Business Resilience
Unfortunately, Prevention, Mitigation and Preparedness can never guarantee 100% avoidance of a natural disaster from occurring which can have serious negative effects for many businesses;
a company’s available capital, since they must now spend money to restore assets rather than advance business operations
disasters often render physical assets unusable if damage is significant to the business
significant damage can sometimes prohibit the business from continuing operations
injured personnel unable to return to work may cause significant setbacks
litigation/Investigations
However, there are steps that can be taken and processes followed which promote a substantive improvement in your organisation’s disaster preparedness, and a subsequent reduction in business risk.
Business Continuity
The ability of an organisation to recover from a disaster is directly related to the degree of business continuity planning that has taken place BEFORE the disaster.
Business Continuity determines how a company will keep functioning after a disruptive event until its normal facilities are restored. This will take the form of a ‘Business Continuity Plan’. Your plan will detail how employees will communicate, where they will go and how they will keep doing their jobs. The details can vary greatly, depending on the size and scope of a company and the way the business operates.
Event Fire Solutions Ltd will provide a best practice framework enabling you to understand, develop and implement a structured Business Continuity Plan and formalised Business Continuity Management System which will help minimise risk and maximize recovery time during unexpected events to your organisation.
The adoption of an effective business continuity plan within an organization will have valuable benefits;
Protection of shareholder value
Risk identification and analysis
Operational resilience
Recovery time reduced
Compliance issues that can be identified and managed with alternative processes
Vital records that can be maintained and protected
The implications for health & safety legislation considered.
Protection of business assets
Preservation and continuity of supply
Avoidance of liability actions
Disaster Recovery
Disaster recovery is the process detailed within your business continuity plan by which you resume business after a disruptive event. The immediate goal of the recovery phase is to bring the affected area back to some degree of normality. Our professional disaster team will respond and are able to strip out, clean up and pump out. Our staff are all county serving fire fighters, fully trained to work in extreme conditions and we can often work in conjunction with your insurance company to ensure that should the worse happen then our trust worthy crews will respond like an emergency team and are on call 24 hours a day to help 365 days a year.
The initial stage post natural disaster must be to conduct a Critical Incident Debrief (CID) to identify the crucial next steps for your business. Event Fire Solutions Ltd will conduct the CID, identifying the communication plan and assigning key roles and responsibilities to members of your chosen Disaster Recovery team.
Some key issues considered:
Who is responsible for instigating the recovery plan, and what is the communication chain?
What is the communication plan to employees?
What is the communication plan to customers? To suppliers and partners?
Who is authorized to communicate with shareholders? With other agencies including local authorities (fire, police) and regulatory?
Which Disaster Recovery team members are responsible for recovery operations, versus salvage operations?
Who is responsible for each element, and who are the backup personnel?
Are outside vendors required to play key roles in the recovery plan?
Following on from that our expert team will complete an Emergency Planning brief with the Disaster Recovery team and all relevant stakeholders to achieve;
Integration – ensure unity of effort among all stakeholders
Collaboration – create relationships among individuals to encourage trust, advocate a team approach, build consensus, and facilitate communication.
Coordinate – synchronize the activities of all relevant stakeholders to achieve a common purpose.
Flexibility – encourage creative and innovative approaches in solving disaster challenges.
Plan – formulate a plan of action with specific and achievable targets within realistic timescales.
Monitoring the use of a structured framework and methodology, Event Fire Solutions Ltd will support you during the recovery phase ensuring your organisation can cover all minimum requirements for the implementation of the Disaster Recovery Plan and adapt to its particular context and environment.