Establish and Manage the Command Centre

Establish and Manage Command Centre

This blog focuses on how an organisation should determine its locations, resources, and procedures for physical and virtual Command Centres.

Determine a point person for Command Centre sites that are to be activated; and
Establish one or more centres appropriate to your environment: primary, secondary, on-site, off-site or virtual.

Identify and acquire emergency supplies, food, and resources (hardware and software) for Command Centre. This includes every day and disaster-specific based upon the risk identified by the threat assessment.

Obtain supplies;
Review inventory periodically and replace expired items; and
Store at Command Centre inaccessible secured location.

Partner with supply chain (internal and external)

The Mission of the Command Centre

The mission of the Command Centre is mainly centred on three critical tasks:

Communicate and Gather Information;
Maintain Command and Control; and
Coordinate and Document.

1. Communicate and Gather Information

The Command Centre must be able to:

Communicate and receive information effectively;
Inform all interested parties about an event;
Gather information to manage an incident; and
Notify CM Team, CCO Team, employees, governments, and the public.

2. Maintain Command and Control

The Command Centre must be able to:

Maintain command and control functions;
Put multiple incident management plans into action;
Trigger and activate the CM plan as needed;
Provide structure required for allocating resources and personnel; and
Ensure effective direction of the response operations.

3. Coordinate and Document

The Command Centre must be able to:

Create a mechanism to coordinate all of the steps taken to respond to an event;
Create a record of those actions to protect employees, infrastructure and shareholder value; and
Document all information received and the steps taken based on good practices.

Exiting COVID-19 Outbreak and Entering the New Normal

Given the COVID-19 outbreak, there is a risk that the CM team may be infected if they gather for CM team meetings, so the deployment of virtual crisis management becomes the standard operating operand.

As most organisations are entering the "New Normal", it is still recommended that this virtual CM management approach is still acceptable and should be maintained as a protocol.

Hence, there is a need to focus on the virtual setup and its new communication protocols.

Goh, M. H. (2016). A Manager’s Guide to Implement Your Crisis Management Plan. Business Continuity Management Specialist Series (1st ed., p. 192). Singapore: GMH Pte Ltd.

Extracted from Chapter 15: Manage Command Centre