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Business Continuity
Business continuity is defined as “an ongoing process supported by senior management and funded to ensure that the necessary steps are taken to identify the impact of potential losses, maintain viable recovery strategies, recovery plans, and continuity of services.” [NFPA 1600]
Business continuity planning involves gaining management commitment, organizing a steering committee comprised of managers from major business functions, conducting a business impact analysis, determining business continuity requirements, developing business continuity strategies, writing the business continuity plan, and then implementing the plan with training, testing, and exercising.
Preparedness, LLC can help develop a business continuity program for your business. We begin by conducting a business impact analysis to identify hazards and scenarios where facilities, systems, or equipment may be damaged or operations may be interrupted or disrupted. This assessment identifies opportunities for hazard prevention and risk mitigation.
Then, using a combination of questionnaires and interviews, we identify critical business functions, and the impacts of an interruption that develop over time. Our goal is to determine the maximum allowable downtime—the “recovery time objective”(RTO)—before the impact of the interruption becomes unacceptable.
During the business impact analysis we help you identify and prioritize time critical functions, and the resources required to support a critical function at minimally accepted levels. Our facilitated discussions also help to identify manual processes—“workarounds”—to overcome the loss of systems and equipment.
We facilitate discussions and present options for development of business continuity strategies to sustain critical business functions. These include reviewing alternate office, computing, operations, and communications facilities. We explore options that may include use of alternate company facilities, contracted facilities and services, and reciprocal agreements.
We help to compile planning documentation into a cohesive plan that will be immediately accessible, if needed. We can help organize the business continuity organization, compile business continuity requirements, outline business continuity strategies, write damage assessment procedures, and document plan activation procedures.
Your business continuity plan is only as good as the ability of personnel to respond effectively during an emergency. We conduct classroom training to familiarize personnel with the business continuity plan, plan activation, and their role and responsibilities.
We design and facilitate tabletop exercises with scenarios that are specific to your facility, operations, and plans. Exercises enable members to better execute the plan, and they can identify gaps or weaknesses.
We utilize a 200 plus question evaluation tool to evaluate existing business continuity programs and offer recommendations for enhancement. Evaluation criteria are based on regulatory requirements, our National Preparedness Standard, and best practices. Our evaluations provide a clear picture of program strengths and weaknesses within an easy to use report.
Click here to download our business continuity services brochure.