When Crisis Hits: Business Continuity Planning
Business continuity planning, simply put, is a plan on how operations will continue should the place of business be disrupted. This article was inspired by my personal experience of flooding at an extrusion plant where I was previously an operations manager.
A river that runs close to the factory broke its banks, tore down a perimeter wall and sent an 11 foot wave crashing into the premises. The water submerged cars, extruders, hammer mills and thousands of tons of raw material and finished product causing production to stop immediately.
During this time, the CEO could not be reached as he was travelling to China. I was on a business trip to the western region of Kenya about 700km from the factory when I received a phone call, we had no BCP (Business Continuity Plan) in place. I had to think on my feet, finding out if the water had reached the power house to see if we had to shut down power; requesting a head count of staff on-duty from a handwritten register that may have been submerged in water… there was a lot that was left to chance. I took a taxi in the middle of the night to the nearest airport about 200km away to catch the first flight back to Nairobi the following morning.
It can happen!
As a business owner it is your duty to ensure your team understands what is expected of them in the event of a crisis. Examples of a crisis are: act of terrorism, fire, broken or leaking sewage, supply chain interruption, power outages, …
Each member of your administrative team should have a ‘Battle Kit.’ These are critical documents, registers and disks that would enable them to continue working if they had to do so at another location. Examples of these are copies of bin cards for your stores manager and accounts backups for your accountant. These should then be kept off premises and updated regularly. You should also identify and test a location for your administration team to continue working.
A call out cascade is critical. This could even make the difference between life and death. Every member of staff needs to know who should call them and whom they need to call in order to verify that everyone is ok. This works because each member of staff has one person to call then that person calls the next and so on and so on. If you cannot reach your assigned person then a central place to report to needs to be in chosen and a guide on what to do next.
A plan to continue serving your customers is also critical. Do you have surplus finished products stored off-site or can you start a toll processing arrangement with a similar business?
Insurance is a must. Is your policy up to date and does it cover natural or man-made disasters?
Each business is unique and the only way to know what your priorities are is to sit down with your team and discuss. Then come up with documented processes and ensure every staff member is familiar with them.
In my situation, we eventually repaired the damaged motors and dry the raw materials at the factory. However the process would have been much faster and easier if we had had a BCP in place.
