Development of Contingency Plans – Guidelines

1. Sustain Operation – Sustaining the business operation is the main objective; to achieve this you
need to identify the operational requirements, the risks, the minimum standard of operational
performance and define success and failure limits.

2. Success Defined – A contingency plan is in place to ensure that service delivery continues in a
state during an incident. Clearly identify in the plan what needs to occur for this status quo to
occur, and what constitutes success.

3. Start Criteria – Clearly state the criteria which will activate the contingency plan the boundaries,
operational limits or risk activators which will initiate the contingency plan. Ensure that the plan
has a documented implementation process with a clearly defined responsibility.

4. Simplicity – Ensure clarity and simplicity of the contingency plan; the plan may need to be
implemented quickly and by operative’s who may not be fully aware of the issues; ensure that it is
free of acronyms, technical language, and using plain English.

5. Scheduling – State scheduling and time limits, and clearly state what needs to be done when.
An operational timeline or schedule helps ensure that deadlines and time-limits are hit; any
mission critical deadlines should be red-flagged or alarmed.

6. Specify Resource Requirements – Identify what resources are required to deliver the
contingency plan, the relative availability of the resources and include sub-contingency plans
should the resources not be available.

7. Stakeholder Analysis – Ensure that a detailed stakeholder evaluation has taken place and that
al key requirements have been included in the plan. Prioritise the requirements to ensure that
the service continuation is the first priority, with other requirements deemed as “nice to have”.

8. Staff Training – Ensure operatives understand what is required in the contingency

arrangements. In many cases the contingency plan comes into play during an unexpected or
unplanned event. Such an instance is unlikely to leave time for training so mission critical
contingency plans need to be trained and drilled, with responsibility allocated where necessary.

9. Study Risks – Identify risks through the risk planning process, implement mitigation and
forecasting to help reduce the likelihood of an incident; the best contingency plans are the ones
that are never used.

10. Strategic Review – Ensure that the contingency plan forms part of the strategic review process
and aligned with the corporate efforts to ensure continuous improvement. The plan should
ensure that it reflects changes in operating process, business strategy and should reflect the
continuous improvement ethos.

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