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.

With temperatures across the UK set to plummet by the weekend you’d be well advised to dust down your severe weather plans and get your business continuity management team together to consider the potential for disruptions to your business before it’s too late.

Whilst the recent snowfalls in the early part of 2010 may have reminded everyone about the potential for snow and ice on the roads and railways to disrupt travel and put just-in-time logistics at risk, many companies have simply not bothered to put any formal arrangements in place to manage both the predictable and unpredictable impact of sub-zero temperatures on their staff, suppliers and most importantly customers – leaving their operations exposed and at risk.

Last weekend was particularly busy as many shoppers took their November pay-checks to the shops to buy their Christmas presents and both the retail and entertainment industries will be looking to secure as much revenue as possible before the New Year VAT hike and any further downturns in consumer spending after what has already been a challenging 18 months.  With these additional fiscal pressures, you simply cannot leave your revenues to chance and hope for the best.

So what sort of things ought you to be considering within your business when you meet?

Here’s a short list to get you thinking:

• Do you and your staff know who the duty command and control team is in case of an incident?
• Have you updated your risk register or carried out a review of weather related risks recently?
• Are you expecting or dependent on any deliveries in the next 10 days?
• Do your suppliers have contingency plans for severe weather disruptions?
• Have you talked to your customers about possible disruption to your deliveries?
• Have you mitigated against burst pipes or frozen fixtures and fittings?
• Does everyone know the minimum levels of staff you need to continue operations?
• Do you have robust plans for this minimum number of staff to get safely to and from work?
• Do you have plans in case the heating or water supply fails?
• Can you keep local access roads, car parks and pavements snow and ice free?
• Are the roads to your premises on the local authority’s gritting plan?
• Can any of your products and services be delivered by staff working remotely from home or elsewhere?
• Have you carried out a desktop exercise based upon a severe snow event or prolonged cold spell?
• Can you team up with others to manage any eventualities?

It’s worth setting aside an hour to brainstorm what might go wrong in your business if the cold spell turns to snow and ice and we experience some of the same travel and transportation disruptions that we saw earlier this year.

Forewarned is Forearmed as “they” say and Failing to Plan is…well, you know the routine.

Don’t hesitate to call me if you’d like help with any of this.  You can reach me on 08456 434775.

On the 16th of August 2004 Boscastle in Cornwall suffered a catastrophic flash flooding event that nearly cost the lives of 100 people. A combination of unusual weather conditions led to incredibly high, and very localised rainfalls in the vicinity of the village as the remnants of Hurricane Alex combined with sea breezes to pile up 40,000ft high clouds that lingered and poured torrential rain onto the steep sloping valleys (“flashy catchments”) and roads leading into the Boscastle valley. In Boscastle itself 112mm of rain fell in 90 minutes!

A floodwatch was issued at 1239 after the Lesnewth rain gauge recorded 3mm of rain. At 1315 a further 15mm of rain fell in 15 minutes. After several more sudden downpours and lightning induced power cuts; the River Valency began to breach it’s banks at 1530. Half an hour later a 10ft high wall of floodwater rushed through the visitor carpark at an estimate 40mph and people began to be trapped in buildings by the torrential streams of water now flowing.

At 1622 rescue helicopters from RAF Chivenor and RNAS Culdrose were scrambled and an hour later they were already winching the first of 100 people to safety from the rooftops of rapidly disintegrating buildings as local emergency services and all available military and coastguard rescue helicopters rushed to the scene.

Studying this event we can see the importance of early warning and a fast, coordinated multi-agency response.

Looking at the recovery and restoration efforts since provides us with a best practice approach to flash flood mitigation – provided you have the budget for it.

The National Budget for Civil Protection in Pakistan is reportedly £500,000 and the area flooded is the size of England. In UK we’ve spent more than 10 times that amount on a small village…