Service disruption has become an increasingly expensive operational problem as the window for error is getting smaller by the year due to increasing connectivity, security requirements imposed by the authority, reliance on ICT to increase customer experience as well as natural adversities in view of climate changes. Making matters worse, such disruptions has a cascading “multiplier” effect and impact on financial “ecosystem” of many businesses in different industries.

Though business disruptions cannot be avoided, the impact and the likelihood of occurrence could be minimized if proper business continuity planning is conducted. Business continuity planning is a strategic imperative in the in every industry as any disruption would definitely cause reputational and revenue losses, customer dissatisfaction as well as creating back logs that need to be cleared within the short timeframe.

Business continuity management is more than emergency planning, it also comprises of succession planning, crisis management, business resumption and business recovery planning. Some of the more demanding challenges in doing business continuity management consulting in air transport industry is the understanding of critical business functions of the organization, the exhaustiveness of service disruption risks identification and assessment as well as planning the recovery processes in a complex operating model involving contractors, tenants, government agencies and facilities-based operators.

Though one may argue that service disruption risks are easily identified as compared to cybersecurity risks which requires a fair amount of knowledge domain, service disruption risks have several levels, starting from climate adversity, social unrest within the region, unavailability of ICT systems to a lapse in maintenance processes. The methodology deployed to identify these risks would be the one of the main determinant factors to a successful business continuity plan.

With all service disruption risks being identified, business continuity strategy needs to be carefully evaluated in a holistic manner so that informed decisions can be made. Once business continuity strategies have been devised, the business resumption and recovery plans are drawn up. Plans would remain as plans until they are tested and it is necessary for the operators to regular test their business continuity plans to ensure that the plans actually work, the people operating these plans are familiar with their responsibilities and the coordination between third parties are well oiled. The strategy of building up the business continuity readiness of the operators through regular business continuity testing serves to be the other main determinant factor to a successful business continuity plan.

Maximus has developed a robust methodology to identify critical business functions and their dependencies as well as ensuring the exhaustiveness of service disruption risk identification. Maximus has also conducted numerous business continuity tests ranging from technical recovery to crisis management. This methodology will allow the Organisation to identify its minimum business continuity objectives (MBCO), derive the maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPD) or maximum allowable outage (MAO), identification of critical business functions (CBF), derivation of recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). A risk assessment is also carried to identify the possible risks at various levels that may result in service disruption.