Traditional Versus Non-conventional BC Planning

Infectious Disease BC planning differs from traditional BC planning because organisations:

Cannot afford to wait the next few months as the spread of the threat and its impact are rapid.
Cannot expect a normal BC event timeline.
Need to react as quickly as possible.
Need to execute BC plans immediately.
Must expect fatality and absenteeism from the workforce.
Need to consider the location of the employees.
Must expect the closure of borders by the government and this will have an impact on the relocation of workers.
Must understand that the degree of the damage cannot be clearly defined as it extends beyond the organisations and country’s boundaries.
Should consider legal issues and risks as this is a predicted event.
Expect outage and/or absenteeism for a protracted period.
Should consider non-compliance of outsourcing agreements.

Key Planning Scenario

One of the business continuity (BC) best practices is to define the key planning scenario. This scenario provides a perspective on the executive management, BC project manager, BC team, IT Disaster Recovery Planning team and even the Crisis Management team.

The key disaster scenario should be based on the possible worst-case time, most severe magnitude, total loss of information and equipment.

The traditional BC plan focuses on the denial of access to facilities, but Infectious Disease focuses on the denial of access to both PEOPLE and FACILITIES. Hence, the assumptions to cope with an Infectious Disease BC planning are very different. Also to this fundamental difference, there are many other assumptions that a BC planner must quickly look into concerning Infectious Disease BC planning.