Emergency Response
- Designated primary and alternate assembly areas
- Posted maps of the assembly areas
- Process to account for every colleague, contractor, vendor and guest in your facility
- Practice accounting for missing during a drill – time it
- Practice communications for evacuations for mobility impaired persons needing assistance to exit the facility
- Procedure to update emergency responders to prevent unnecessary risks during containment
- Night and daytime numbers for colleague emergency contacts
- With permission – personal cell phones and email, authorized for use only during emergencies
Crisis Management
- Training on when and where to meet following an incident if direct communication is not possible
- Succession plan for all key personnel
Communications
- Colleague emergency information line not associated with your own phone system
- Laminated wallet card with brief instructions for colleague disaster response, including emergency number
- A plan to get information to colleagues when no voice or data communication is available
- Conference call line in your plan that everyone knows how and when to access as a means to quickly update essential colleagues
- Test conference call line during exercises or offsite testing
- Plan to redirect your local fax numbers
- Plan to answer the local directory number and tested with local service vendor
- Prioritized list of 800 numbers
- List of DNIS/RTN at recovery vendor to point 800 numbers to
- List of 800 number capacity requirement and verification that recovery vendor can accommodate the volume
- Reroute procedures for mail, express mail, courier deliveries or pickups and vendor deliveries
Critical Vendors
- After-hours number for vendors listed in your continuity plans
- Verification of critical vendor continuity plans and review of their test results
- Back-up list of vendors for every critical supplier or business partner
- Testing critical vendor contact numbers
Continuity Plans
- Checklist of tasks to be completed after a declaration for various types of disasters:
• Building unavailable
• Staff unavailable
• Systems unavailable
• Media crisis
• Critical supplier/partner outage, including offshore partners.
- Exercise plans based on greatest risks, hazards or threats
- Ask internal teams to exercise by trading plans and recovering for another division based on documentation (You’ll be amazed what’s missing!)
Off-Site Storage
- Extra copies of barcodes for critical offsite recovery materials stored away from your office and the storage facility
- Multiple personnel trained, authorized, in and out of the local area designated to retrieve materials during an incident
- A current copy of your plan offsite
- A client list offsite on CD or in paper form
Finances
- Procedure to procure emergency check stock
- Procedure to duplicate your electronic funds transfers (EFT) or banking connections if you have moved to your recovery facility, using an alternate network with different routing identification numbers. Test it
- Method for relocated staff to pay for hotels, rental cars, and meals (not using their personal credit cards or funds)
Other Considerations
- List of all network connections and routing configurations
- Test of disaster dial-up access including volume load tests
- Plan to allocate limited dial-up port access
- Plans to work around dial-up limitations
- If offshore operations exist, develop plans to recover operations stateside – without official notice and with immediate impact to normal operations
- Print recovery plan with test validating full capability
- Mail insert and mass mailing recovery plan
- Procedure to collect recovery plans from departing or terminated colleagues that may be stored at home
- Ask the first colleague you meet—someone you don’t know by name—to tell you what they know about ER or BCP (Be prepared to be surprised by the lack of information.)
- Cultivate relationships with local emergency management personnel, including fire, police, public health, county emergency managers, and homeland security liaisons
Successful Recovery
In planning for effective and efficient disaster recovery, the preparation process is complex and multi-faceted, a fine balance between sufficient details and simplified plans. The larger your organization is, the more considerations you must weigh, the more contingencies you must anticipate, and the more layers of complexity you must analyze.
A proactive, forward-thinking approach is critical in developing a comprehensive recovery plan. Anytime you can eliminate an unforeseen gap in your plan, you will be that much closer to achieving your ultimate goal of getting back to business as usual in the least amount of time with the minimum amount of resource.
Vicky Cluney, MBCP, is a business continuity coordinator for a Fortune 500 company, a member of the Iowa Contingency Planners and the Metro Emergency Planners for her city. She has 14 years of experience in business continuity and disaster recovery.
