Testing your plan
The only way to ensure that your continuity plan will work is to test it with regular exercises and then to update the plans in light of your experiences.
Why run exercises?
Exercises provide the only way of realistically testing your emergency plans under controlled conditions. Testing your emergency strategy will also bring people from different areas together to work as a team and to get to know and respect each other's strengths and weaknesses. Other benefits of regularly testing your continuity plan include:
- increasing the likelihood of your business surviving a disaster
- preservation and enhancement of your public image
- ensuring continuity of business operation and service provision during and after an incident
- minimising the impact of an incident on the community and environment
- minimising the social, political, legal and financial consequences of disaster
- identifying areas of vulnerability in your organisations or supply chain
- opportunities for those who may be involved with responding to an emergency to become familiar with their role.
The support and commitment of senior management is crucial to the success of any exercise - testing must not be seen in isolation but rather as a vital part of the process of making sure your business is prepared.
Types of exercise
Choosing the right type of exercise is important, to make sure you are effectively testing your response arrangements.
There are three main types of exercise:
Seminar exercises
Table-top exercises
Live exercises
Debrief and review
Whatever type of exercise is chosen, it is important to evaluate the event. Holding a short debrief at the end of the exercise, or a short time after, allows participants to feedback their views on how well the exercise went and how response plans can be improved. The outcomes of this debrief should then be written up into a report outlining the exercise successes and improvements that can be made.
You may need to review your plans in light of the outcomes of your exercise – make sure you keep a record of amendments made to your plan and keep copies of different versions.
In the event of a disaster, previous exercise reports demonstrate to the community, and any subsequent formal inquiry, the commitment of your organisation to the safety of people and your surroundings.
