5.2 Business Continuity Planning for a Pandemic [Part 2]

8 Plan Development

Develop a template for the plan. A good plan should address the following six components:

• Reduce (or Reduction).
• Respond (or Response).
• Recover (or Recovery).
• Resume (or Resumption).
• Restore (or Restoration).
• Return (to Normal).

The content above is a simplified version of the plan development phase. Readers who are keen to learn more about the detailed steps for this particular BC phase can find further reading from the author’s BCM Book Series entitled “Implementing Your Business Continuity Plan.”

9 Testing and Exercising

Once the BC plan is developed, the procedures must be tested immediately. These tests are highly recommended:

• Telephone Notification (Call Tree) Test.
• Walk-through Test.
• Tabletop
• Incident Simulation.

10 Telephone Notification (Call Tree) Test

A Telephone Notification Call Tree (Call Tree) is simply a hierarchical telephone list. One key person can “contact” a significant number of individuals by systematically delegating and sharing the task of making the calls downstream.

The compilation of primary and emergency telephone numbers for the entire organisation should constitute a part of the BC plan.   This test will allow management to contact the entire organisation during and after office hour.

11 Walk-through Test

Another important test is the walk-through test. In this test, recovery team members meet to walk verbally through the steps of the components of the BC plan. The objective of a walk-through test is to confirm the effectiveness of the BC plan and to identify gaps, bottlenecks or other weaknesses.

It is critical that the business head of each department walk-through with the entire department based on the scenario of an immediate colleague announcing that he or she is running a fever exceeding 38 degree Celsius.

It must be stored in the mind, however, that the objective of the walk-through test is not to "ambush" the participants. However, to let them discover that when it comes to Infectious Disease BC plan tests, "failure is the success". You want them to discover their weaknesses now rather than during a real Infectious Disease incident.

12 Tabletop Exercise

The exercise emphasises the role preparedness of each within the BC organisation. This exercise usually takes between one and four hours. It involves some or all key members of the BC team. The tabletop exercise is meant to gauge responses to a major outbreak of Infectious Disease.

In such exercises, participants are presented with a scenario, identified options and asked whether each of the members has the plan to fill the identified gaps.

13 Scenarios

It is important to review the key operations and determine what needs to be tested. An example of a specific scenario for a university:

• Stranded international student and faculty.
• Continuity of laboratory research
• Isolation and quarantine.
• Tracking of faculty, student, staff travel and health status.

14 Incident Simulation

The Incident Simulation Exercise focuses on recovery and resumption issues that include the execution of the subsequent part of the plan. Questions addressed were in greater depth as compared to the preparedness exercise.

Participants are expected to manage the surge in capacity. This surge will result in heavy skewing toward reduction and response activities. Some of the unaddressed issues in this exercise include surveillance, vaccination, and antiviral medications.

The key emphasis is to ensure that the participants carry out actions within reason, and it should not be too philosophical.

The content above is a simplified version of the testing and exercising phase. Readers who are keen to learn more about the detailed steps for this particular BC phase can find further reading from the author’s book entitled “Testing & Exercising Your Business Continuity Plan” in the BCM Series.

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