Business Continuity Planning

Good Afternoon All:

My name is Lynn and I am writing business continuity plans for my firm. Has anyone been there and done that? I would appreciate any advice / pointers.

Thank you

Lynn

FEMA has a BCP Generator (as well as a DRP Generator) on their website that seems to be directed at commercial business entities.  I'm a municipality and BCP/DRP take on a different meaning for us because we're also the first responders to emergencies, so our "business" is public safety.  The FEMA tools might be able to be adapted, but I haven't been able to take the time to figure out how.  However, you may find it useful.  Here's the URL:

http://www.ready.gov/business-continuity-planning-suite

Thank you, this is very helpful.

Lynn,

FEMA has an excellent tool that will help you start your Business Continuity Plan.  You can find examples and templates at http://www.ready.gov/business/implementation/continuity.  There are additional resources available on the Internet.  Many companies have made their BCP available to the public.  These plans may provide you a guide for your plan.

I wish you the best of luck.

Susan Flanagan

Hi Lynn,

I spent the last year completely overhauling our internal BCP.  Start with departmental Business Impact Analysis followed by detailed Critical Process Plans.  We also implemented an emergency alert notification system capable of calling, texting, emailing etc.  I would be happy to speak with you offline and share our collection template.  Good luck Amy

Lynn, I have been working in business continuity for a very long time.  There are many ways to approach writing business continuity plans.  May I recommend you do some research on how to build plans at DRII.org.

Cindy

I recently assisted several 9-1-1 Centers in completing their Continuity of Operations Plans and in the process came across some great tools.  Here's an excellent website specific to business continuity:  http://www.preparemybusiness.org/planning

The SBA and Agility Recovery are working together to better prepare businesses and provide very informative free webinars on a regular basis.  

Also, FEMA offers free online training for Continuity of Operations Planning.  This is geared more towards government agencies, but could apply to your business.  

http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is548.asp

I also have a template that a local business provided.  If you are interested you can contact me directly and I will email it to you.

While I have never done one for real, I have done them in a graduate class.  There are great FEMA courses (and some not so great) online.

These are two that should help you.  The independent study (IS) courses often do not use the formal language of the guidance documents, but make the topic real with easy to grasp concepts.

I have not found a decent sample, but you might try to google for one.

Here is a template.

http://www.samhsa.gov/csatdisasterrecovery/preparedness/coopPlanPDF.pdf

One of the problems I have with using a static template is that in a multi-department environment where each has their own BCP, it is very difficult to maintain the contact information.  There really needs to be a central contact database that can change as people come and go and as their roles change relative to BCP.