The project was delivered in a combination of training seminars, facilitated workshops, information gathering via forms, tutorials and management initiatives including organizing events, making formal appointments and establishing a policy document to give credibility and form to the entire enterprise wide operational risk management solution.

The solution included an operational risk register, a process to formally surface risk from ground up and a work group to manage and sustain the focus on operational risk and to embed the process a routine procedure for organizational management.

This process has been sustained and is currently part of the client's normal operational process.

Case Study: Avian Flu Exercise

An internationally renown transport infrastructure operator needed to validate their avian flu response plan. However, as most of their operations were outsourced to essential firms, the client needed an independent and credible entity to carry out this validation exercise.

The initial brief appeared to be deceivingly simple; design avian flu injects and carry out an exercise based on the scenario. However, as there were more than 12 outsourced essential firms to be included in the exercise, it was crucial that their individual avian flu response plans were credible.

In addition, their plans needs to be coordinated and synchronized with the client's avian flu response plan.

A full review of the avian flu response plan was carried out for all essential firms taking part in the exercise. This included site visits to all critical sites, individually scheduled interviews and a review of 12 separate avian flu response plans.

This exercise revealed the extent of work that was needed even before we can craft an exercise scenario. An intense period of avian flu response plan upgrading was carried out for all 12 essential firms to meet the extremely aggressive timeline for the exercise by adding on more consultant resource.

The exercise was carried out as scheduled and met all the requirements presented by the client. This included active participation by all stakeholders, a good and comprehensive set of realistic injects, proper and detailed pre and post exercise debriefs and a final exercise report. That report was submitted to a government ministry as part of the client's operating obligation.

Case Study: Business Continuity Management Gap Analysis 

An established real estate organization had undertaken some business continuity management activities over the years and wanted to have an assessment of their current state. The client intended for this analysis to establish the start point for their business continuity management journey.

The client organization comprises the typical business units and support departments. While many have heard of business continuity, not many appreciated the fact that they needed to prepare in detail for what they perceive was something they were well qualified and able to do even in a crisis situation.

The documented part of their manuals were first reviewed and assessed using TR19:2005 issued by SPRING Singapore. The review was complemented by interviews we had with the individual business units and site visits.

The client engagement sessions were important as they allowed free discussion and clarification of key BC concepts. In particular, the business units and departments realized that 2 major activities were required during a large scale crisis; a set of crisis response activities (like emergency evacuations or temperature taking) and a set of business continuity response activities (like resuming the supply chain of their normal work).

In many cases, the client organization had detailed crisis response activities in place like emergency evacuation. However, in terms of business continuity, they had statements indicating what they would do but not how to do it. In some cases, they did not have the assets, people and infrastructure adequately worked.

Finally, they required a fresh and complete set of BC policies and they needed to carry out a range of exercises to validate their plans; both at the discrete and integrated level. This BC report was used to establish how they would move forward in business continuity management.

Case Study: Crisis Management Teams and Infrastructure

A large distributed organization has the procedures in place to carry out their crisis response. However, the teams that were required to support these response plans were assembled individually in each location. The client needed to have a consistent team and response infrastructure so that they can have clear roles for their crisis and disaster response personnel.

Being a large organization with international interface, the solution to the client was obvious. The final solution had to be easily recognized internationally and responsive to the needs of the local Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF). The Incident Command System (ICS) was utilized to establish crisis response roles at the command and response levels.

However, to implement the ICS, all the crisis and continuity response procedures had to be re-written in a form that is consistent with the new structures.

Each operating site also needs its own individual team structures and all team structures needs to be integrated at the organizational level to take into account requirements for both crisis management and business continuity management.

The final solution delivered to the client provided customized team structures with common roles across operations, planning, logistics and administration necessary to respond to a major crisis situation. It also included a revision of their existing crisis response plans to take into account the new streamlined team roles.