The Experience in London

By Lyndon Bird and Paul Moor

Continuity Planning Associates (CPA) does not have offices in Central London and therefore would have not normally have been directly affected by the events in London on the 7th July. However, by coincidence, both Lyndon Bird and Paul Moor were in the capital that morning, right at the heart of the financial district having meetings with the Business Continuity Group Survive.

The offices we were visiting were within 50 yards of the police cordon from one of the explosion sites and the thing that immediately became obvious was the lack of information available to us. Initially we heard that the tube system was stopped because of a power surge, then that an explosion had occurred, then that 7 bombs had gone off, then that 3 buses had been blown up, then that suicide bombers were responsible and so on. The reality that there were 3 simultaneous explosions in three tube trains and a bomb on a bus about 30 minutes later was not known until sometime later.

Survive were asked to provide a spokesman to comment for the BBC so Lyndon was asked to be interviewed at a studio in the London Stock Exchange. It was quite eerie walking the ½ mile or so to the Stock exchange through virtually deserted streets. By this time the police had asked people to return to their offices, and stay inside until further notice. Although most financial organisations had activated their Business Continuity Plan, mostly this was a precaution because of lack of access to the building. All of the main Disaster Recovery providers were inundated with invocations, although no one ultimately needed to utilise these services.

Although the events were a political earthquake to the G8 Summit underway elsewhere in the UK, enormously tragic to the people involved and very frightening to a wide range of people the affect on normal business operations was not very significant. The thing that most affected individuals was the loss of mobile (cell-phone) connectivity. When Lyndon was interviewed the main concern of the interviewer was why mobile phones were not working. In fact many sensational theories quickly got proposed such as the reason they had been switched off was to stop other bombs being detonated by a signal from a mobile phone.

Lyndon explained to the BBC that this was probably not the case, firstly it was standard operating procedure in a major incident to cut capacity back to allow the Emergency Services better access to all the communications they needed. Secondly, the sheer volume of people trying to use their phones to contact friends and family would clog the system capacity even without these restrictions. Business Continuity consultants have long warned their clients not to rely on mobiles as their primary source of contact post disaster for precisely these reasons. The general public clearly did not realise this would happen. The interviewer later explained he had a personal concern in that his elderly and disabled mother was travelling into London that day from Northern England and he was unable to make any contact with her. One of millions, of course, but typical of the minor personal dramas this type of event causes in addition to the big picture.

As an interesting sub-text and comment on current mentality, perhaps for the first time in history following a major disaster, thousands of people effectively became cameramen. With their mobiles unable to communicate people in the carriages and affected areas took photographs of the scene, sometime poignantly of themselves in case they did not survive. Consequently most of the first pictures of events came out as amateur, grainy, but frightening mobile phone images.

So, apart of the casualties, the overriding thought is about people’s ability to communicate and what happens if this is interrupted. Other than at the actual scenes, there was no panic but much confusion. For those who had been evacuated as a precaution, they had neither mobile or land lines and except for those with blackberry or similar devises no access to email or web information. Even when people returned to their buildings, access to many websites was difficult as capacity failed to meet demand. Fortunately CPA had available to it a system we call CommSuite which had been developed to help manage information gathering and dissemination during a Crisis.

With our two senior executives stranded in London, they were able to communicate with staff and some customers, monitor the situation as it unfolded and manage operations normally.

Although this is a product that we have developed with and for customers it was the first time we have used it ourselves in a real incident. Paul Moor is the driving force behind this concept and he explains how it works and why a tool of this nature is vital in managing crises.

Commsuite was originally developed in conjunction with one of the UK’s leading high street retail organisations. A clear need had been identified by the company for a system that would be available, even in the event of their own infrastructure being out of operation, that would allow a collaborative approach to crisis management. Research found that no products met their criteria. The company, being forward thinking within Business Continuity decided to develop their own.

In the past year, Commsuite has been demonstrated at two Business Continuity seminars as a case study on how the company approached Business Continuity. After each of the demonstrations the company had a number of direct contacts from members of the audience asking where they would be able to purchase it. CPA, as the companies’ Business Continuity consultancy of choice was aware of the product and very interested in making Commsuite a commercially available product.

Commsuite provides a robust and secure mechanism for decision making, supporting fast access to the flow of data you need to make important decisions in the critical fist hour of an emergency. As a web enabled, hosted application, team members can join in and assist with the incident regardless of their location.

Commsuite is built around a secure instant messaging system, allowing multiple teams and personnel access to reliable up to date information. All data is name, date and time stamped to assist with post incident auditing.

Built-in Incident Management checklists and Crisis Management notification ensures that all involved personnel have the same clear, concise understanding of the situation and that the right teams are notified at the right time based upon the details from those on the scene.

Commsuite unifies key personnel into a team focused on the task of bringing order to a chaotic situation, regardless of over how many locations your organisation is dispersed.

About the Authors:

Lyndon Bird FBCI and Paul Moor MBCI are Managing Director and General Manager of leading UK Business Continuity firm Continuity Planning Associates. Lyndon is also a Director of The Business Continuity Institute.

Paul Moor can be contacted at paul.moor@cpa-ltd.com More information is available at http://www.cpa-ltd.com