The BBC news site covers a story today following comments by the Defence Select Committee that the  current review is cost driven rather than strategic and lacks sufficient input from the MOD, members of the public and defence industry – what a load of nonsense.

The MOD, Ministers and defence contractors should and indeed will have been consistently and continually reviewing the suitability or otherwise of their existing policies, strategies, plans and equipment in light of changing defence priorities and lessons identified from the current conflict in Afghanistan and recent operations in Iraq.  MPs meanwhile should continually maintain contact with their constituencies and (if they were doing their jobs properly) understand their views on defence and other topics.  Of course the reality is somewhat different and most MPs pander to lobbyists seized by enormously significant strategic issues like driving whilst using a mobile phone and 20mph speed limits rather than discussing the continued requirement for a national nuclear deterrent!

If the pace of the Strategic Defence Review is deemed too quick for the Defence Select committee (who again ought to be up to speed with the issues and have clarity of purpose in terms of what is required from a lifetime of consultations and other means – even if members are recent joiners) then this is indicative of a much broader malaise across all aspects of governance and UK plc.

Regardless of the recommendations and policy decisions thatcome from the Defence Review, success will depend upon collective agility to respond to those policies and recommendations – and that is the problem – industry and highly regulated public sector organizations cannot react quickly enough to capitalise on opportunities or respond to crises.  They are too tied up in contracts and overly bureacratic processes; staffed with agreeable “yes men” and women who put career before conscience in many cases and hamstrung by continual churn of people topped off with an utter lack of accountability for their actions – despite the burden of so called governance process on which they all insist.

The knowledge and capability to build modular systems of systems that can cope with any type of conflict or peacekeeping requirement has been within our gift for tens of years.  What is lacking is clear, purposeful leadership from Ministers (in particular) and Service Chiefs – too many unaccountable cooks! – and the funding and agility to respond quickly and effecively to emerging requirements.

The soldiers, sailors and airmen of the armed forces are only as ready as their superiors plan and train them to be – they can do whatever they are required to do with sufficient foresight and often without – relying on their initiative, teamwork and sheer calibre – but they do need half-decent equipment that is fit for purpose and can be supported and maintained.  It doesn’t have to be state of the art – just good enough and in plentiful supply.

A bigger problem is perhaps where defence sits within national priorities in terms of funding with a budget that is dwarfed by welfare and other wasteful “give a man a a fish” programmes that seek to appease lobbyists and pander to historic links that are no longer valid or useful.

I look forward to seeing and hearing about the latest Defence Review in due course – but I shall be surprised if it makes much difference to defence industry or front-line support in the next 5 years – by which time any changes introduced will have too much lag to be relevant to the challenges we face then.

The BBC coverage is here.

As TUC members vote today in favour of joint action to protest against the forthcoming cuts to public sector budgets we consider what public and private sector organizations can do to minimise the damage to their cash-flow and reputation from industrial action and other disruptions that reduce the number of staff available for work through effective business continuity management planning.

During our fast-track BusinessMEDIC workshops, the first consideration after understanding the business aims and objectives is to determine the minimum number of staff needed to deliver critical products and services to the standards required by contracts and business objectives.

It’s often surprising to clients that their organization is able to function adequately for a fortnight or more with only a handful of key staff that are suitably trained and empowered to make executive decisions, execute contracts and expend cash – but that is the reality in many companies.

Of course manufacturers, airline operators and other safety and people intensive business may not fair so well without staff so they need to make alternative arrangements to meet their key outputs by other means such as outsourcing or employment of agency or other staff if unionised workforces will not cooperate.

Employing alternative staff is most effective when they have prior knowledge and experience in the tasks for which they are employed but a lot can be achieved through carefully written and tested procedures and processes which can greatly reduce the training time and supervision ratios needed to deliver safe, repeatable performance of most tasks.

Trades that require considerable skill of hand may be less straighforward to replace on a short-term basis but careful forward planning can identify alternative sources of supply at home and abroad.  Customers may also be used to longer delivery times for bespoke pieces and it may be possible to negotiate a revised delivery date in exchange for a price reduction or other incentive to protect the customer relationship.

Other alternatives would include taking the opportunity to reduce headcount and improve resilience to inustrial action by investing in new plant andmachinery that is highly automated and requires little setting up.  In the early eighties with mass-vane-damper control systems you’d need an army of “fitters” and “control engineers” to set up and continually recalibrate endlessly drifting potentiometers and other analogue wizardry, but computerised, solid state systems are much more reliable and consistent than their predecessors and could allow significant reductions in headcount – assuming these have not already been made.

Another option is to re-look at the overall processes to see which parts might be outsourced to others without losing your competetive advantage.  For example, a former client who made security doors had the capability to begin with a tree at the left hand side of a dream workshop full of every joiner’s Christmas list but replacing and commissioning this capability after a fire would have been pointless, expensive and time-consuming when compared with the alternative plan of sourcing the component parts to suitable quality standards from any number of national or international joinery shops then assembling the pieces to make the killer product.

“But we’re not in the public sector!” you cry.  Well that’s fine but much of what you do is doubtless impacted by prolonged or short-notice firefighters strikes, mail worker strikes and especially disruptions to refuse collection and transport services so you need to plan ahead and look at how you can minimise the effects on your business.

We haven’t had national strikes since the 70′s when the military and probably police services were considerably larger and well equipped to support the government than they are now.  There aren’t boxfulls of soldiers, sailors and airmen sat twiddling their thumbs in barracks and dockyards up and down the country, nor do they own a lot of the kit they’d need to help if they weren’t in afghanistan or elsewhere.  Much of the defence world has “benefited” from contractor logistic support and civilianisation of posts to the degree that it’s run on a hired shoestring through a cascading array of service level agreements and other mumbo jumbo which translates to “no we don’t have any people, cranes,  boats or planes to help with the strike minister – terribly sorry.”

So if you want to protect your business from damage, disruption and loss as a 21st century winter of discontent looms, you’d be well advised to give us a call so we can check your plans, help you test them or put them together from scratch.  You know it makes sense..

For more information on the TUC vote, click here or visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11278570

Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service together with other local and international rescue teams are currently taking part in Exercise Orion – which simulates an earthquake in the fictitious local town of Widley.

Held at Fort Widley in Hampshire, the exercise takes place over 3 days and provides realistic training to the participants similar to that carried out in the Royal Navy’s DISTEX training that every ship undergoes during Basic Operational Sea Training; including limbless and other simulated casualties, public disorder, fires and realistic light and heavy rescues from buildings and bridges.

It is not clear whether the exercise will also involve establishing an emergency hospital and feeding facilities – as practiced by the Royal Navy teams when they prepare for disaster relief of tropical islands or following eathquakes and tsunami events but it is exactly the sort of realistic exercising and training that emergency planners crave but are rarely given funding for.

Of course planning for and participating in the exercise provides enormous value in itself but it is in carefully capturing and acting on the lessons identified that the real value comes. Finding out that policies, processes and equipment doesn’t work during a simulation will save lives and avoid costly procurement mistakes as well as clarifying who is best equipped and most logically responsible for tackling the myriad problems thrown up by the event.

Whilst the exercise is an encouraging development – and it is planned to carry out more over the coming years to maximise the return on investment – it would be advantageous to involve local businesses and the organizations that represent them to bring another perspective to the scenario and see how local companies can assist – for example with heavy plant and skilled staff such as abseiling window cleaners and scaffolders.

For more information and some photos of the exercise you can visit the BBC’s South Today website.