Edwards builds sustainable BC plans with Shadow-Planner

The Situation:

Edwards has been supplying the semiconductor industry with vacuum, abatement, chemical management equipment and services for nearly 100 years. This global company, with more than 4,000 skilled employees, serves companies in the semiconductor, flat panel display, LED and solar cells manufacturing industries.

As a reputable global company, Edwards relies on a set of core values to ensure that the Company and its employees behave ethically, with integrity, and with mutual respect. Business Continuity is a big part of the Company’s core value system, as shown in the Company’s focus on its Environment, Health and Safety Systems (EHS).  The comprehensive EHS Management program includes policy, planning, performance measures, EHS functional support, risk control, training, communication, monitoring, corrective action and a review process. According to the Company’s website, ”There are no higher priorities for us than the health & safety of our colleagues, contractors, customers and the protection of the environment.”

The Problem:

Edwards, when part of the BOC Group, enjoyed the support of a relatively large Business Continuity and Risk Management function that carried out all tasks related to business continuity. Although the efforts primarily revolved around using Excel spreadsheets and Word documents to record the results of business continuity analyses, plans were nevertheless produced and formed the basis for general discussions and contingency planning. In 2007, when Edwards split off from the BOC Group and became an independent entity, the Company found itself faced with the responsibility of managing its own BC management.

This situation presented a golden opportunity to take an in-depth look at BC as a whole, and to investigate the role that a BC automation tool might play in developing dynamic plans that would help ensure resiliency in the event of any disaster or potential interruption. The Company looked to Duncan Coates, Environmental Health and Safety Manager, to lead the BC efforts, starting with the UK sites, of which there are five. Coates’ brief is to then roll out the BC automation solution in America and Asia/Pacific, for a total of some 12-15 sites when fully implemented.

Edwards undertook an investigation into a variety of business continuity automation products to help the company build initial plans and to keep them current over time. One of the primary criteria for a solution was that it should be easy to use, as well as very easy to update as circumstances change. Another important qualification was the actual look and feel of the software. Edwards needed a tool that very closely resembled the other tools in use by employees. Given that business continuity activities take place on an infrequent basis, the BC tool would need to look and work like a normal Microsoft Office application. A third requirement was the availability of local support, in the event that there were questions about the software and its functionality.

 “I had not had the opportunity to implement a business continuity software solution in the past, but business continuity was definitely something that held great interest for me,” commented Duncan Coates, Environmental Health and Safety Manager at Edwards. “When Edwards was presented with the opportunity to implement a BC automation program, I was eager to take on the task.

One of the most important tasks he faced was building a BC program that would be sustainable. He explains: “Many business continuity plans are merely long reports written on paper, that are out of date the moment they are printed. I wanted to ensure that the BC efforts at Edwards represented living documents that could be used immediately in the event of a crisis. That means they need to be up-to-the-minute. In order to meet that requirement, the software would need to make it extremely easy for everyone involved to update the information when things change.”

The Solution:

Edwards looked at various business continuity automation systems but selected Shadow-Planner from Office-Shadow. One of the deciding factors was the manner in which Office-Shadow went about the sales process. Rather than simply presenting a demonstration of the product, Office-Shadow encouraged Edwards to meet independently with another Shadow-Planner client. In that meeting, there was no controlled demonstration; rather, Edwards personnel were able to ask all important questions about actual implementation and performance, without any pressure to purchase the product.

 Once the decision was made to select Shadow-Planner, Coates was able to spend a great deal of time reading the user guides, creating various organizational structures, and really getting to know the product prior to rollout. In the process, he realized that it would not be possible to shoehorn his prior business continuity plans into Shadow-Planner; instead, he would need to use the trigger action approach.  This situation actually presented an opportunity to revise and update the plans, leading to sustainable, usable plans.

One of the major breakthroughs was the realization that with Shadow-Planner the Company could actually move away from writing plans based on a potential total loss, Instead, they could write plans based on different levels of threat.  For example, instead of planning just for the loss of an entire plant, they could also plan for partial damage. This breakthrough approach – looking at the CONSEQUENCES rather than the CAUSES of a business interruption, has been extremely beneficial in ensuring efficiency and continuity throughout the organization.

Coates devised a system of color-coded alert levels. By creating plans for green, yellow, red or and black levels (from least disruptive to most disruptive situation), a small number of plans cover a wide list of potential threats. One example is denial of access: if personnel are not allowed onto a site for a period of time (a green level might be for one day, while the red level might involve two weeks, and the black level would indicate permanent denial of access), the plans will reflect what needs to happen at each level. It is not important to know why the access is denied – whether a bomb threat, flood, gas leak, etc – but rather that everyone understands what they must do at a specific alert level.
 
Naturally, there are some event plans, where required, for example a pandemic flu plan. This situation could also lead to loss of suppliers, loss of key personnel, etc. In this case, additional activities, such as monitoring people’s travel, hygiene procedures, monitoring World Health Organization information, screening operations and the like will come into play.

Benefits:

According to Coates, the main benefit of Shadow-Planner is that business continuity is sustainable. Unlike other approaches to business continuity that present the need for a full-time document control function, Shadow-Planner can be kept up-to-date with tasks that take only five or ten minutes. “It takes no effort whatsoever. The responsibility is not resting on any one person’s shoulders. Shadow-Planner does all the document control and produces the standard reports – all in a very user-friendly format.”

Another benefit is the fact that Shadow-Planner is a hosted solution. By keeping all the plans in one location that is easy to find and access, Shadow-Planner makes it easy to use from home or a hotel room, as well as from the office.

A third benefit is that the product is easy to use. Since everyone who contributes to maintaining or updating plans does a little bit, the workload is spread out across the organization. Coates explains “Most people are surprised at how easy it is to use, and how little they have to do. They don’t even realize they are in Shadow-Planner until I tell them. That’s because the product lets us brand it, so the site looks just like our intranet.”

Finally, Coates appreciates the way the reports are formatted. They are well presented, easy to read and easy to understand. He states “The format of the reports has paid real dividends in designing the plans.”

Advice to Peers:

Coates advises anyone embarking on a business continuity automation project to ensure that they have senior level support. In the case of Edwards, the initial project was sponsored by one of the Directors. Now, business continuity has become part of the objectives for all the sites. Completing a BC plan represents 10% of everyone’s objectives. With this level of strong senior management support, BC planning becomes a very visible activity that can become part of the daily operating environment for all employees.

He further advises colleagues to spend a lot of time trolling the Internet, looking at other people’s BC plans, and to read books to get an idea of what a really good plan looks like. Based on his research, he changed his initial concept of a good BC plan – some 50-60 pages with lots of text – to a more realistic concept of short and sweet plans that are easy to understand and implement.

Final Words:

“Don’t try to shoehorn your existing business continuity plans into Shadow-Planner. Instead, take the opportunity to really evaluate what works and what doesn’t. With Shadow-Planner, you can be innovative in the way you let it work for you, as we did with our color-coded alert levels. Take advantage of the Shadow-Planner flexibility to review and revise your BC plans, safe in the knowledge that they will provide a basis for sustainable business continuity well into the future,” says Coates.