BCM Vs EM

BCM Vs EM. What's that?



If you're in the field of emergency management or emergency response long enough, you'd probably be able to guess that it literally means "Business Continuity Management versus Emergency Management". Nothing anymore complicated as that.

Have you ever come across situations where folks in our field (or maybe not) have been using these terms loosely? Having said that, is there actually a difference between these two?

For starters, we all know that Emergency Management typically resides in the field of "fast action" emergency response to a given hazard or crisis, and involves response plans and standard operating procedures for situations involving fires, floods, road traffic accidents, rescue operations, and so on (you get the idea). It is generally a subset or a niche in the management field pertaining to managing emergency response situations. Those in the EMT, fire and police organisations would be well aware of this definition and the exercises that come packaged with it.

Business Continuity Management on the other hand, has its roots starting from the commercial and banking industries, and typically involves an overall organisation-wide business continuity plan and requires various internal stakeholders as well as its associated vendors to provide a detailed response plan to support the organisation's critical business objectives (usually decided by senior management in advance). It conceptualizes that main objectives to be fulfilled by the organisation in times of identified crises such that its minimum servic edelivery standards will not be overly compromised.

In a nutshell, that's what these two fields of niche management are about. And if you're in the field of BC, you'll be well aware that "emergency management or response" will form part of your business continuity plan.

Business Continuity Management Framework: The Easy-To-Use, Comprehensive, Business Continuity Tool (third Edition, 2008)

One Week On...

It's been nearly a week plus or so, since my country initiated DORSCON Alert "Orange" and since then, has already scaled down to Alert "Yellow".

What does this mean?

Essentially, national resources would not be as strained as before, with more of these resources and other government efforts devouted to other much more critical tasks. Internally as an organisation, you can definitely say that the fear and stress level has gone down at least a few notches down.

As a emergency response division within my organisation (in case you're not aware I'm currently in the aviation industry), resumption of daily training in terms of physical aspects has also gone back up to normal level as well. However, PPE items such as BA face masks still need to be constantly sterilised and witnessed by the Station Officer.

Yep, drills are back to ops normal now.

Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope everything turns out well.

H1N1 Scaling Down of Alert Level

Currently, WHO has signalled that the current strain of influenza virus H1N1 may not be deemed as deadly as before. And judging by the symptoms shown by suspected victims in reported countries, they all seem to be in a rather "stable" and controlled condition.

Pending WHO's final decision, my country may similarly scale down on it's current DORSCON level from "Orange" status back down to "Yellow". This is essential as it will lessen the current strain on PPE resources to the Nation as well as various government agencies.

For thos of us currently in the fire stations and so on, we will constantly maintain a high state of PPE donning alert.

Hmm... hopefully it really scales down coming Monday?