Information on disaster preparedness and hurricane information
Business continuity management (BCM) is a process
that helps manage risks to the smooth running of an
organisation or delivery of a service, ensuring
continuity of critical functions in the event of a
disruption, and effective recovery afterwards. Good
BCM requires both incident management plans and
business continuity plans. Incident management plans
allow the organisation to manage the initial impact
of an event, for example staff evacuation or media
response. The business continuity plan allows the
organisation to maintain or recover the delivery of
the key products and services that the business
impact assessment (BIA) identified.
Planning and exercising these plans minimise the
impact of potential disruption. It also aids in the
prompt resumption of service helping to protect
market share, reputation and brand. Here at GHL,
business continuity is regarded as an integral part
of our normal ongoing management processes.
GHL has also become a trendsetter in the Caribbean
by incorporating both business continuity and health
& safety into one departmental entity. Business
Continuity is, of course, much more than Health and
Safety. It is the procedures, practices and
protocols an organization puts into place so that it
can recover and return to normal operations with the
least downtime in the advent of a disaster or an
extended business interruption.
Plans cannot be considered reliable until they are
exercised and have proved to be workable. Exercising
should involve: validating plans; rehearsing key
staff; and testing systems which are relied upon to
deliver resilience (e.g. uninterrupted power
supply). The frequency of exercises will depend on
the organisation, but should take into account the
rate of change (to the organisation or risk
profile), and outcomes of previous exercises (if
particular weaknesses have been identified and
changes made).
Each territory is expected to develop a Business
Continuity Plan and review them regularly to keep
them up to date. Particular attention is paid to
staff changes; changes in the organisation's
functions or services; changes to the organisational
structure; details of suppliers or contractors; and
changes in the organisation’s strategic objectives.
At GHL, we focus on three main ingredients: The
Business Operations, Our Human Resources and the I.T.
Operations.
The Business Operations:
What do we do in the event of a national disaster
which resulted in major structural damage to our
primary site? The Caribbean is vulnerable to
hurricanes and there are islands that are on the
earthquake belt or in proximity to volcanoes.
Where and how would we begin to restore all our
operations? Which department and which functions
should we recover first? To determine this, we
conducted a BIA for each department of every
company. This indicates the critical business
functions of that unit and its level of priority.
Who determines the critical functions of a
department? The manager and his/her team members are
the ones familiar with the daily operations and the
experts in which processes are the most important
and which could be deferred. It takes many years to
develop and build a reputable company. In the advent
of a disaster, armed with a sound business
continuity plan, it would take only several days to
rebuild. Each department provides its own unique
value to the group; it is important to the technical
recovery process that each is restored in
coordination with the core operational needs.
Human Resources:
Our human resources are our greatest asset. Unsafe
practices and hazardous working conditions affecting
employees result in loss of productivity. GHL has
already embarked on a Health and Safety programme
driven by the group’s Health and Safety policy.
Those employees responsible for implementing BCM,
those responsible for acting in the event of
disruption, receive extensive training. Awareness
programmes are provided to those employees who have
no direct responsibility but who will be impacted by
the plans.
I.T. Operations:
Can any business in the Financial Services sector
afford any disruption of IT services? I.T. is
undeniably critical to our success, growth,
competitiveness and existence. While disasters and
unplanned downtime get the big headlines, planned
downtime for hardware maintenance and backups is the
cause of the majority of service downtime. Even
slight disruptions in I.T. services can have
tremendous rippling effects and result in unwanted
downtime of business operations.
Business continuity has become a vital ingredient of
IT strategies in a world where businesses need to
operate 24 hours a day. The disruption of IT
services can be fatal to a business.
At GHL the I.T. department is regularly commissioned
by the BCP Department to test the recoverability and
re-installation of major business applications and
network services that are critical to the business
operations of all the sub holdings under the GHL
group.
GHL currently has its ‘hot site’ located at its
Chaguanas Regional Service Centre. At this location
the backup servers for all the major applications
and network services are housed, data is kept
updated to mirror their production counterparts at
Head Office. Should a production server fail or
require some maintenance, requests can be rerouted
to its respective backup server at the hot site.
Companies with no business continuity planning
initiatives often times fold in the aftermath of a
disaster. Stakeholders and clients can be assured
that GHL has positioned itself so that its brand
name will continue after a crisis.
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The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
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Trinidad and Tobago Shelters List
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Disaster Supplies Kit
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HSSE Awareness Presentation.ppsx
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Before Storm
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During Storm
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After Storm
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Hurricane Tracking
Map |
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Property Damage
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