operations
Lightning never strikes twice?
Smart thinking
Best practice
Doublé play
What'sNewS Issue 4 July/August 2001 I I
delay, the London BCP has now been re-
fined and the sensitivity of the trigger in-
creased by stipulating that any incident
should be notified within 15 minutes, and
that the Crisis Management Team should
have responded to the report within 90
minutes. In this respect at least,
the incident was actually more
useful than an exercise. It tested
precisely the area - crisis recogni-
tion - which an artificial disconti-
nuity scenario has most trouble
replicating - the slow transforma-
tion of a norrnal working day into
a crisis event. Van Waveren: 'Basi-
cally you've got to report the fire
in the chip pan, not wait until the
kitchen is on fire.'
Should any further proof of the
importance of an early response to
an incident have been needed,
there was not long to wait. Even
before the London crisis had been
finally resolved, a further test of
RI's BCP planning was being pre-
pared - this time in Utrecht. On Utrecht
Thursday 16 November the
Utrecht BCP was still in its preparatory
phase. Fortunately, IT infrastructure
computer service's Toon Leijtens was
closely involved in the preparatory consul-
tations. Consequently when he reported
for work at 07.30 and heard that there
had been a problem with the DEVON
system he immediately convened an ad
hoe BCP crisis management team while
setting about tracing the fault and reboot-
ing the system ready for business opening
at 09.00.
By 08.30, DEVON had been re-booted
and seemed to be operating normally. The
opening of business however revealed that
the system would only access 15 of its
usual 150 logons. Fortunately, with the
's Johan van Waveren(l), Jeanette Daals, and Toon
crisis management team - comprising Lei
jtens, his line-manager, the DEVON chief
of competence, the operations manager
and representatives from all the businesses
- already in place, a decision to give prior-
ity to payments and settlements could be
quickly authorized. The crisis team then
set about drawing up plans for a worst
case scenario enabling the office to survive
through to the weekend and create a fixed
environment ready for opening on Mon-
day. 'Fortunately an engineer found a
problem with the configuration which
meant that after a second crisis team
meeting that afternoon we were able to
fix the problem and return to business as
usual the same day,' says Leijtens. Van
Waveren concludes: 'It's not the severity
of the crisis, hut the fact that
developments were continually
monitored by the crisis manage
ment team so that appropriate
decisions could be taken as soon
as they became necessary - that's
the important lesson from
Utrecht.'
'To a certain extent it was com-
mon sense plus experience from
earlier incidents which led me to
set up the crisis management
team,' says Leijtens. Which is as it
should be, adds Van Waveren.
'The BCP is essentially a formal-
ization of best practices so that
they are always available when
and where they are needed.' That
process is currently being under-
Leijtens taken by Janette Daals, Utrecht's
BCP officer. 'At the moment the
third drafts of the plans compiled by the
individual departments are being reviewed
and the majority are in the midst of being
finalized - they're just waiting on final ap-
proval. Over the summer we'11 be dotting
the i's and crossing the t's, but by then the
BCP safety net should basically be in
place.
For reports on the London and Utrecht
incidents check the Intranet at
http://bcp. rabobank.com
continued from page 8
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ing between each part of the chain), global
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