Facilities Management

Facilities Management Business Continuity Planning and FM

BCP events • Events that can affect business • Direct or collateral loss of production facilities – fire, explosion, bomb, flood, earthquake, insurrection • Access – terrorism, bomb warning etc. • Staff – strikes, death or headhunting of key personnel • Financial implications – exchange rates, Hyundai in Fife • Knowledge and information – personnel, records and IT • Political, social, healthcare or financial crisis • Supplier and customer collapse

BCP • A systematic forethought to allow response during and immediately after an event to be based on pre-planned and optimized solutions that minimize the consequences for the business • Protecting physical and informational assets should be a major issue for every company running a business • Innocent events could greatly damage any business – vandalism, theft, sabotage, personal assault, criminal acts

BCP process • Initiation of BCP and assessment of risks • Business impact analysis • Analysis of critical processes • Creation of business continuity plan • Testing of the BCP • Updating of BCP

Initiation of BCP and assessment of risks • What is the nature of the business and business process? • What are the main activities within the business process? • What are the types of work, and the types of risk exposure? • Undertake a multi-faceted review of needs, consequences and relationships of each elements of the process/activity with respect to the business. • What are the financial, HRM and facilities implications of discontinuity of provisions (singularly and as a system)?

Business impact analysis • FM, the practice of coordinating the physical workplace with the organizations’ people and work, requires integrating the principles of business administration, architecture and the behavioral and engineering services • FM must continually research, evaluate and implement plans that meet the numerous demands and objectives of their business (Gregory, 1994)

Business impact analysis • To analyze the impact of a possible “disaster” or accident, interruption of the business, the FM should look at: • Who and what are directly affected (internally and externally)? And who and what are not affected? • Who and what are indirectly affected? • What is the time scale of disruption and consequences? (supply chain interruption?) • Analyze the business process and identify the critical components. What are the constraints and resource implications, what vulnerabilities do the critical components depend upon? • Immediate impact analysis (post crisis plan) and long term effects (recovery plan)? • Back-up systems: hot and cold sites: duplicate IT, facilities, staff expertise, suppliers and strategic design of work in progress, stockpiling and retention of expertise

Analysis of the critical FM processes • What facilities are core and cannot be contracted out temporarily? Which are non-core or could be substituted? • What facilities can operate temporarily with minimal attention, thereby allowing diversions to the critical? • Space management and allocation is also an important issue and under the FM control: what space is core and how is it used? Could alternatives be created temporarily or sourced elsewhere? Where are you space-critical? Could an IT/IS back-up allow remote working of a significant portion of the process and allow re-shuffling to support the site critical? • Communication is another aspect under the control of the FM: assess the critical and core communication routes? How is the remainder of communications achieved? Could alternatives be created temporarily or sourced elsewhere? • Think about temporary outsourcing some of the IT system? • How site/IT?HRM critical is the visible product/image of the company?

Analysis of the critical FM processes • Look at the FM itself as the possible victim of an event, since the indirect impact on the core of FM disruption will be unacceptable. • What aspect of the process (and people) is the memory of the FM department • Who and what are the highly critical facility/communications and HRM issues?

Critical HRM and business aspects • Who is critical to the process and cannot be substituted or temporarily contracted out? Who can be safely ignored temporarily (location or process-wise)? • What supplies or suppliers cannot be substituted? Bear in mind that the loss of a monopolistic key supplier could be very damaging and at the same time applies to your customers! • What sub-processes are on the critical business process path? Which are safe and not safe? Do you have a list of contingency suppliers? • Who in the company is irreplaceable – MD, designers or icon for the company?

Key points in BCP • The safety of personnel: evacuation, shelter • Alert mechanism: establish contact points and communication routes within the company and to the outside • Communication and control: co-ordination meetings are essential to implement and operate the BCP • Cordons and access: planning for operation within the cordon is a priority. Access to your building to assess the damages and losses, recover core data and information to recover normal activities, start to rebuild your property and your business activity • Transition: establishing a transition management team is an option considered by many companies • Parallel BCP and DRP: a series of immediate measures following a disaster • Recovery on access

Key points in BCP • Emergency services roles: liaison is critical to allow them to help you • BCP contracts: if you make prior arrangements with a specialist salvage firm to operate a BCP, will they be over extended? How do you get priority?

Creation of BCP – aims and criteria • Characteristics of a BCP are very specific to the organisation and business activity • The aims of the creation of a BCP following a disaster are • to recover the business • to reoccupy the premises within a given period of time • to ensure the continuity of the business activity throughout the recovery period • The BCP must • Be flexible • Be realistic • Be a process • Plan for recovery of the full activities of the business • Establish a path • Analyse the chain of consequences

Creation of BCP - creation • The BCP is a “live” document. The following are needed: • A budget • A BCP team with MD, FM, financial director, marketing, engineers/technicians and any other person representing and having knowledge of any part of the core business • Specialist knowledge and expertise • Strategy and a process • Risk analysis • Value assessment

Creation of BCP - creation • Think who, what, where, when, why, how? • And how much (rationalize your provision across the risks and knowing where the domain of FM finishes)? • Be careful to avoid over-providing for the controllable and ignoring the highly critical/unstable. Therefore focus on instability. • Plan your real time communication chains (with back-up) • Set your BCP targets – time recovery • Create a detailed (chronological) hypothetical scenario

Creation of BCP - operation • How and who decides and then activates the BCP (with back-up)? • How and to whom is this to be interpreted in an event? Do they know? • What can be left until after the event and planned live? Within the BCP reserve the resources and create the space to allow this to be done properly under stress. • Assess the likely consequences of an event: staff, work in progress, access to equipment, materials, records, documents, stok • What happens if communication links are lost? • Hot site/cold site not operational • Impact of the media

Testing and updating of the BCP • The BCP is a “live” document and as such it must be tested and updated regularly. • The needs and resources of any organization or business will change, be improved or maybe decrease • It is also an excellent way to assess the strengths and weakness of the plan, allow for a higher safety factor and test the company and resources

Facilities Management