What is BCM Body of Knowledge (BOK) ?

Body of Knowledge

The BCM Body of Knowledge or BoK is an all-inclusive term that describes the sum of the area of the body of knowledge within the profession of Business Continuity Management (BCM).

Since it is usually not possible to put the full body of knowledge of even a discipline, such as BCM audit (A), business continuity (BC), crisis communication (CC), crisis management (CM), disaster recovery (DR) or Operational Resilience (OR), into a single document, there is a need for a comprehensive guide to the BCM Body of Knowledge. 

The BCM BoK consists of BoK 1 to BoK 7.

	Body of Knowledge

This complete BoK guide deposited in BCMPedia seeks to identify and describe that subset of the body of knowledge that is generally accepted, even though the professionals must be knowledgeable not only in BCM Audit, BCM, CC, CM, DR or OR, but also, of course, in other related disciplines.

The BCM Body of Knowledge or BoK is categorised into BoK 1 to 7 areas, respectively.

Alignment to Planning Methodology

The BoK 1 to BoK 7 is aligned with the seven phases of the BCM planning methodology.

To understand more about each phase, read more about the details of the BCM Planning Methodology. 

It is often argued that some of the phases within the other four disciplines do not apply.  The BCM Institute intends to standardize the implementation across the five disciplines.

Taking the "Risk Analysis and Review" or RAR phase within the BCM Planning methodology as an example.  The context for each discipline is illustrated below.

• Business Continuity (BC): In BC Planning, it is the risk assessment that identifies the threats, analyses their likelihood and impact, and their treatments. 
• Crisis Management (CM): In the context of Crisis Management, the process of RAR continues to be used, except the threats are now renamed as "crisis scenario." 
• Crisis Communication (CC): When executed as part of CC, the RAR phase requires the participants to rely on the "crisis scenario" identified in the Crisis Management discipline. 
• IT Disaster Recovery (DR): The RAR phase in IT DR Planning emphasizes the threats that disrupt the IT processes and infrastructure. 
• BCM Audit (A): The RAR phase does not apply to the BCM Audit discipline. However, the participants are still required to learn and understand the RAR concepts.
• Operational resilience (OR): The RAR phase does apply to the OR discipline. However, the participants must still learn and understand the RAR concepts.
  

The key is to allow an organisation to integrate the findings from the five disciplines into one typical (BCM Planning) platform (if needed), and in reality, it forms a risk register.

Integration with Competency Level and Expertise Level

The diagram below provides an overview of how the BCM Body of Knowledge (BoK) is linked with the Competency Level (CL) and the Expertise Level (EL).

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