One Agency, One Approach
Client : Environment Agency
Overview
The Environment Agency is the leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in England and Wales. As its chairman Sir John Harman puts it, "It's our job to make sure that air, land and water are looked after by everyone in today's society, so that tomorrow's generations inherit a cleaner, healthier world".
The Business Requirement
The Environment Agency wanted its business continuity process to be consistent across the whole organisation, yet sufficiently flexible to ensure that its plans keep pace with the ever-changing nature of its environmental monitoring and regulatory roles. With 12,000 staff spread across more than 100 locations, and with such a diversity of business activities, this presented some very difficult challenges.
Before it could manage business continuity effectively the Environment Agency needed to fully explore its business priorities, but was uncertain how to tackle the problem on such a vast scale.
The Solution
Garrison Continuity was selected because of its experience in developing and implementing simple, robust business continuity frameworks that work. Within a few months, critical business activities had been assessed across the organisation and priorities were signed off by directors. Garrison was able to design a framework that achieved the key objectives of consistency and flexibility, while ensuring that the Environment Agency's process would align with BS25999, the emerging standard for business continuity.
Given the client's extensive property portfolio, the selection of an in-house recovery solution was straightforward. However, developing the recovery plans required to support the complex mix of functions and locations presented more of a challenge. Garrison designed a framework to fit the bill and trained over 300 staff in the business continuity planning skills needed to produce quality plans.
