The BT/TMA Business Continuity Challenge 2000

How would you react if a Boeing 747 crashed on your building or what would you do if your chief executive was shot?

Hardly the questions you expect in a business environment but these two particular problems have recently exercised the minds of TMA and BT customers.

It’s not that they have thought Sir Peter was the likely victim of an assassin or that air safety figures large in their outlook. They have simply been taking part in the BT/TMA Business Continuity Challenge 2000.

The motive behind the ideas is, in effect, a disaster exercise. It prepares people - in these cases Communications and IT managers - to face and manage any catastrophe, natural or man made in their business.

In much the same way that square bashing or drill gets troops acting immediately on orders without question, so the practice behind this exercise is to prepare staff within organisations to deal with an unexpected chain of events that may occur after a disaster.

The action for this year's challenge took place at the Fire Service College in Gloucestershire, where, officers from many fire services around the world use these training facilities. Using such a venue means that the disaster doesn't have to be imagined: realistic effects can be created and staged.

Teams were created from the 35 attendees and instructed by the chief executive to develop a corporate business continuity programme (BCP), working to defined budgets using tools and techniques presented to them throughout the two days.

They had the opportunity to purchase products from the BT CommSure portfolio, to ensure the survival of the business in the event of a major incident.

The key speaker for the event was David Bawtree who has experience of providing direction and support to the Home Secretary on major incident management for UK plc.

The teams were woken at 6.15 am on the second day and informed that there had been 'a major incident at their corporate headquarters.'

They were taken to view the incident. The scene being a plane that had crashed on the building, bursting into flames on impact.

A briefing by the fire brigade followed and the teams then invoked their Corporate Business Continuity Plans.

During the day, TV conferences were held with the teams facing media and shareholders.

As the result of the incident, the chief executive resigned and the team's plans were further tested to determine how they had taken account of this action and the resulting impact on the corporate brand and market share.

BT sponsors the challenge under the direction of Yvonne Simpkins of relationship management, who manages the TMA relationship for BT.

Mike Mikkelsen, Chairman of the TMA Business Continuity Special Interest Group who managed the event, said:

"Companies are getting better and smarter at creating a strategy to minimise the impact of a disaster on their organisation. Often this is limited to ensuring that the most important networks and systems are in place. The human element is completely overlooked - yet people can be even more unpredictable than technology!

With the BT/TMA business continuity challenge, we aim to equip key personnel in an organisation with the skills to manage a crisis. We refer to the event as a challenge because the participants are put through two days of mental and physically demanding exercises.”

Much of the value of the challenge is that it is not classroom based but, those taking part are faced with a ‘realistic disaster’ and are required to deal with it as a team.”

Team advisers were on handto assess the teams reactions, the exercise being an examination of management initiative, organisation and prioritisation and the winning team was presented with the BTTMA Business Continuity Challenge award by Frank Mills, BT Regional Director West Midlands

For more information about the TMA, please contact Sylvia Griffiths on 01372 220551, email sgriffiths@tma.org.uk, or visit www.tma.org.uk