Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Planning

This client, TfL, has more than 60 buildings in central London. Within these buildings, the internal equipment and the staff they house are critical to the running of London. If the building that houses the control centre for London’s traffic-lights goes down, London grinds to a halt. The same applies to the tube network. TfL buildings house command and control centres both for the city and national disaster management and the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR). The importance of these facilities cannot be overstated.

Some project highlights:

• S2 became part of the main TfL 2012 Olympics preparation team

• Presented with a high risk ‘insurmountable challenge’

• Pragmatic ‘big picture’ approach popular with all on 2012 Olympic project

• Task completed in five weeks after two high profile consultants had failed to deliver this in over 3 years

S2 began working with TfL via our connection with MITIE Engineering and MITIE Technical Facilities Management. MITIE’s element of the overall operational risk was significant and critical. In this way, we became a key part of the main TfL 2012 Olympics preparation team.

There had been a number of parties assigned to putting together Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery Plans (BCP & DRP) for the Olympic Games. As the games approached, TfL and The London Organising Committee Of The Olympic & Paralympic Games (LOCOG) reviewed the plans and decided that they were not adequate or realistic. The main focus was too much on detail, yet the wider strategic perspective had been neglected and poor communication was blamed. S2, already engaged in H&S, quality management and training systems via MITIE, were asked to help. Time was extremely limited, with only 6 weeks to go to the games. We were told it was an ‘insurmountable challenge’. S2 put forward a pragmatic, planned proposal, which was immediately accepted. We began work straight away and continued for 7 days a week for 4 weeks, finishing a week ahead of the deadline. During the games, everything ran smoothly as the detailed processes had largely been covered.

This is an example of how a small company can make a huge impact on a large and critical project, where high profile consultancies had failed to deliver over a long period.