of staff;
- permanent or long-term loss of staff;
- denial of site or geographical area;
- flooding;
- severe weather;
- loss of mains electricity;
- disruption to transport;
- loss of mains water and sewerage;
- loss of availability of oil and fuel;
- loss of telephone/ mobile telephone communications.
Where can I get some more information on business continuity management?
The Government has developed a business continuity toolkit to help the commercial and voluntary sector develop business continuity within organisations. The business continuity toolkit is free to download at http://www.direct.gov.uk/
Other useful information on business continuity and emergency preparedness is available on
the Direct.gov website www.direct.gov.uk
The British Continuity Institute www.thebci.org
British Standards Institute www.bsonline.bsi-global.com
Business Link www.businesslink.gov.uk
Small business service www.sbs.gov.uk/
British Standard on Business Continuity (BS 25999)
This British Standard was developed by business continuity practitioners throughout the international community, drawing upon their considerable academic, technical and practical experiences of business continuity management (BCM).
BS 25999 was published in December 2006 and provides a system based on good practice for business continuity management. It is fast becoming the single reference point for identifying the range of controls needed for most situations where business continuity management is practised in industry and commerce, and to be used by large, medium and small organisations in industrial, commercial, public and voluntary sectors.
BS 25999 is in two parts:
Part 1: Code of practice for business continuity management;
Part 2: Specification for business continuity management.
Part 2 specifies the process for achieving certification that business continuity capability is appropriate to the size and complexity of an organization.
For more information on BS 25999 go to the British Standards Institute on www.bsonline.bsi-global.com
