What are the best ways to document and maintain an emergency management contingency plan?
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An emergency management contingency plan is a document that outlines the roles, responsibilities, procedures, and resources for responding to a potential crisis or disaster. It is essential for any organization or community that faces risks from natural, technological, or human-induced hazards. However, creating and maintaining a contingency plan is not a one-time task. It requires regular review, update, and testing to ensure its effectiveness and relevance. In this article, you will learn some of the best ways to document and maintain an emergency management contingency plan.
The first step to document your contingency plan is to choose a format that suits your needs and preferences. You can use a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation software, or a specialized tool for emergency planning. The format should be clear, concise, and consistent, and follow the standards and guidelines of your industry or sector. You should also consider the accessibility, security, and backup of your document, and how you will share it with your stakeholders.
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James Podlucky, CEM®, MEP
Empowering Emergency Management Professionals with Innovative Technology | Girl Dad x2 | Certified Emergency Manager
Digitized plans are easily accessible from anywhere. There are more mobile phones than people in the world. Add computers, tablets, etc. on top of that and paper is a thing of the past. I'm not saying that plans should be electronic only but it's likely that if a plan is easily accessible in the palm of a hand it will more likely be looked at compared to plans collecting dust on a shelf. With various solutions, contingency plans that are digitized will provide more room for collaboration and revisions from lessons learned. But always have a paper copy nearby when the lights go out and maybe a contingency plan for when they do go out.
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Henry Comas, CEM, MEP, MCP
Emergency Management / Government and Business Continuity / Exercise Design
Contingency plans should be living documents that are regularly reviewed, updated, and tested to ensure their effectiveness in mitigating and responding to emergencies. Documenting and maintaining an emergency management contingency plan is crucial for effective preparedness and response.
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The next step is to identify the scope and objectives of your contingency plan. The scope defines the boundaries and limitations of your plan, such as the types of hazards, the geographic area, the time frame, and the level of detail. The objectives state the desired outcomes and goals of your plan, such as the protection of life, property, and environment, the continuity of operations, and the recovery of functions. You should also establish the assumptions, constraints, and risks that affect your plan.
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James Podlucky, CEM®, MEP
Empowering Emergency Management Professionals with Innovative Technology | Girl Dad x2 | Certified Emergency Manager
When identifying the scope and objectives of your contingency plan consider what is needed in order to provide for the continuation of critical missions and business functions in the event of an incident. You may have high level objectives for a contingency plan but ensure that they can be flexible enough based on the hazard at play.
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Alvar Orellana McBride, CPP
Global Security Leader | Senior Security Consultant | Speaker | ASIS International RVP Region 8C | Director Hub Lideres de Seguridad Empresarial
BCP must be aligned with the company strategy; that said, the program must cover the critical process that impacts the business continuity, that's where the profit is. Focus on what is really important and write it down. Is it different from the company strategy? It could be important but not critical to work with.
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The third step is to define the roles and responsibilities of the people and organizations involved in your contingency plan. You should assign a leader or a coordinator who will oversee the plan development, implementation, and maintenance. You should also identify the key stakeholders, such as employees, customers, suppliers, partners, authorities, and media, and their roles and responsibilities in different phases of the emergency response. You should also specify the communication channels, protocols, and tools that you will use to coordinate and inform your stakeholders.
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James Podlucky, CEM®, MEP
Empowering Emergency Management Professionals with Innovative Technology | Girl Dad x2 | Certified Emergency Manager
Detail the roles and responsibilities of key personnel (crisis management team, first responders, emergency management, etc.). Include who is responsible, accountable, or informed about specific actions. Are those individuals responsible for obtaining information? How is that shared with others? While there are specific actions and responsibilities that pertain to a role it's important that there's a status or update tied to that role with it being communicated back in an operation center. Situational awareness is key and with no process attached it will either be disorganized information or no information at all.
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Yvan Castro Aguilar
Humanitarian and International Development Leader | Strategic Planning and BPM Consultant | Portfolio Manager | Sustainability Expert | Fundraising and Sponsorship Expert
I recommend to have the Business Process Management approach, with the following key documents: 1. Clear organizational structure for the contingency. 2. Map a clear and specific process for the contingency. 3. Identify the roles and responsibilities: Develop a Crossed RACI Matrix identifying responsabilities for every positions for every main activities in the contingency process. 4. An additional communication plan will be relevant with a tree of communications, key channels, and key information of every staff in the response.
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The fourth step is to develop the procedures and resources that you will use to execute your contingency plan. The procedures are the step-by-step instructions that guide your actions before, during, and after an emergency. They should cover the prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery phases, and address the specific scenarios and tasks that you may encounter. The resources are the assets and capabilities that you will need to support your procedures, such as equipment, supplies, personnel, facilities, and finances. You should also identify the sources, availability, and allocation of your resources.
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Pete Miller
Special Programs and Industrial Security Subject Matter Expert
Always remember the leadership will look at the bottom line costs and the return on investment. So try and outline the costs when writing up mitigation strategies
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James Podlucky, CEM®, MEP
Empowering Emergency Management Professionals with Innovative Technology | Girl Dad x2 | Certified Emergency Manager
Included in the procedures, I suggest adding the events that will trigger the contingency plan to include any mitigation strategies. You may have playbooks that can be digitized for various positions which will allow those individuals to easily see and access the step-by-step actions to be taken in order to successfully respond. Burying the process in a wordy document will lengthen the amount of time to respond. Consider the procedures and resources needed are well outlined and noticeable.
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The fifth step is to test and evaluate your plan to verify its feasibility, effectiveness, and efficiency. You can use different methods to test your plan, such as tabletop exercises, drills, simulations, or full-scale exercises. You should involve your stakeholders in the testing process, and collect feedback and data from them. You should also use performance indicators and criteria to measure and analyze the results of your testing. You should document the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges of your plan, and identify the areas for improvement.
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Eric Kant ∴
Award Winning Innovator & Founder @ Kant Consulting Group
In a Decision Intelligence (DI) framework, testing and evaluating your plan transcends into a rigorous data analytics exercise. Utilizing DI, you can simulate various emergency scenarios to gauge the plan's responsiveness and adaptability. Engaging stakeholders in a data-rich testing environment not only garners invaluable feedback but also fine-tunes the DI model for enhanced predictive accuracy. Performance metrics fed into the DI model offer a quantifiable analysis of the plan's effectiveness, pinpointing areas of improvement. Through iterative testing and evaluation underpinned by DI, you are forging a contingency plan that's data-informed, resilient, and continually evolving to meet the exigencies of potential emergencies.
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James Podlucky, CEM®, MEP
Empowering Emergency Management Professionals with Innovative Technology | Girl Dad x2 | Certified Emergency Manager
Train employees on the plans, policies and procedures. This will set them up for success from the standpoint of the type of technology being used and the expectations within their role. Always create and follow-up with any corrective actions to improve processes on lessons learned and highlight strengths. If corrective actions are not identified or solutions are not created to solve the problem it will repeat itself.
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The final step is to update and maintain your plan to ensure its currency and accuracy. You should review your plan periodically, or whenever there is a change in your organization, environment, or requirements. You should also incorporate the lessons learned and best practices from your testing and actual emergencies. You should communicate and distribute the changes and updates to your stakeholders, and provide them with training and education on your plan. You should also keep a record of the revisions and versions of your plan, and archive the obsolete ones.
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Helen Miller MD, MBA, CPE, CEM
Be very clear who is accountable and on what timeline and benchmarks for the plan to be kept current and accurate. Actually operationally practice the plan and with the realistic conditions in which it would be implemented (after hours, without phone or internet service etc) Incorporate some contingency process wherever possible in day-to-day activity so that it is hands-on familiar. Have redundancy in roles and recognize single points of failure.
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Alvar Orellana McBride, CPP
Global Security Leader | Senior Security Consultant | Speaker | ASIS International RVP Region 8C | Director Hub Lideres de Seguridad Empresarial
"Test and evaluate your plan" is the primary source for updating and maintaining your plan! Lessons learned must be used as action items to update your plan. Something didn't go as expected? Run a post-mortem and find the root cause; use as many Whys? as possible until you find the reason for failure; then, identify the strategy to fix it and update your plan.
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Steven Kuhr
In another thread I mentioned the migration away from Emergency Operations Plan (EOP) formats in favor of a crisis management playbook model. EOPs are weighty and challenging to reference while in crisis conditions. A playbook can be both strategic and tactical in nature and should contain the following essential sections: - Threat/Scenario - Incident Management/Concept of Operations (Brief Narrative) - Issues for Consideration (Bulleted) - Action Steps, Pre-Scripted Mission Assignment Sub-Tasks (Bulleted/Checklist Format) - Essential Elements of Information (Bulleted) CM Playbooks should be threat-risk based and should be part of an overall strategic approach to critical incidents. Playbooks also lead to an easy to maintain plan model.
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Tony Oxford
Emergency Management Planning Coordinator, Ambulance Victoria; Board Chair, Heywood Rural Health
Have a well developed and documented plan that has had broad stakeholder engagement. Have Action Plan/ Playbook for quick reference when needed. Also, where possible, embed some of the key actions into normal business so it becomes muscle memory.
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