Enhancing enterprise resilience in the commercial facilities sector

This paper examines the important role that appropriate technologies — anchored on the foundation of a comprehensive, integrated business continuity management and emergency preparedness programme — have in reducing the impacts of disasters on business and industry and the communities they serve. The paper examines the planning framework in which private sector planners operate to effectively design, train, equip and exercise for ‘enterprise resilience’. Lessons learned in the past decade of disasters demonstrate the vital role that the private sector plays in recovery, restoration and continuity of communities. Enormous resources have been applied to improve public safety, however, the private sector has benefited less significantly from these coordinated efforts. The paper focuses on the preparedness challenges in the commercial facilities sector, which operates on the principle of ‘open public access’. The reader will take away a better understanding of the mission, roles, responsibilities, equipment and technologies supporting various types of private sector command centres. They will recognise the emerging need for a technology test and evaluation capability, ie a strategic enterprise resilience centre, as a resource to enable better informed, cost-effective decisions that guide specification, acquisition and integration of technologies for infrastructure security.