Continuity Planning: Minimize Interruptions & Build Resiliency
By Adam Conway
The U of A’s Emergency Management team lead shares quick tips and tools for minimizing interruptions to research, teaching, and administration, and prioritizing scarce resources in times of crisis.
I always remember the first meeting I had when I started at the university in 2010. The first thing my host said in the meeting was an apology for having to relocate the meeting from its original location to a new location because there had been a flood in the original meeting room. The second thing that my host said to me was that she had no experience in emergency planning or business continuity. I said, not only do you have experience in emergency management and business continuity, but you’re good at it.
At an institution the size of ours, there is always an emergency or business continuity incident going on. Everyday there could be IT or utility outages, significant staff absences, a critical light switch that doesn’t work, or a vendor who can’t meet our timelines. These are the everyday occurrences for the thousands of us who work on our campuses; but, the good news is there are well-experienced processes and resources for dealing with them.
Prepare for work interruptions big and small
Continuity planning is the process of creating tools and systems to help in the prevention of and recovery from potential threats to your team or work. U of A teams are required to have plans in place to deal with the most common work-related outages for their most critical services. As my first meeting host demonstrated, continuity planning does not have to be complex. Writing a business continuity plan starts with simply writing down the common processes that units already follow for minor interruptions.
The emergency management team has developed an operational continuity form for units to complete to help teams document their critical services and related resource dependencies, and to list any existing backups. This form also contains instructions to follow during an outage and provides retention strategies to follow to ensure that any interruption of your critical services has little an impact as possible.
Preparedness reduces stress and streamlines solutions
Following the procedures in your operational continuity plan will decrease the stress of managing an incident and ensures that your unit is accessing replacement resources in the safest, most prudent, and most efficient way. The faster a plan is implemented, the less energy it takes to carry out that plan. Having a written plan shortens the decision-making processes for 90% of our outages. It also crucially identifies services for units that (a) cannot stop operation or (b) require significant effort to prepare for beyond the day-to-day university processes.
Capture your COVID-19 continuity best practices
At this point in the response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, we all have emergency management and business continuity experience. We are all experts in how to continue our business without ready access to our ‘normal’ resources such as staff, physical space, computer networks, or desktop phones. Albert Einstein famously said, “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity.” Make an appointment in your calendar at the end of the week or month to capture the lessons your team is learning and the extraordinary processes that have now become routine. Try to do it while the lessons are fresh in your mind, and pretty soon you’ll have a step-by-step guide to continue your critical services and support your clients during future emergencies.
Whether it is summer storms, food poisoning at a holiday party, the loss of building space due to a water leak, a critical staff person trapped overseas by flight cancellations, or a theft of unique research equipment, the effects of a sudden crucial change can be lessened by a complete operational continuity plan.
To prepare for possible building closures, extended absences, outbreak scenarios, shifts to remote work, or additional disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, all U of A units and teams must conduct continuity planning. University activities and spaces should be able to shut down, suspend, delegate, or shift operations within 24–48 hours.
Quick links:
- Your guide to U of A continuity planning
- Research ramp down procedures, continuity planning and related resources
- Operational Continuity Planning Form
- New Tools for Continuity Planning (Safety and Risk Symposium 2020 Webinar) by Adam Conway, November 24, 2020
- Learn how to create a plan to get back to business quickly
- Learn how to document existing backup processes so that they can be found quickly
- Understand how the university prioritizes resources during an outage
