District Borough Council
The Client
A district borough council providing a full range of services to the community.
The Challenge
An audit identified that existing business continuity plans were not fit for purpose and that this needed to be addressed.
The local authority did not have an internal resource to undergo the necessary activity and only limited budget to utilise external specialists.
Teed suggested an approach that would allow requirements to be satisfied, without spending any more time than was absolutely necessary.
The Solution
A clear understanding was gained at the beginning of the project of the organisation, its infrastructure and the current level of business continuity preparedness.
The overall business continuity aim was defined: in the event of an incident impacting the physical infrastructure or people resource at any key site, the council would be able:
“to maintain operational capability of the Borough’s emergency plan, maintain services at a level that will satisfy customers and keep all other impacts within acceptable levels”.
The exposures and issues were understood prior to facilitating business impact analysis discussions with the 15 service heads, thus ensuring good use of time.
Updated plans were produced and an exercise was facilitated involving the incident management team and service area representation. Clear guidance was given on what now needed to be done to ensure effective implementation and ongoing maintenance of plans.
The Result
Audit requirements were satisfied through utilisation of an effective project approach and proven methods.
Where other councils have chosen to employ a full time business continuity coordinator or manager, our client managed to satisfy their requirements by utilising less than 25 Teed consultancy days over a 4 month period.
The methods adopted ensured that staff and management time input was kept to a minimum, whereas experience has shown that those organisations that choose to directly employ an inexperienced practitioner are likely to take up more than 100 man days of staff and management time than is actually required.