Ealing Homes has a comprehensive Business Continuity Management Planning framework in place following expert guidance from Socitm Consulting. The Business Continuity Plan identifies Recovery Time and Recovery Point Objectives for mission-critical capabilities, while highlighting single-points-of failure and vulnerabilities. It also provides an incident management framework for the whole organisation to British Standard BS 25999-1:2006. The Plan will ensure that Ealing Homes can continue to provide an acceptable level of services to customers and partners regardless of any threat or disruption to its infrastructure or operations.
The project issues
Ealing Homes is an ALMO with an independent board and Senior Management team but which for reasons of cost obtains its ICT services from the London Borough of Ealing. It wanted to produce an independent Business Continuity Plan for the whole organisation in order to implement safeguards against potential risks and asked Socitm Consulting to provide best practice advice and guidance.
The Socitm Consulting solution
We began by carrying out a business impact analysis and risk assessment. This included interviewing Heads of Departments and running an awareness programme.
We then produced a report detailing our findings and outlining strategic response and recovery options for the organisation. We mapped our methodology to BS 25999-1;2006 and the Business Continuity Institute’s Good Practice Guidelines 2007, covering the minimum equipment, resources and services required by Ealing Homes in a crisis situation. We also produced plan templates, which included an organisation-wide Business Continuity Plan and an Incident Management Plan for each department.
The benefits to the client
With our expertise in the assessment of risks to business continuity and the development of best practice Business Continuity planning, we were able to help Ealing Homes to undertake a comprehensive assessment of its requirements to provide service continuity in the event of disruption. We were able to ensure the organisation identified its critical capabilities and single points of failure and enabled it to prioritise recovery tasks by putting in place a recovery planning process. As a result, Ealing Homes can provide reassurance to its customers and partners that it has taken seriously the risks to the organisation and met the requirements of Business Continuity Management best practice standards.
Project identification
Client organisation: Ealing Homes
Client contact: Romeo Lipizzi, IT Manager, 0208 825 5157, lipizzir@ealing.gov.uk
Lead consultant: james.royds@socitm.gov.uk
Project no: 5916