In talking to clients, many feel that the likelihood of them being denied access to their site or key buildings and offices is sufficiently remote that they don’t need to plan for it.

This mindest may also be influenced by early business continuity briefings where practitioners took the lazy scenario option and asked them to consider a terrorist attack.

Whilst a terrorist attack remains feasible (and depending on what business you are in maybe more likely than you know) statistically they are few and far between – albeit devastating when they occur.

The more mundane and higher probability incidents are less sexy but need to be considered.  Mechanical and electrical failures (burst pipes and short circuits), disgruntled employess or vandalism, natural disasters or extreme weather, animal disease, crime and transport disruptions are all affecting business somewhere in the world everyday.

So what’s your strategy if you lose you site and how long could you operate at what capacity from that position?

It’s tempting to plan for a “call the customer and muddle through” approach because that seems the cheapest and simplest option – but what of the impact on your firm’s brand and reputation?  Can you still carry out business development in parallel with “priority services only, run from my dining room table or the local Costa Coffee”?

The bigger your business is the more complex the task becomes and when you are a government department the problems get bigger.  The Lyons Review requires any new lease or freehold contract to have prior approval by the Treasury.  Try fast-tracking that one when the site burns down!

Even if you find a suitable site, the contractual work can take months.

Alternatively, providers like Sunguard, Regus and Community Resilience can put arrangements in place to reduce the delay but then you have to convince shareholders and the board that the overhead is justified.  In a recession that’s akin to asking for more money to upgrade the snowplough during this hot spell when everyone has already forgotten what it was like in February.

The reality is that you need to have identified an alternative location.

To stand any chance of a reasonable transition into your fallback accommodation you need to put the logistics and infrastructure in place then practice using the site if you are going to have a fighting chance of minimising the impact on your business.

So where do you start?

You start by agreeing Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives (how much of the business operating by when), the location (commutable for current staff?, budget and timing.  Until you fix a date by when it must be done the project will drift and consume both time and money whilst your risks go unmitigated.

Even if you only work through the specification and location for a suitable site, please do something.  Don’t risk what has taken years to build for the sake of a few months’ work.

And don’t forget, if you haven’t tested and updated your business continuity plan – it ain’t a plan!