A business continuity plan is the least expensive tool a company can use to prepare for disasters.

A business continuity plan is very similar to a disaster recovery plan and often both documents are combined, but while the disaster recovery plan focuses on recovering after a disaster, the objective of the business continuity plan is to ensure that a business can continue until the recovery is achieved.

Essentially, the business continuity plan is a reference document that contains all the necessary information to deal with an emergency situation affecting the business.

The business continuity plan needs to assess what is going to happen during an emergency. For example: What will be affected by power outages and how can this be dealt with? What happens if traffic is shut down? How do you operate without certain equipment? How do you access important contact information?

Where do people meet when the office is inaccessible and how can everybody be contacted?

The plan first needs to identify the key personnel without whom the business cannot function. For each person, a method of contact must be devised for a situation when the normal means of communication such as phone, email or pager are not available during an emergency.

The plan should also identify which members of staff can work from home and ensure that those members who are absolutely critical can work from a home office.

All external contacts that are essential for the operation of the business, such as suppliers and contractors need to be documented. This list should also include legal counsel, IT support, banking contacts, utility companies, police and hospitals.

The plan must further list critical equipment, including personal computers, laptops, servers, software and corresponding back-ups.

Critical documents should also be included, from legal documents, banking details and documents, to utility bills, leases, tax returns and human resources documentation.

As a next step, the plan will explore contingency options for replacing equipment or determine alternative premises from which to operate the business.

The crucial part of the business continuity plan will describe in detail what needs to be done, when should be done, who should do it and how it will be executed. Each responsibility must therefore be assigned to an individual and for each person all the responsibilities should be listed, so it can be easily determined who is responsible for a specific duty.

It is important to communicate and familiarise everybody in the organisation with the plan and test it regularly.

Testing the plan will mean a visit to the contingency site, checking the contact phone numbers and making arrangements to set up equipment, etc.

When things go wrong, and they are likely to, the plan needs to be adapted and retested.