Mine into continuity management to stabilise business and survive

Jan. 18, 2011 - PRLog -- In October, the San Jose copper mine in Chile made worldwide headlines after 32 miners were rescued after being trapped underground for almost three months.

By contrast, 29 miners recently lost their lives in a mine blast on a colliery in South Island, New Zealand, and 47 miners were killed in an incident on a coal mine in the central Henan province in China.

Dean Horner, CEO at 42 Consulting, an international Business Continuity Management (BCM) services provider, says loss of life and impact on communities is a reminder that in commerce, business continuity translates to survival on a number of levels.

According to Horner the fundamental aspect of BCM is that decision makers not only manage the business effectively through a crisis, but do so in order to continue operations.

As such management at 42 provides an end-to-end BCM service that includes crisis management, emergency management, business continuity/ recovery and IT continuity/ recovery.

It is a service that is offered to a wide target market of companies across a variety of sectors, including mining.

Horner says, generally speaking, the mining industry is very good in terms of emergency management, but lacks follow-through and efficiency as far as business recovery is concerned.

“The mining industry is set up to control and effectively deal with an emergency – it is really a part of what is known as normal operational failures. The challenge this industry is faced with is that whilst emergencies are dealt with quickly and effectively, operators often struggle with the long-term impact on business recovery and continued operations,” adds Horner.

“The fact is that when it comes to business continuity management, decision makers have to differentiate between what are normal operational failures and what are crises. This will differ depending on the nature of the industry. What those in the banking or financial sector regard as a crisis could be construed as being normal operational failures for those in mining, for example,” Horner explains.

To help clients understand the dynamics of business continuity management, experts at 42 Consulting ask a principle question: What will happen to your business if you experienced a major crisis today?

“In many cases the company has a strategy or plan on paper. These are really impressive-looking documents that detail all actions and responsibilities to be followed in the event of a crisis. The problem with this scenario is that everything looks fine on paper, but when it comes to practical application, most do not know what to do because the knowledge rests with a few and is often not communicated effectively to the rest of the organisation,” says Horner.

Horner is emphatic about the need to empower clients through the delivery of business continuity capability. In essence this means that should a crisis unfold, everyone that is affected knows exactly what to do in practice, when, where and how.

“In the mining sector a crisis must be addressed immediately to curtail damage, minimise risk and protect people and resources. In the Chile example we saw decision makers take action to manage the crisis and centralise all available resources to ensure the safety of all the miners. Once this is done the decision making process is then focused on continuing operations,” Horner continues.

Management at 42 Consulting believe that as events unfold globally and impact on operations across various industries and sectors, the role of BCM and crisis management will increase in significance.