CPM

How to Restore Critical Operations in an Instant

• By Jeff Weinberger
• Dec 02, 2009

They are the things most people hope will never happen: earthquakes, fires, floods, snowstorms, pandemics, human errors and even acts of violence. But they are the things that keep continuity of operations professionals (COOP) up at night – and working hard every day – answering the hard questions about how to keep your business running when something does happen.

Having good technology and plans in place are really only the beginning for the diligent COOP professional. Testing, planning and running drills are critical to making the plans work when that moment of crisis hits, and ensuring that communications channels are known, practiced and working make it possible to handle the inevitable unexpected developments.

Challenging your assumptions

Plans, technologies and practice can give you a very effective COOP plan. But I want to challenge your thinking about this.

What if the appropriate response to a crisis is not to respond at all?

It may not be possible for every scenario, but I propose re-thinking the all-important time element in responding to a crisis can result in COOP plans and strategies that are easier, less expensive and smoother to implement.

Every crisis and every disruption has its own unique events, properties and complications, but there are some things they all have in common. For example, in nearly all of the possible disruptions listed above, it is either impossible or ill-advised for even the most critical employees to come to the office to continue working and making sure that your business is still running. Earthquakes can damage roads and other infrastructure; floods can block travel; pandemics require social distancing and a winter snowstorm can cause the road to be treacherous, putting your employees in harm’s way.

Another common attribute of most crisis situations is that it’s not just the crisis response team that needs to find a way to communicate and work together. Critical operational employees who keep the required aspects of business going also need to stay in touch to remain up to date on information.

How long does it take to get there?

The answer to these questions are some of the most critical elements of the COOP plan.

How long will it take for you to gather the crisis response team?

How long will it take to communicate with critical employees that there is a disruption?

How long will it take to remind everyone of what they need to do for the disruption? 

How long will it take to get the crisis response team operational?

How long will it take to get critical employees back to work?

How long will it take to get the most critical work re-started?

In an instant

Most organizations today have a telecommute or COOP program in place.

My company supports telecommuting and I mostly work remotely. If a crisis struck my office, I can simply work from home. Therefore, the time it takes for me and my colleagues to restore productivity in the event of a crisis is zero minutes -- no plan was required, no rehearsals, no drills. Everyone can keep working as though nothing has happened.

H1N1 is the new SARS

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), a leading architectural firm based in the U.S., was working on several large engineering and construction projects outside the U.S. in the fall of 2002, when SARS became a problem.

KPF had to suspend all travel to Asia due to the SARS epidemic. “Our work couldn’t stop, so we used WebEx to keep our projects on schedule,” said James Brogan, AIA, senior associate principal and director, firmwide technology at KPF. “Without WebEx, we wouldn’t have been able to continue working with colleagues and clients in Asia, and a large number of our multinational projects would have come to a complete standstill.” The SARS epidemic created a turning point for KPF.¹

KPF implemented Cisco WebEx Web conferencing services to help workers across the globe involved in the project work together without having to be in the same room. They were able to share (and mark-up) construction drawings and architectural diagrams, and negotiate building details, contracts, protocols and the finer points of international business dealings -- all without interruption, without damaging client and partner relationships and without delaying projects.

“Since the execution of every project suddenly required WebEx, it became an even greater asset to our organization during that time,” Brogan said. “WebEx has since become a standard firmwide application for KPF.”¹

Today, if KPF’s project teams had to maintain social distance due to an H1N1 outbreak, or something kept them from getting to their (and their clients’) offices, they can continue to work, almost as if nothing happened.

Making it work by making it a part of your work

Not every crisis and not all work can be handled using virtual technology like Cisco's WebEx online meetings. Delivery of physical materials, like relief supplies, must be physically transport. But for the majority of workers, their work can be effectively performed in a virtual setting, and their work can continue in that same virtual setting during a crisis.

The key to making virtual technology an effective part of your COOP plans is to make it a part of your daily operations and the daily habits of your employees.

If your employees are using virtual technologies every day in the course of their work, when the crisis strikes, there will be nothing new to learn or remember.

Here are a few examples of work that can continue without interruption using Web conferencing technologies:

Critical Meetings:

Do your employees drive to multiple locations to meet with colleagues? At Cisco, we’ve found that people will gladly move as many as 20 to 30 percent of their meetings online to save both time and travel (and a few pounds of greenhouse gas emissions saved as a bonus).

Once they become familiar with holding meetings online, during a crisis, critical operational meetings can be held online without any confusion, interruption or learning of new technologies and new ways of interacting with others.

Negotiating, publishing and communicating

Do your employees work on important documents together? Is it important for teams to collaborate and agree on the finer points of key negotiations? Critical communications? And get the right document published?

With Cisco WebEx Web conferencing technology, entire teams can cooperatively edit a single document. Ask your operational teams to do this with 20 percent of their cooperative editing, instead of passing it around by e-mail and trying to keep all the comments and edits straight.

Once your people are used to doing this, making sure that key negotiations and critical communications can continue to be completed during a crisis just as they were before the crisis hit.

Take the Challenge

Are you now convinced that your COOP recovery time can be zero minutes in many cases?

Are some of these examples and suggestions in your agency’s COOP plan?

Or maybe you are a bit skeptical about how effective you can make your COOP plan by re-thinking the time element.

Look at your COOP plan. Find one or two critical operational/people processes that need to be up and running immediately after a crisis hits. Try making Web conferencing or other virtual technologies part of the way that process runs every day.

Then run a crisis response drill and see what happens to that process.

If it’s not up and running nearly immediately, I’d like speak to you to figure out why.

And if it is, I’d like to hear about that, too.

¹ Cisco WebEx Case Study on Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates: http://static.webex.com/fileadmin/webex09/files_en_us/pdf/casestudies/KPF_CS_2009.pdf