Read some of the details about the UK government’s contingency plans for a worst case scenario in relation to the recent Fukushima reactor disaster that followed the earthquake and tsunami in March.

Read the article here

Lessons identified?  Here are my observations:

-  Poor housekeeping always exacerbates an incident.  Minimise clutter.

- In a major disaster – GO IN , STAY IN, TUNE IN (shelter, water, warmth)

- It’s too late to think about contingency planning during the event.  Anticipate, Prepare, Prevent.

- Your best laid plans are just that.  Expect to have to improvise as systems and people fail to act as you’d like them to.

- Relocating is often the best plan.  For radiation, distance and time are the key factors.  Screening can reduce distance requirements.

- Resilience by design is better than planning for disaster.  Don’t build 3 major hazards in the same place!

What are your thoughts and comments on this disaster?  Do you think nuclear energy is still a good idea?

[free video and report on contingency planning]

Tweet me @veterus or comment below.

Veterus

21 Jun 2011.

At Veterus we take pride in the breadth and depth of our emergency planning and disaster recovery expertise, which has been gained and consolidated through more than 20 years of world-class training and experience in military and civil contingency planning.

An example of this is our comprehensive understanding of radiation emergencies: from anticipation and prevention through to response, containment and recovery.

We’ve personally led, planned and directed the response to military and civil  emergencies ranging from nuclear warfare and weapon accidents to submarine reactor-plant breaches requiring shelter, evacuation and medication of a city of 300,000 citizens and full remediation of a contaminated city – with all of the associated multi-media messaging to warn, inform and reassure the local population and staff.

The ability to safely manage this kind of crisis only comes from careful planning, training and exercising – that’s when you find out the real issues and problems – and they are seldom what first comes to mind!

If you’d like advice or help with planning for radiation emergencies – please get in touch.

I’ve attached a one-page pdf highlighting some of my personal experience in this field (Clickon the link below to download)

Radiation Emergency Planning and Management

The recent failure of BAA to maintain an operational airport at Heathrow raises a useful teaching point for business continuity professionals and company executives – the importance of having clarity about what “core business” is.

Many business continuity, resilience and emergency planning professionals will be familiar with the frustrations associated with trying to get the board to take contingency planning seriously and understand that it IS core business to stay IN BUSINESS – it isn’t a bolt on, blue collar, Cinderella service that you tolerate on the executive agenda for a few minutes (along with the dreaded risk register) before getting back to “proper work”. If you or your company thinks and acts like that then sooner or later yo will come spectacularly unstuck – just like BP, BAA and a host of other big brand (now trashed-brand) companies did in 2010.

The case of BAA is perhaps more subtle than this though – perhaps they DID have a business continuity policy and had identified that their CORE business is:

“To bring and retain as many passengers as possible to our retail hub, keep them there as long as possible and get them to buy as much stuff as we can”.

Think back to the last time you travelled through an airport?  Was it a glowing example of lean process?  Did the airport embrace the Toyota Lean Principles:

* Specify the value desired by the customer
* Identify the value stream for each product providing that value and challenge all of the wasted steps
* Make the product flow continuously
* Introduce pull between all steps where continuous flow is impossible
* Manage toward perfection so that the number of steps and the amount of time and information needed to serve the customer continually falls.

Or did you arrive WAY to early, spend lots of time queueing needlessly for too few check ins and lines, then dwell ENDLESSLY in the bit where they can sell you stuff before being called too early to the next waiting station before boarding the aeroplane too early to wait around again?

If the airport operator’s private corporate aim is more aligned to the one I’ve articulated above rather than:

“To maximise the safe, secure and efficient transportation of passengers to and from their pre-booked foreign destinations by air or all available means.”

then you’ll get different decisions about resources, training, strategy and plans.

For example, if you know you aren’t able to fly anyone out of the airport or receive arriving passengers from abroad – why let more people into the terminals when you could communicate and signpost them away before they become guests of an ill-equipped “hotel”?

Could you partner with other transportation companies that are unaffected by the weather to help your customers’ customers more or less achieve their travel goals by other means – for example bus and ferry or train to Europe so they can still ski or get home for Christmas?

Or maybe the resultant chaos indicates a complete lack of contingency planning – exemplified by the flat-footed PR and decision making that we saw unfold over the 3 or so days?

The same of course goes for the UK government response – which demonstrated an inability to manage multiple simultaneous threats and disruptions.  Perhaps ministers and the cabinet office were still focused on the wikileaks issue, the student protests and the Met Police’s failure to safeguard the heir to the throne and simply ran out of time, people and brain cells to cope with the snow – that’s normally the case when the excuses are trotted out instead of appropriate, timely actions – inexcusable given that we’ve got double the resources in a coalition government.

So what can you do to avoid similar problems in your business?

Start off by being very clear about what business you are in and how much of what products or services your customers and stakeholders need you to deliver by when in order to deliver an acceptable level of service; horizon scan for potential threats and be clear about how, who and what is communicated in a crisis.  Better yet, give us a call and we’ll guide you through the process – before, during or after.