disaster planning

Crisis & Emergency Planning

Companies and organisations should be able to contain crises as they occur, as well as effectively and efficiently manage their commercial and reputation advantages under threat by the situation.

Crisis management consists of:

" Methods used to respond to both the reality and perception of crises.

" Establishing metrics to define what scenarios constitute a crisis and should consequently trigger the necessary response mechanisms.

" Communication that occurs within the response phase of emergency management scenarios.

You need to recognise that proper and timely planning is a necessity if you want to transform from crisis situation competently and in a time frame to ensure damage is minimised - be that people, commercial, assets, brand, image. Organisations should be confident in their ability to return to normality through focussed and effective Business Continuity or Emergency Plans.

The threats can come from;

1. Natural disasters

2. Technological crises

3. Confrontation from discontented individuals and/or groups

4. Malevolence - product tampering, kidnapping, malicious rumours, terrorism, and espionage

5. Crisis of deception

6. Crisis of management misconduct

Surety focuses on establishing

1. methodologies to allow people to detect when or if a crisis threatens, through indicators and warning triggers (red flags),

2. preparation and prevention of major impact through prior planning and training,

3. Containment of situations and damage control - active management policies as well as media handling

4. Business recovery techniques

5. Training

We do this through identifying the stages of a crisis

" Identifying and understanding issues management,

" planning-prevention - contingency planning

" managing the crisis - business continuity planning

" post-crisis actions