Business Continuity Plan
Hi,
My company is a small (7-8 employees) spice distribution company and we are nearly (or so I hope) done with our SQF documentation. However, we were struggling to figure out how to write a Business Continuity Plan:
What sorts of things should our plan address?
What would be some examples of measures that would appropriately address those things?
And if anyone would be willing, it would be SO helpful if someone could share an example of their business continuity plan, so I can get a good idea of what one should look like! That would so great!
Thanks IFSQN community :).
snether,
Here is our basic layout at a 30 team member powder drying facility. We are not SQF rather BRC but is a start
Crisis team member layout and who is responsible for what (corporate, plant management, staff) corporate to do media/customer relations and funds procurement. Plant management to notify regulatory, emergency clean up services, other team members and set up action plan including what or where to manufacture or store product if possible. You will need to have a offsite meeting location in the event your facility is not inhabitable.
Who is critical to contact in emergency (Federal, state/providence, customer, certification body)
identify threats fire/flood/explosion/gas leak/human emergency/power outage. Also we give levels such as Tier 1 all or part of facility is down for 6-16hrs (Chemical spill, power outage, gas leak, lightning strike). Tier 2 16hs to 5 days (fire, tornado, flood) Tier 3 greater than 5days (explosion, fire, tornado)
Very detailed instruction of what your team would do if you had any of the above incidents (fire, flood, explosion, neighborhood lock down) and it doesn't hurt to practice some of these scenarios
A list of plant/ corporate/customer contacts both during and after hours.
Contacts of clean up crews, rental places, offsite meeting places, secondary manufacturing/storage facilities and the like
No matter how small of business its also a good idea to reach out to local fire dept or sheriffs office with a tour of your facilities, hazards, and plans incase the worst should happen. Now if you're a 10 person plant in downtown New York or Chicago this may be difficult but still worth a try.
For other thoughts look to the search bar above for emergency procedures.
G
The Institute for Business and Home Safety has a free Business Continuity Plan with Templates called "Open for Business-EZ". This is what we used and it is easy to do.
https://www.disaster...n-for-business/.
Hope this helps
Thank you all so much!!! Thanks Lisa for the website link, that's super helpful!
Crisis Team Members and their backup people.
Assigned roles for the team members and backups.
Documented training for the team members and backups (formal training documents and training records).
List of hazards the team would address.
Emergency contact numbers (government, corporate, certification body, etc.)
Optional - scripts for what to do during a crisis and who does what.
Records (minutes, etc.) of any mock or real crisis and where kept.
Business Continuity for food safety concentrates on controlling the contamination and proper communication to the appropriate people.
Some of your customers may ask about Business Continuity in terms of redundant resources (can you produce somewhere else if plant destroyed).