Heathrow Fire

Author: Chris Goodeve-Ballard

The fire at Heathrow on Friday should be a wake up call for not just those in charge of significant national infrastructure, but every organisation that relies on what should be resilient services.

I have no intention of speculating on the causes (there are many better qualified people than me doing this already – as well as a few worse qualified). Chasing causes of incidents is of course a valuable exercise, and at Aldbury International we help firms do this.

The effects are however, far more immediate and coping with these as well as finding mitigants to lessen the effects is where, irrespective of the cause, some particularly useful work can be undertaken.

Think about it logically for a second. There are many reasons why the electricity sub-station could stop providing power to the airport. There is however only one effect – there is no power. It would cost the GNP of a medium sized country to prevent all the possible causes of the power stopping (and then you may miss a few). While it is perfectly reasonable to put preventative measures in place for the more obvious causes (security, fire suppression, resilient materials etc) it is a lot more cost effective and certain to identify the effect and mitigate that.

It would appear, sadly, in Heathrow’s case that this wasn’t done. I say “sadly” from a personal perspective as well, as my son was supposed to be taking my wife to tea in the Shard on Saturday but his plane was turned back to the US mid-Atlantic.

In Heathrow’s case, at first glance, a suitable and robust back up independent power supply would have made this an isolated inconvenience rather than a full blown pain in the posterior.

Returning to my opening sentence in this piece, every organisation should be identifying its vulnerabilities and asking itself simple “what if….” questions. From these, plans can be made for dealing with the effects and putting suitable mitigants in place.

This is not rocket science. This is simply about ensuring you are running a resilient business that can maintain services to its customers when things are going pear-shaped.

It doesn’t matter whether you are a global investment bank or a widget manufacturer from Wigan, the basic principle is the same – identify what you do for your clients, identify what will stop you doing it and then work out the solution. Cut out all the extraneous noise often found in Business Continuity Plans and take it back to the main drivers of profit – the services you provide to your clients.

Simple really.

At Aldbury International we help firms to identify these drivers, we look at their plans (or help formulate them) and then provide rigorous testing to ensure that not only the plans, but the individuals who have to implement those plans in an unfamiliar and stressed environment, work effectively.

It’s what we do, it’s what we do well and that is all we do.

Call us on 020 3475 2953 or contact us via our website.