How Changes in Environment Change Your Plan

A while back, the local newspaper ran an article about a new, longer runway at a local airport. It was intended to make the airport more accessible to larger jets. I didn’t think much about it except that it would bring more business to the small airstrip.

 

Then one morning, on my way in to work, I saw a jet circling in a landing pattern. Right over the top of my office! Yessir that new runway changed the landing pattern for all planes coming into the airport – they now approached over the top of our building, at least 5 miles from the airport. I realized at that moment we needed to make changes to our business continuity plan.

What's above your company?

How did the new airport runway affect our plan? Well… until that moment, the worst man-made disaster we had considered was a semi crashing into the building. Now we had to consider planes, jet fuel… total obliteration. A direct strike from a jet would affect us about the same as a tornado AND a fuel explosion at the same time. Adding to that was the number of flights landing each day, making a jet accident a much more likely event than a tornado. We made some adjustments to our written plan to include the scenario and added a process.

No, I’m not an alarmist. But I do pay attention to the little things that might cause us to tweak our plan. Ok – so the jet thing wasn’t so little. But the changes our plan required to account for the environmental change were small and required little more than an added process. The thing is – we stayed on top of our changing environment and didn’t need to give our plan a complete overhaul.

Take a look around your organization’s “neighborhood”. Do you know who your neighbors are? Better yet – do you know what they do? A new business moving in might change your list of possible threats, if they handle dangerous chemicals or have other unusual traits. Pay attention to traffic flows. If your location is near trucking companies or warehouses, you might consider what they are hauling and storing. On October 29, 2007, an explosion and fire at a Des Moines solvent plant required surrounding companies to evacuate their buildings as well.  Multiple organizations found themselves initiating their contingency plans (those that had them) or shutting down for the day.

Barton Solvents Disaster affected surrounding companies

Preparedness begins with awareness. Be aware, be prepared.