Business Continuity and Disaster Preparedness Plan Development (BC/DP):
This project is designed to assist you in your understanding of how a simple Business Continuity/Disaster Preparedness Plan is engineered from the ground up. It requires you to think through the various steps involved in planning for and recovering from a disaster related occurrence. You will have your hand in designing and developing a plan that will assist a small business in the case of a disaster.
You are the IT Manager at __________ enterprises. This business could be a grocery store, insurance office, convenience store, restaurant, clinic, etc. Depending on the type of business you choose, you will need to think of any and all related disasters that could affect the business (i.e., flood, hurricane, fire, robery) and provide the related information requested in the template. Think about the flood that Phoenix is experienced in the Fall of 2014 and consider this in your document. This is a once in a lifetime event no one expected, or maybe never even prepared for, but it happened. Stuff happens, and your job is to protect your assets and resources and get them up and running again.
Please use the “Ready Business” sample plan template (available from the Department of Homeland Security at: https://www.fema.gov/media-library/assets/documents/89510Links to an external site. Note: The fields in the pdf document are interactive so they can be filled out. There are many fields in the document that you will fill in fictitious names, locations, etc. Have fun with this part of the plan. I encourage you to think through the information that goes into such a document. There are many items than can easily be missed and it is important that you spend extra time and effort in completing it. One approach is to think about the 5 W’s and H as you work through the questions. I also recommend completing the plan independent of each other (if in groups of 2), comparing the two plans, and taking the best from each.
I have also attached a copy of the template in MS Word for those who prefer to work in MS Word.
