On 6/19/07, Steve Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I think that a heck of a lot of companies, if not most, don't have a
> good disaster plan and/or practice the plan under different scenarios.
> They're either out of date or they just read it once and don't really
> worry so they're not familiar with it.

Steve has hit upon one of the key critical aspects of any plan that
you design, develop and implement. You must continually exercise the
plan so that you can identify gaps, update it and prepare the
personnel.

A former employer of mine was responsible for oil spill response in
the Gulf of Mexico. The OSR plan was tested on a regular basis, it
could have been a simple desk top exercise, or it could be a
full-blown out in the field exercise. In any case these tests involved
all concerned the company, first responders, the press, and vendors.

One time there was a pipeline break east of Houston as a result of a
flood. the company was able to use that incident to test certain
features of their OSR plan.

At a different company I had the following experience. We had
implemented a disaster recovery plan. One morning at about 4 am I
received a call from my manager that i needed to get the offices
because the chill water pipes for the telecomm closet had broken and
water was flooding down on the floor below. I was at the office in
under 30 minutes. Only problem was the incident had been reported at 2
a.m. My boss' boss was the person notified, but she lived 25 miles
away, she bumped the call to my boss who was a single parent with a 6
year old child which meant it got bumped to me. By the time I got to
offices the facility group had stopped the water flow and begun
recovery ops. I did an assessment and reported my findings to the
folks higher. The key to thing was lessons learned. The notification
tree had been set up based upon someone's role within the company
(egos) and not who was most likely to be able to respond.

so if you have a disaster (even a small one) be sure to do  an
after-action assessment of what worked and what didn't worked.



-- 
Peter Kurilecz CRM CA
Richmond, Va

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