Open to all Business Continuity and Incident Management Practitioners, the forum is presented as an exercise throughout the duration of the day, during which delegates will receive a series of injects as the scenario unfolds. After each stage of the scenario delegates will need to consider what steps they should take to mitigate the impact on their staff and business.

Delegates will be guided towards better practice by a panel of recognised industry speakers including emergency services, in-house BC practitioners and technology providers. The expert panels will be in place to highlight considerations and methods to meet the challenges, answer specific questions and discuss the responses that delegates have decided on.

With the excitement of a live event, this is a unique forum to test and develop knowledge of incident response methods and tools. All those involved in the organisation and running of the event are confident that practitioners at all levels of experience will leave with a better knowledge of how to manage an incident.

If you would like to participate in the event please call Natalie Thompson at GemaTech on 0845 3458714.

The mix of reactions of the people caught up in the Manhattan area was a great insight into how people respond to a major disaster. After all, the best laid plans for emergency situations are put under greatest pressure when people don’t do what you expect them to. The number of people heading into the falling dust or entering unstable buildings left me wanting to scream ‘get away, get as far away as possible’ and yet they hung around watching and waiting, only being moved when someone in authority took control and started to get them to move back from the scene.

It really highlighted to me how important communication is in such as situation – communication between emergency services and communication with the public. Clear and conscise instructions from a trusted authority is more likely to get people to do what you want them to, than chinese whisper types of conversations ‘encouraging’ people to take a certain action.

Taking this view I wondered how corporates changed their plans and attitudes on disaster recovery and business continuity following a potential crisis and discovered the following:

Paul Argenti, a management professor who worked with corporates such as Morgan Stanley, Dell and Verizon after the disaster, advised that new business continuity plans should incorporate: ‘Maintaining high levels of visibility so that employees are certain of top management’s command of the situation and concern; establish contingency communication channels and work sites; strive to keep employees focused on the business itself, because a sense of usefulness enhances morale and good morale enhances usefulness; and ensure that employees have absorbed the firm’s values, which will guide them as they cope with the unpredictable.’

It makes sense and yet again it takes a major disaster for companies to have it hit home that plans need to be robust and that they need to take into consideration the human factor during crisis situations.

My heart goes out to all the families and victims of the 9/11 bombings today as we remember those who perished on that ‘dark day’.

Karen Jones

Those companies who are trying to save money by cutting corners and not installing properly serviced equipment, or are letting fire prevention measures fall by the wayside, are taking a risk with both lives and and their business.

Why is it that when budgets are squeezed the threat of a major disruptive event suddenly becomes less in people’s minds? Is it that due to budget accountability, it is easier to make a purchase on something that is instantly beneficial rather than something that is considered insurance for something that may or may not happen?

In times of recession I believe that companies should be doing everything possible to maintain buisness as usual through any disruptive event, whether it be fire or flu pandemic. When you consider how many businesses never recover from a disaster becasue they cannot continue to service their customers, business continuity should be top priority.

In light of this information I believe that for UK businesses and organisations, more emphasis should be placed on managing the impact of a flu pandemic, than is placed on disaster recovery for terrorist attacks, certainly at the present time. That is not to say that other disruptive events should be dis-regarded, but that the top priority for now, the winter, and possibly further into next year, is to protect our employees and build in business continuity into all systems and processes to ensure the smooth running of public and private sector services.

Of course the upside for having a robust business continuity plan in place for the swine flu pandemic is that employees are, by default, also prepared for more major disruptive events which, though shocking for an organisation, should take away the uncertainty of what unaffected employees should be doing in the aftermarth of a terrorist attack to their business district, or office building. By ensuring that call re-routing from office phones to alternative mobile or landline numbers becomes a buisness-as-usual activity, the ability for employees to adapt to changing work circumstances is greatly increased, resulting in the time between a disruption and getting an organisation back to normal, to be greatly decreased.

Author: Karen Jones

Why do some people never learn ’sufficiently’ from these recurring events? Is it that we think that a disaster can never happen to us twice, or to the same extent? Back in April, within a couple of weeks of the year before, Tooley Street in London was flooded. You can compare photos from each year and they could easily have been taken at the same time. The disruption caused year on year by the same natural disasters, or as a result of human error must surely have some effect on how we plan for disaster recovery and business continuity, however I am still to ’see’ and ‘feel’ that both the government, the public and industry alike take it seriously enough. The flood waters disappear, the sun comes out, life goes on and it is easy to forget just how bad it was - until it happens again!

Author: Karen Jones