the soap Box provides you the reader
with an opportunity to speak your
mind on the issues impacting on your
discipline. to air your views contact
nigel Allen at nigel.allen@thebci.org
S
oap B
ox
You must have ‘smart’ objectives that are based on three factors:
1. are the plan documents useful? is the content accurate and
appropriate? Can the plans be accessed? are they easy to
navigate?
  Note – If the only lesson learned is that the telephone 
numbers are out of date you have wasted the best 
opportunity to breathe life into BCM.
2. Familiarisation with roles and responsibilities. do
participants know the BCM structures and processes? do
1
they know who is in authority and who they need to liaise
k
k
k
with? are they more confi dent after the desktop than
before?
  Note – If you rehearse in isolation without integrating with 
Q: what can you really learn from
those you depend on you are kidding yourselves. The activities 
must be realistic and the rehearsal objectives as well as the 
desktop rehearsals?
scenario must be well thought out. 
3. Have had some fun doing it. The desktop must be engaging,
No rehearsal quite simply means you have no confi dence in 
educational and entertaining.
either your BCM plans or in those who will activate the plans in 
the event of an incident. In effect, you will not have a validated 
  Note – If you fi nd people’s diaries are too full, they send 
a deputy or simply fail to show up this may tell you that 
BCM capability. While many practitioners would agree with 
your desktop exercise is too boring or too ridiculous; or 
this sentiment, still they do not deliver effective desktop 
alternatively that you are too boring!
rehearsals. 
In my opinion, the fi rst three things which a desktop rehearsal 
So what can you ‘really’ learn from a desktop exercise? In my 
will reveal are:
opinion, you can learn the following:  
1. If rehearsals have not been conducted ‘yet’ then the BCMS 
•  That the scenario is relatively unimportant; 
or the BCM capability simply doesn’t exist.
•  That the debrief is the most important element, arguably 
2. If rehearsals have not involved executive-level participation 
more important than the action itself;
then any talk of BCM is purely lip service. I bet the policy 
statement hasn’t been signed either!
•  That if the post desktop report recommendations are 
executed and the follow-up results in a change to policy, 
3. If the scenario is in real time dealing with an evacuation then 
a capital expenditure or a management decision you have 
it isn’t really BCM. At best it is a bit of health and safety, a 
succeeded; 
bit of emergency response and a bit of crisis management.
•  If there is no post rehearsal action you need to look to your 
Practitioners fail to facilitate effective desktops primarily 
laurels; and
because the majority of so-called BCPs concentrate on raising 
the alarm, warning and informing, evacuation/invacuation and 
•  If there is enthusiasm to do another you have breathed life 
procedures for risk events such as a fi re, bomb or fl ood. This is 
into BCM.
an incident management plan not a BCP.
While some of the points I have raised may seem harsh, it is 
It is a mistake to exercise the fi rst hour or three of an event in 
important to remember that you are in a privileged position 
real time, as many do. This may be a good starting point for 
regarding the lives, livelihoods and liberty of those in your 
incident management, but when did you ever set rehearsal 
organisation and other stakeholders. You must stop thinking of 
objectives to continue or recover critical process in the priority 
risks and start thinking about reality. 
order as agreed in the BIA? What does the plan say about how 
to get resources, where to deploy them, when will they be 
Andy toMKinson MBCi
required etc.? You must use accelerated time. 
Andy tomkinson is a business continuity & crisis management
consultant and a partner at Adtapt.
We call them ‘rehearsals’ deliberately and yet fail to rehearse 
andy@adtapt.com
what we really should; because the desktop objectives are as 
www.adtapt.com
weak as the plans themselves. 
0  Continuity  January/February 2010
Cont Jan/Feb 2010_insides.indd 40 3/2/10 14:53:20
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