After every natural disaster, people are deprived of basic amenities like water, food and power. On the other side of the coin, the utility industry is always at the receiving end to succumb to any type of disaster, be it man-made or natural. In this scenario, this sector needs a comprehensive business continuity management strategy to serve the people even during a crisis.
The services delivered by these utility companies are critical to the economic and social well-being of a society. Thus, continuity of utility sectors like Power Distribution is a critical issue to be considered by senior management and concerned authorities.
Business Continuity Management strategy helps you prepare for the worst. However, that worst may not happen many times. Then why do we need a separate policy and committed resources for a prophecy?
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Organisations cannot ignore the possible external effect on the operations. Sometimes, the internal risks may surprise and effect both at the organisation and operational
This worst case scenario is a contingency plan that hopefully will never be implemented, but one that occasionally is warranted. Once prepared, the management staff has a clear understanding of their respective mission, assignments and necessary actions, should this contingency plan require exercising. The plan is formulated by first getting consensus from the firm’s strategic planners as to how really bad the business can really get. If the bottom falls out of the economy as predicted, to what level will our gross sales fall?
The whole discussion about disaster recovery boils down to the business level and IT technology understanding of the products helping the organization during a disaster. Below are the advantages of choosing products from Continuity
(1999), system approaches can also be used for emergency management. It entails using rigorous techniques to help determine preferred designs, plans, and operational strategies for challenging and complex disaster management systems. As a result, this jurisdiction has an emergency messaging system. Its emergency management department has partnered with its community to prepare for, respond to, mitigate the impact of, and recover from disasters. It has an Alert Center that allows people to view all emergencies and alerts in their areas.
When a disaster occurs the federal, state, and local governments contact the military for help and support due to the their advantages attached to military operations and response which could benefit in them in manpower with specific qualifications, skills and expertise, strategic and rapid mobilization, updated technology and a variety of equipment (helicopters, aircraft, earth-moving machinery, respirators, medical supplies, power and lighting equipment, under-water capability, etc.) that most emergency organizations are unable to acquire on a moment notice (Kapucu, 2011). Besides, the military’s bureaucratic structure with hierarchical rules in place are effective in command, coordination, and control of manpower, authority, and regulations, is beneficial in providing effective response actions during the time of emergency (Anderson 1970; Schrader 1993; Sylves 2008; US House of Representatives 2006) (Kapucu, 2011). This advantage cut time in half because the structure is already set up without questioning who is doing what or who is in charge. Additionally, the military supports in sheltering the homeless, the construction of temporary housing and restoration of minimal critical infrastructure (water, electric, sanitation, communication infrastructure, etc.), (Miskel 2006; Schrader 1993), (Kapucu, 2011).
Although storms like Hurricane Katrina occur once in every one hundred years, being prepared and storing water, food, medicines, and other supplies keep families ready for any disaster. Natural disasters can leave communities without power for days and even for weeks. Being prepared in the event of severe weather and disasters like Hurricane Katrina, can reduce fear and anxiety that accompanies disasters. A crucial element of self-sufficient living is survival. Our government does not have all the resources to be totally prepared to take care of the vast numbers of people in a disaster.
However, for the county’s economy it is more efficient to put the emphasis on the worst case scenario to prevent any possible economic problem such as crash of a stock market or financial
Emergency management describes the process of preparing for disasters, responding to their occurrence and putting in place both structural and nonstructural measures to mitigate against them. Emergency management has come a long way in terms of evolution in the United States of America. In terms of evolution, there have been a number of changes with evidence in shift from state to federal and local involvement in disaster management. This paper will thus discuss the evolution of emergency management as well as the lessons that have come as a result of this evolution. The evolution can be traced back to the biblical times, Moses himself tried to manage floods by splitting the Red Sea (George et al, p. 1).
This strategy will entail a variety of strategies, including the following: APS should find possibilities to minimize its operating expenditures by enhancing its operational efficiency and simplifying its business procedures. This would get the company closer to its goal of lowering operating costs. For instance, the corporation might establish more effective maintenance procedures to lessen its power plants' offline time and increase their
After reading the case study of the PCNet Project, we will examine how critical success factors apply to the case study. The first area is setting clear objectives for risk management. With this factor we set strategic, financial, operational, and other objectives during the strategic and annual planning processes and throughout the year for a company. With these objectives we need to ensure that there is the process of identifying risks to our objectives, evaluating the impact of those risks and choosing a response. Some of the actions the company needs to be ready to respond to are avoidance, mitigation, or acceptance.
At times the concepts have been used interchangeably without trying to understand the underlying factors. They have also been associated with a single cause that is to understand a physical phenomenon which was inevitable, as well as uncontrollable at the same time. Much clarity has now been arrived at understanding these two concepts. Vulnerability can be defined as the internal risk factor that a subject or system is exposed to while dealing with an external factor like hazard or other life changing situations. These internal risk factors or intrinsic factors can be defined as defencelessness or ability to cope.
99% of businesses have four key business functions, these include; operations, marketing, finance and human resource management. Each of these specific areas has their own attributions towards their businesses success and failure and often has dedicated departments and staff for these four business functions. Despite this the functions are interdependent meaning they rely upon one another to achieve and exceed their goals and expectations set by themselves and management. The function of finance affects and is affected by the other key business functions.
Based on this event the social structures had not been addressed such as limited access to communication, various fragile physical environments, and no risk planning for disaster events. Several combining factors will change wage earnings and business operations within the community effecting the social vulnerability levels. In addition, the idea behind the
This paper will explore safety culture as management human error(internal) and legislation (external) that influence organisations or businesses way of doing things. It will explain the positive and negative effect of safety culture. In addition to a generally view on how safety culture can also play a role or influences regarding safety
Strategy also defines what kind of resources we need to achieve the goals set by the