Public-Private Collaboration: What’s in it for Each?

P&O Stena Line’s computer systems that manage the loading of ferries at Dover Docks are highly resilient, being split between two data centers two miles apart. However, when a technical fault crashed the system, police invoked part of their Operation Stack emergency plan, which involved parking all the queuing lorries on the M20.

The interruption was significantly prolonged because the resulting traffic chaos delayed both technical staff and replacement equipment from reaching either site. Much of the delay could have been avoided had they understood the police response and worked with them.

From the perspective of ensuring business continuity in an organization, understanding the plans and powers of the local authority and emergency services could mean the difference between recovery success and business failure in an emergency. Premises owners can be denied access to a building and its environs by emergency services where there is concern for safety or where evidence of a crime may be destroyed. As a last resort, equipment and facilities can even be commandeered, though usually a request for voluntary assistance is the preferred route.

One of the vaguest points in most business continuity plans is how the organization’s staff will work with emergency services to handle an incident and then retrieve control of the site from them – at a point where the organization is at its most vulnerable.

Where Each Party Can Help
There are several areas where information sharing between the public and private sectors can be mutually beneficial. Such areas are in plan exercising, media relations, and resource-sharing.

Exercising
There is a wealth of practical experience in response issues among local authority emergency planning personnel, gained from many past exploits. Emergency planners share with the business continuity profession a determination to learn from every incident. Inviting the local emergency planner to attend and comment on a business continuity exercise can be a sobering, even depressing, experience. However, the practical knowledge they freely offer can only enhance the company’s ability to cope if an incident occurs.

The BCI/DRII certification standards include a section on coordination with external agencies, which reflects this need for companies to improve their recovery planning by collaboration with the public sector services. However, it should not be seen as a one-sided relationship. The most significant contribution that private companies can offer to the public sector is their site and staff for use in emergency exercises, giving both parties benefits.

Media Relations
Responding to the media can become the Achilles heel of a company’s attempt to recover from an incident. Many companies have a press officer or nominate a senior manager to brief the press, but few have the training, experience, or backup necessary to handle the immediate demand for statements. Smaller companies may lack the media contacts and be unaware of the correct local procedures for issuing press releases.

Here again there is a wealth of knowledge on these issues in the public sector, where disasters, albeit other people’s incidents, are handled more frequently. And by working with private companies in this area, emergency services representatives can learn the key priorities and public-facing responsibilities of the businesses in their jurisdiction.

Resource-Sharing
Where hazards are highly visible, this mutual interest can lead to a close and ongoing cooperation between public and private sectors. For over 30 years the chemical companies that surround the UK town of Grangemouth have worked in partnership with the local authority and emergency services. In the event of an incident, the council’s emergency control team is supplemented by representatives from each company authorized to contribute their company’s resources as needed – for example, their private fire engines, a generator, or specialist staff.

The City of Leeds houses the headquarters of many businesses. The City Emergency Planning department works with businesses, transport and utility providers to develop response plans to events such as flooding, severe weather or explosion which may require the evacuation of all or parts of the City Centre.

A Two-Way Street
In the early hours of January 8, 2005, the river Eden in NW England was swelled by the equivalent of one month’s rainfall falling in one day. Storm-force winds battered the area and increased the height of the tide. Much of the center of the City of Carlisle was inundated to a depth of several feet. In recovering, the larger companies were able to call on their own resources from outside the area. However, the smaller enterprises could only look to the city council and organizations such as Business Link to assist with access, salvage, insurance, and relocation issues. The prosperity of an area and its tax base depends on its businesses, so local authorities have a real interest in assisting businesses to survive.

While many local authorities have had experience in handling disasters within their communities, they are only starting to address the impact of an incident affecting their own buildings and staff. As local authorities are encouraged to view the running of their services as a business, the business continuity expertise developed to identify and protect critical functions in the private sector is valuable. Maintaining an ability to provide an acceptable level of service to those in their area is, in some cases, a statutory responsibility.

In Carlisle, the rapidly rising water flooded the city council offices, the fire station, and the police station, giving no time to salvage equipment. The situation was further complicated as the power was cut to the whole city by the flooding of the main electrical substation. Council departments were forced to relocate, and a multi-agency control room was set up in the twelfth-century Carlisle Castle. Despite heroic efforts by all concerned, there is no doubt that the response to rescue and subsequent recovery were and will continue to be hampered by the simultaneous loss of these key buildings and resources.

It is for this sort of event that the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) in the UK is now being enacted to mandate first responders to have effective business continuity plans for their emergency response functions. For a local authority, what these functions are remains an issue of debate, but in Carlisle they are going to find that most departments, including finance, environmental health, education, legal services, and business support would all have had a hand in that response and will therefore need to consider their ability to recover.

So, by working with the appropriate local public bodies, a private company can ensure that it understands the responsibilities of the various organizations it must deal with in a major incident. Meanwhile, the public bodies can develop and rehearse their plans with an understanding of business needs and be assured that their response will not be hampered significantly should they be impacted by the same incident.