The flowchart depicts the 6 key aspects of developing your Business Continuity Plan.  The top three boxes depict the Pre Incident process of Assessing, Quantifying and Mitigating your key risks.  The bottom three boxes depict the plans that Green Oak Solutions recommends you develop as part of your overall plan to form your Post Incident response.

Pre Incident Planning

Before any plans are developed it is important for you to conduct a Risk Assessment.  This assessment should evaluate your man made and natural hazard risks, and should include a Business Impact Analysis to assess your operational risks.

As with any Risk Assessment the process should first identify key risks, then work to assess their severity, and finally identify means to mitigate the risk. 

The goal for this part of the process is to determine how the underlying risks a company faces can be mitigated before an incident occurs. 

Post Incident Planning

We recommend that three principle plans be developed.

The Emergency Response Plan addresses the immediate reaction to an incident.  It addresses the evacuation, stabilization and securitization of the operation.  These plans are largely required by OSHA and other governmental agencies.  The Emergency Response Plan may many times be all that is needed to respond to an incident.

If an incident cannot be contained by the Emergency Response Plan the Crisis Management Plan will be activated, based upon a recognized set of criteria that has to be developed as part of every planning effort.  A Crisis for one company might be a minor incident for another.  The Crisis Management Plan activates key leadership in response to the incident.  It defines how the incident will be managed and how the response to it will be escalated.  It also defines how Business Recovery will be staff and managed.

When severe incidents occur it may be necessary to active the full plan for business operations recovery- Business Resumption or Recovery Plans.  These plans can be developed at the operations level according to a structure that best fits a company or locations mission.  These plans outline what individual segments of operations will do to recover their ability to maintain their output of goods or services.

For more information on the overall Response Process please see our graphical depiction of the Operation of the Business Continuity Plan.