The Business Continuance Group

Meetings

We meet 4 times a year, usually at a member's offices, but occasionally at external venues, including the Corporation of London's City Marketing Suite.

Our meetings for 2009 will be:

  • Wednesday 4th March (09:30 – 13:00, followed by lunch)
  • Wednesday 3rd June (09:30 – 13:00, followed by lunch)
  • Wednesay 9th September (09:30 – 13:00, followed by lunch)
  • Wednesday 2nd December (14.00 – 17.30, followed by an evening social))

We discuss a wide range of topics from both internal and external speakers, and also hold discussions and workshops. Meetings normally conclude with lunch, except in December, when there is an evening social.

The Chatham House "Rule"

We hold our meetings under the "Chatham House Rule". The Rule states:

"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed".

We operate on this basis in order to set a framework for members to use the information gained at our meetings when they return to their employer, whilst at the same time protecting the identity of the person / company who provided that information.

Use of the rule has allowed us to be open in discussion, which has been one of the critical success factors for the Group.

You can read more about the Chatham House Rule on the web site of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Meeting topics

The content and format of meetings is determined collectively by members so may include any combination of presentations, open forum or panel discussions, etc. Whilst the group encourages and places considerable dependence on its members to make presentations or lead discussions themselves it does occasionally invite outside speakers, but always on the strict understanding that no ‘sales pitch’ is given.

We maintain a list of possible future meeting topics. At present this includes:

  • Enterprise Risk Management
  • Corporate Manslaughter
  • BS25999 update (possibly including PAS77 IT Services)
  • Return to normality (business as usual)
  • People Issues
  • Data Protection Act – picking out parts which affect BCM
  • Duty of Care – what does it mean
  • Contents of grab bags
  • Basel II.
  • Regular interactive workshops on subjects suggested and led by members.
  • Back Up / Data Recovery / Mirroring.
  • External visits.
  • Communication aides (Telecoms, blackberry, satellite phones etc.).
  • Pandemics an other infectious diseases (not caused by terrorism)
  • Outsourcing (How do you guarantee their BC?).
  • BIA – interactive session - Let’s create the ideal BIA.
  • Benchmarking (can we use ourselves as the benchmark?).
  • Call Centres (national standard).
  • Corporate Manslaughter.
  • Civil Contingencies Act (including changes to evacuation risks etc).

Recent topics have included:

  • Police Casualty Bureau
  • Reception centres
  • Compassion, Common-Sense And Continuity
  • BC training and the Cornerstone programme
  • BCM and the outsourced contract
  • Home working - technology pitfalls
  • Simulation techniques for Business Continuity
  • The UK Government's Retail exercise - a member's perspective
  • Protecting the Brand: the impact of incidents on share price
  • The Media in a Crisis
  • Automated information management tools (e.g. Criticall, Vocal)
  • PAS 56 into BS25999
  • New business models challenging BCM.
  • Surveillance threat and how to counter them.
  • Avian Flu by the Department of Health.
  • 7 July (Metropolitan Police, Financial Services Authority & Corporation of London).
  • A presentation from the Tripartite Authorities (FSA, Bank of England & HM Treasury) on the November 2004 market wide Business Continuity Test.
  • London flooding risks, including a tour of the Thames Barrier (with thanks to the Environment Agency).
  • Crisis Management benchmarking.
  • Ensuring Supplier Continuity.
  • A presentation from the Continuity Forum (the Trade body of 3rd party BC suppliers).
  • Use of the Intranet/Internet to market BC.
  • A whole meeting given over to a scenario exercise.
  • A tour of, and and presentation about, a member's Incident Control Room.
  • People Recovery.
  • London Resilience.
  • Current Threats and Counter Terrorism Issues (by the City of London Police).
  • Kidnap / Sieges (by the City of London Police).
  • Asymetric threats
  • PAS 56
  • CitySafe
  • "You're out of the building - so what next ?"
  • Succession planning (particularly for staff loss from an incident).

This list is neither exhaustive, nor mandatory - we add or remove topics in accordance with member's suggestions.

If you are not a group member and would like to present to the group, please email your suggestions to the Group's Chairman.