A Major Business Disruption A Strategy for Minimising the Downtime Anthony Hegarty Mitigating Risks

An Understanding £64,000 per hour or £2.6million per week Lose ½% of market share every 8 hours Require 3 years to recover ½% of market share Leave 1 year of consequences for every 6 hours of downtime The average cost of organisational downtime

Objective To develop Emergency Disaster Recovery Plan tailored for City Financial District To create Emergency Response Action Task Team – ERATT – from both public and private sectors To develop coordinated response plan as core of ERATT policy

ERATT ERATT members will consist of representatives of: Police Fire Ambulance Utilities Transport Home Office Property Owners Business Leaders Judges Security Directors Media Business Associations Surveyors

Givens Some cities have emergency response drills however: Focussed on evacuation of public Do not address business continuity Police / Fire services have primary roles in emergency situation and focus on life saving duties – not business continuity Organisational downtime will have severe economical repercussions for the city long after infrastructure has been restored

Which Businesses to Invite There will be too many organisations within the business district to invite all, as this would be unmanageable Businesses should be invited on the basis of the economic impact their loss of functions would have on the city

Focus of Response Plan Public / Private sector responsibilities Incident specific guidelines Communications Perimeter access Training Recovery

Who & What EvacuationSafetyRecovery & Damage Assessment Hazard Mitigation Communications Police Fire Ambulance Utilities Transport Business Leaders Property Owners Such Matrices should be developed to establish which section of ERATT will be responsible for the required tasks Sample

Private Sector Focus How can building owners / managers mitigate losses in an emergency To complete Risk & Vulnerability assessments of properties Review / Update emergency plans Conduct emergency training with staff / tenants Purchase emergency supplies – hard hats, flashlights, first-aid kits, sirens Back-up building plans with local police / fire departments Specialist agreements – Property managers, Repairs / Restoration engineers, Computer suppliers, Telecom engineers, Office furniture suppliers, Trauma specialists, List of contacts

Communications There is no time to contact each individual member of the disaster recovery team for each organisation Each individual organisation will have a list of trained personnel who can be summoned at short notice Method of communication will be computer generated text message sent to each member’s cell phone Authority to send such message must be established

Specialist Staff Does the organisation have staff with unknown specialist skills, eg. Electrical engineers, plumbers etc. ( previous careers ) Are any blind people employed in the building (blind people can often guide others out in the event of zero visibility)

Unique Incidents – bomb threats Staff training for telephone procedure for bomb / other threats Are staff trained in search procedure Who decides on evacuation – floor / entire building Designated safe area for evacuees – ensure absence of any secondary device For small devices discovered in tall buildings, can limited floors only be evacuated eg. Dallas, Texas bomb discovery procedure. Device discovered on 55 th floor. It is established that the device will not cause structural damage. Floors 50 to 60 are evacuated. If device considered a threat to structure then the entire building is evacuated.

External Communications Emergency communication links have to be established to ensure flow of information website AM radio station – constant broadcasts to the public mobile data centre media news conferences

Perimeter Access Access guidelines must be established Streets surrounding impact point of disaster likely to be closed off by police Building assessors / surveyors need access to building ASAP In event of building safety critical staff need access Police need to break perimeter boundaries to allow critical staff / ERATT members to access business district to permit business continuity

Perimeter Access cont Business leaders / staff outside ERATT will still have to remain outside the perimeter ERATT i.d. cards would be issued as standard to assist in access control Key contractors within the ERATT database will also have i.d. cards

Caution Despite criticality of Business Resumption, all ERATT members must first and foremost understand that the crime scene preservation is paramount and this may delay procedure

Questions, Comments