Business continuity week: Loss of premises

This week (16^th-20^th May) is Business Continuity Awareness week. Organised by the Business Continuity Institute, the week aims to raise awareness of the importance of business continuity and resilience in organisations such as ours.

The theme for the week is return on investment and, in addition to the obvious benefits business continuity has in the event of a disruption, it will look at the other advantages it may have.

Loss of premises

What can go wrong?

Suppliers and/or staff cannot reach you
Damage to equipment and stock
Damage to data and records
Health and safety and risk issues
Specialist equipment lost.

What can you do?

Prioritise activities that you think would need to be reinstated at an alternative site
Pre-determine an alternative site that staff can access and make sure all colleagues know about it
Consider home working.

Note: Some ‘time critical’ activities like receiving 999 calls will need what we call ‘hot’ fall-back arrangements to make sure they can carry on uninterrupted, even if a site is lost. Some routine and non-urgent activities will obviously need to be suspended or reduced to free up resources to concentrate on those important priorities.

Final thoughts:

At EEAST we invest our time every day in helping to give our patients the best available care. We owe it to ourselves and our patients to have plans to deal with foreseeable issues such as those mentioned this week. Every day, somewhere in the trust a business interruptions occur, most are dealt with locally and nobody notices, this is how it should be. Which is good. However, some of these issues might be preventable elsewhere. So if a business interruption occurs, even if fixed, report it, describe it and just as importantly how you fixed it. You can do this by an email or phone call to Ian, vis the details below, or via Datix.

If you would like any further information on business continuity, please contact our Business Continuity Lead, Ian Crowson, by emailing ian.crowson@eastamb.nhs.uk.

Published 20th May, 2016

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