The document discusses business continuity planning and management to prepare for unexpected events known as "black swans" that can severely impact business operations. It defines black swans as rare but high-impact events like natural disasters, market crashes, or data leaks. Having a proper business continuity plan (BCP) and continuity management (BCM) process in place can help businesses recover more quickly. The document outlines the key components of an effective BCP/BCM system, including understanding risks, developing strategies and procedures to address risks, implementing and testing the plans, and maintaining the plans over time. Most businesses acknowledge risks but few have fully developed continuity plans, and plans often focus only on information technology rather than all aspects of operations.

1. Business Continuity Planning:
Paving a way to future protection
Author
392016
Keywords
Black swans, Business continuity, Business
planning, Prevention
Abstract
Future protection for large and small
businesses has to be in place, with
globalisation developing over the last 100
years, impacts from disasters can reach
around the world affecting everyone.
Disasters are more commonly known as Black
Swans within a professional industry but can
be further defined into self inflicted and
natural. With the idea of black swans comes
the idea of protection, protection though an
efficient use of business continuity planning
and management. Both can provide a
recovery time which would be acceptable for
a business, however without proper
management the plan will become outdated
and inefficient.
Introduction
Creating a successful business in
recent years has not been the easiest feat;
lessened consumer buying power, increased
fees for services and fierce competition. All
are obstacles to any business and without
proper management within the business,
trade may cease to due to financial difficulty.
Along with these factors which are down to
human influence other phenomenon’s most
commonly known as a catastrophe or a
natural disaster could also halt business
operations for the unforeseeable future.
Catastrophes and disasters can be defined as
a rare event but carries a large impact and as
described by Cred (2010) it is a situation or
event, which overwhelms local capacity and
requires local or international assistance.
Certain criteria need to be fulfilled for an
event to be branded as a disaster. A more
unknown term for a catastrophe or a disaster
which incorporates a range of rare situations
are Black Swan events.
This report is going to look into how
Black swans are defined within the
construction and real estate industry as well
as how proper planning and management
through a Business Continuity Plans (BCP) and
Business Continuity Management (BCM) can
result in a faster recovery period during a time
of halted business trade.
Black Swan Events
Black swans are events are generally
rare and lead to large amount disruption to
either business operations or public living
standards. Past examples which have had
extreme impacts are the 9/11 terrorist attacks
which resulted in a major dip in the stock
market and a halt of business around the city
of New York and the tsunami in Japan which
halted all business within its country and
destabilised its economy. Both have had
impacts directly and indirectly to every
business in the modern world.
Within the professional industry black
swans are often referred to as unpredictable
events and as characterised by Taleb (2007)
they are events which are outside regular
expectations and carry an extreme impact
such as natural disasters, market crashes or
terrorist events. However within that
definition it does not describe how smaller
events can have an equally large impact on a
business or organisation. Smaller events like a

2. power loss, a network freeze or a data leak
are all small black swan events but have an
equally large impact on a business. Although
these events are still infrequent they may
happen more often due to their nature.
Another theory about these
catastrophic events are self inflicted black
swan events. It will never happen to me is a
common phrase which can be applied in this
situation. As Kronenberg (2011) stated texting
while driving is frowned upon, but a situation
may arise which requires the attention of the
driver. Sending one text the first time may not
cause an accident, but a habit of sending texts
while driving, and a thought of “it will never
happen to me” will eventually cause an
accident. This can then be further explained
and demonstrated by applying it to the
construction industry. Under no pressure or
time constraints a labourer may follow all
health and safety checks. If delays become to
develop, routines may become rushed and
shortcuts found. The same shortcut could be
used multiple times creating a habit within
the rushed routine. This could result in
something major being forgotten or missed, a
vital wall tie on a scaffolding tower or a
forgotten screw on a crane attachment, both
have happened in the past and both have
been caused by a self inflicted event.
These events, whether self inflicted or
not will always occur randomly and
infrequent, but as technology advances and
mans influence on the world grows; new
types of rare events will emerge. As depicted
by Woods (2006) these “surprising events”
reflect on the businesses inability to recognise
new threats as well as their ability to produce
an effective countermeasure during times of
recovery. With the inherent uncertainty and
new threats constantly emerging, knowledge
should be at the forefront of prevention.
Taleb (2007) also described that black swans
represent our misunderstanding of the
likelihood of a surprise. Both authors
demonstrating that knowledge is always
required to prevent and recover but Masys
(2012) also explained that planning and
managing risk along with proper
understanding of the space of possibilities is
also required to avoid disasters.
Business Continuity Plans
As black swan impacts are potentially
catastrophic, full planning should be laid out
in order to prevent such events or to lead to a
faster recovery period. These plans are
commonly known as Business Continuity Plans
(BCP) and as characterised by Hotchkiss
(2010)A BCP’s are a set of procedures for each
potential risk which if carried out in full could
result in an acceptable level of recovery and
continuation of business operation. Recovery
times will vary dependant on the situation
however the need to recovery will always be
the same. Loss in revenues may result in
bankruptcy so it is clearly evident to have a
plan in place. Unfortunately Kash and Darling
(1998) discovered only a few businesses have
a continuity plan set up even though 85% of
businesses acknowledge the risk of a crisis.
For a BCP to be efficient for the future
protection of business operations it also
needs to cover a range of aspects. However
frequent studies have found that the plans set
up only concentrate on a limited range of
events. Hearnden’s (1995) study identifies
that the majority of BCP’s primordially focus
on ICT, even though ICT usage is important in
the modern age the protection of just this
area is not enough. Plans for a new building of
operations or a procedure to move all
equipment need to be in place along with
other backup plans.
With all planning comes management,
an essential role to keep the plan or
procedure up-to-date and well know within
the business culture.

3. Business Continuity Management
Business continuity management will
ensure the longevity of the BCP within the
business, through further training, testing and
maintaining of the current BCP, in doing so
the plan will stay up to date and well
communicated. Hotchkiss (2010)B said that a
BCP without proper management will
eventually fail.
With more business looking into a
BCP and BCM the British Standards have
produced a life cycle model (Fig 1 BS 259991;2006) demonstrating the four key areas
which should be focused on when producing a
new BCP and BCM.
(Figure 2 Risk Matrix)B
The second area is “Determining BCM
Strategy”. This will involve taking all risks
found and producing a procedure (BCP) to
overcome the problem. HM Government have
produced some general procedures (Fig 3-4).
(Figure 1 BCM Life Cycle)A
The first of the four key areas is
“Understanding the Organisation”. This will
include a business impact analysis and a risk
assessment with a risk matrix score for each
eventuality (Fig 2).
(Figure 3-4 Tactic to Adopt)C

4. The third area is “Developing and
implementing”. Possibly the hardest stage
due to:


Employee resistance to change
Extra training needed
However after it is fully integrated the only
stage left is testing and maintaining. The stage
required for the BCP’s to be successful in
years to come. Testing and auditing will riddle
out potential problems which could in the
long term save the business if a high impact
event were to happen.
Conclusion
In conclusion humans influence is not
the only factor which can end a business.
Black swans can and do also play apart.
Whether it is self inflicted or natural, past
events have had dire impacts on singular
business, but due to the modern era of
globalisation, impacts can reach around the
globe. With this in mind it is ever more
important to have BCP’s and BCM in place.
However at the moment 85% of businesses
accept the risk but a much lower rate do not
have any recovery plans in place. If they do
however the majority only focus on ICT. This
lower rate and singular focus needs to
improve for the future protection of single
businesses and the country wide economy.

5. References
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Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disaster 2000, Cred website
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HEARNDEN .K. (1995) Business continuity planning
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HM GOVERNMENT (2006)A-C Figure 2-5. How prepared are you? [Online]
Available from: www.direct.gov.uk
[Accessed: 28th Dec, 2012]
HOTCHKISS, S. (2010). Business Continuity Management.
Available from: www.dawsonera.com
[Accessed: 1st Nov, 2012]
KASH, T.K, and DARLING, J.R. (1998) "Crisis management: prevention, diagnosis and intervention"
Leadership & Organization Development Journal Vol.19 (4), pp179-186 [Online]
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[Accessed: 28nd Dec, 2012]
KRONENBERG .E. (2011) “Strategy and Business” How to Prevent Self-Inflicted Disasters[online]
Available from: www.ljmu.ac.uk
[Accessed 15th Jan, 2002]
MAYSYS .A.J. (2012)”Black swans to grey swans: revealing the uncertainty”.
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Available from: www.emerald.com
TALEB N.N. (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
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WOODS .D.D. (2006) Essential Characteristics of resilience
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