Service: Business Continuity - Plan

Client:

Medium sized food producer

Objectives/background:

Our client, a manufacturer of ready meals, needed assistance in developing business continuity plans.  The driver for this was the need to satisfy the board of directors that the business had plans to manage and recover from a range of crisis incidents.  There was also pressure from retail customers and insurers for the company to implement effective business continuity planning. 

Methodology:

A programme was developed that outlined several steps to developing the business continuity plan.  The steps were as follows:

  • 1. Risk profiling
  • 2. Business impact analysis
  • 3. Business continuity plan development

The programme started with an initial kick off meeting where the risk profiling exercise identified the types of crisis that could impact the business (e.g. fire, flood, loss of personnel, IT failure, product contamination, etc.).  This was followed by a second meeting to carry out the business impact analysis which identified key processes, equipment and personnel that would have a significant negative impact on business if they were not available.  Follow up work related to seeking alternatives and identifying costs and lead times for replacement. 

After these initial meetings, the RQA consultant worked remotely to collate all the information into a draft / first pass business continuity plan.  In some cases, there will be additional site visits to discuss specifics with other site personnel and to source further details.  There was regular contact throughout between the RQA consultant and the identified contact at the client site.  After further feedback from the site, a final draft was produced which was issued to the relevant people within the business.

Outcome:

Our client now had an effective business continuity plan.  the next step was to ensure that the plan was trained out to the senior team and others involved in business continuity.