Consulting Firm Revises Business Continuity Plan after Disaster

A global consulting firm is revising its business continuity plans based on lessons it learned from using its original plan after a disaster.

In an article on the Computer Weekly website, Warwick Ashford says that while Watson Wyatt was able to maintain services last year in London, England, when a nearby building collapsed, company officials discovered some areas of its BC plan needed improvement.

The original plan, Ashford says, provided for some employees to move to a workplace recovery center and others to work remotely from home. The problem came, he said, when many employees found collaboration difficult.

“Before the incident we were pushing ahead to get as many people as possible working from a remote location, but after four days more people were asking for a seat at the recovery centre so they could work with their teams,” Vijay Bains, risk manager for Watson Wyatt in the UK, told Ashford. The company’s revised business continuity plan makes provision for more people to use its workplace recovery centres in future if necessary.

Bains also told Ashford that last year’s incident had shown that a more blended approach to business continuity was better than a single approach centered on remote working to allow greater flexibility. The revised plan also makes provision for alternative venues for events scheduled to take place at the company’s offices during any future disaster recovery period.

Ashford says Watson Wyatt plans to get certified on the new British standard BS 25999 for business continuity by the end of 2008.

To read the full article, click here: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/03/13/229837/consulting-firm-watson-wyatt-revises-business-continuity-plan-following-building.htm