Making the Most of the BIA

The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is a very critical part of the development of a Business Continuity Program (BCP) for any size company, but many companies either do not conduct a BIA or conduct an incomplete analysis.

The complete BIA process is a long time consuming and potential expensive project. There are the wages and time of the experts within each department that have to answer the BIA questionnaire and/or attend the consultant’s BIA workshops, if a consultant is used. The consultant’s fees can become an obstacle for some companies as a BIA may take many months to complete. After the data has been collected, it must be analyzed and recommendations made that will guide the company forward in the development of the BCP.

Once the BCP initiated, what do you do in the following years with the data collected from the BIA?

This is valuable information to the company and the BIA should be updated on a regular basis. In a report “Making the Most of the BIA”, by James R. Mitchell form eBRP Solutions Inc. (located at http://www.continuitycentral.com/feature0528.htm ), he gives some ideas on how to continue and update the BIA to ensure that you are protecting the critical business functions within your company.

Personal Influenza Pandemic Planning

There have been numerous articles and checklists produced by various government agencies that warn everyone that a pandemic is overdue and everyone should prepare their homes and families to be able to survive for 72 hours.

While my main business focus is preparing small to medium enterprises to cope with an Influenza Pandemic or other disaster or emergency, I believe that people are being somewhat misled that they will be taken care of during a pandemic and it will be a minor inconvenience at most.

An Influenza Pandemic will last more than72 hours, so what will families do after their 72 hour supply of food, water, basic necessities and medicines run out? They may not be able to get to stores to replenish these items as the stores may be closed due to lack of goods; they may be in a quarantined area; they may still be too sick to venture outside and would they want to go to a place where large numbers of people are gathering for fear of getting infected again. Though once a person has passed through the infectious stage and recovery stage, they will have developed immunity, but the fear will still be there in their minds.

If the population believes that the various levels of government will protect them through the various levels of government’s own Influenza Pandemic plans, I think that these people will be very disappointed. Most plans that I have read from various levels of government are concerned with maintaining the Emergency systems; hospitals, fire and emergency services and police, their plans do not go down to the general population level except to say that hospitals and emergency services will be overwhelmed and it will not be business as usual.

So my advice to individuals, don’t rely on the government to provide the basic necessities that you would need during an Influenza Pandemic, they will be too busy looking after the critical infrastructure. Prepare yourself using the guides for what they are, guides, but remember that stores will close, shops that are open may not be able to be resupplied and the time to recover will be longer than 72 hours, so plan accordingly.