Noted American statesman Benjamin Franklin is famous for many sayings. One of his most-often quoted, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” has particular resonance for business continuity professionals and not only because he made the statement in regard to fire prevention.

Today, an “ounce of prevention” has many meanings and has become a mantra of the medical profession. At the nexus where the medical field meets business continuity is a hot-button topic – pandemic preparedness.

The threat of a pandemic is nothing new. In the past few years we’ve heard of monkey pox, SARS and West Nile Virus. In terms of human history, pandemics happen rather frequently. Major influenza pandemics were recorded in 1918, 1957 and 1968. The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed an estimated 20 – 50 million people worldwide. Infectious disease experts think the world is “due” for another major outbreak.

The current virus that is causing the most concern is the avian or bird flu. It is caused by Influenza viruses that occur naturally among birds. A type of avian flu, known as H5N1 (pictured to the right) is of most concern. As of May 31, 2006, H5N1 has been detected in 37 countries on three continents and has infected 224 people, 127 of which have died.

Currently, there are limited clusters of H5N1 being transmitted from human to human. Should it evolve, however, it could become a pandemic. While the probability that H5N1 can mutate into a pandemic is still relatively low when compared to other risks an organization may face, its impact could be huge.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has speculated that between two and 7.4 million deaths could occur worldwide. In addition, if H5N1 (or some other disease) was to reach pandemic status, it could cause significant disruptions to businesses and organizations worldwide. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted that H5N1 could cause a “sharp but only temporary decline” in the world economy. The IMF further advised businesses to step up their continuity planning in the face of this threat.

While many believe the threat may be overblown, to business continuity planners, it is a real issue, one that they have been dealing with for the better part of a year now.

“We started in mid-2005,” said Bob Cornelius, Director of Business Continuity with Constellation Energy, referring to the energy company’s pandemic preparedness efforts. “We were watching the situation and decided the threat had elevated to the point where we had to mitigate the risk.”

To begin, Cornelius formed a Flu Pandemic Planning Team, which consists of business continuity planners and medical staff. The teams’ first task was collecting as much relevant and accurate information as possible.

“We met with infectious disease experts and the heads of (local, state and federal) health departments,” he said. “If you are a critical infrastructure provider, you need to deal with regional groups for these type of events. We had to make executive management aware. We couldn’t hype it like the media had, but we needed to present facts and planning assumptions to show the potential impact to our operations and stakeholders. We have had a great amount of support from our leadership.”

Gaining senior executive support and building their awareness is important, but deciding how to build the plan and what resources will be needed is also a key aspect of pandemic preparedness. Pre-defining how work will be accomplished and how services or products will be delivered to customers in the event of an outbreak provides the “ounce of protection” rather than the “pound of cure.”

“Whether your strategy is transfer of operations to another location, work at home, shutdown operations, curtail travel or a combination of all of these and more, the BCP organization, along with executive and senior management need to be prepared to execute these plans when specifically defined event triggers have been reached,” said Lee Milligan, Senior Project Leader for Strohl Systems.

Constellation Energy is devising a plan that incorporates WHO’s six stages of pandemics, pictured below. H5N1 is now in phase three.

World Health Organization’s phases of a pandemic:

“We used these (phases) as triggers to move to additional steps,” said Cornelius. “Each phase has detailed tasks and teams. We concentrated on four areas for each – awareness and communications, continuity of operations, development of policies and equipment and facilities. Our existing business continuity plans in LDRPS had previously identified critical processes, allowing us to quickly focus the business area leaders on how to maintain operations during a pandemic event.”

“Another action trigger for your plan might be recognition of contagion within an employee’s household, or acknowledgement of a specific number of cases of illness at a company location,” said Milligan. “This information needs to be reported, tracked and acted upon and your plan should provide a process for making these decisions.”

Energy companies aren’t the only ones looking to build plans to respond to a potential pandemic. Michael W. Janko CBCP, Global Business Continuity Manager with The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, said his company has had pandemic planning teams in place since September 2005 and began actively building plans the following month. Like Cornelius, Janko went straight to the medical experts for advice.

“We’re partnering with governmental agencies, medical professionals and other organizations,” said Janko. “Sharing information with people and communications is the key.”

A potential disruption from a pandemic is quite different from natural disasters or man-made disruptions. For starters, there will probably be no damage to facilities or technology. The major issue to deal with will be high rates of employee absenteeism. Employees may be deceased, sick, caring for a sick relative or simply afraid to come to work due to the possibility of coming in contact with people who may be contagious.

Secondly, organizations need to be concerned about suppliers who may be decimated by absenteeism for the same reasons. Organizations will have to consider alternates and cross-training of personnel, teleworking procedures and revising and clarifying human resource procedures regarding absenteeism and potential travel and meeting restrictions. Alternate suppliers and work-around procedures should be considered in the planning process.

“If you are looking at the worst case scenario,” said Janko, “you have to build redundancy into everything.”

Teleworking may be key and many organizations are preparing for the increased load on systems due to many employees logging in from home.

“We are studying our systems for the capability to telework,” said Janko. “Then you have to plan that it might not work as well as anticipated. You build your plan, then realistically scale it back 30 percent to 40 percent.”

If the plan involves large numbers of employees working from home, organizations will have to ensure adequate networking power and that employees have advanced knowledge of access requirements. But network capacity is not the only concern if large numbers of employees are working from home.

“Your plan should also address facilities issues like mail and places where employees working at home can drop off and pick up information, materials, supplies and other things that they’ll need to be effective in doing their jobs,” said Milligan. “The plan should provide for technical or help desk support for the staff working at home.”

Finally, a pandemic will not be a one-time event. Pandemics usually come in waves that gain in intensity. Organizations could experience two or three waves of a pandemic, which could span the majority of a year.

“Typical events are over and done with rather quickly,” said Cornelius. “With a pandemic, the first wave can last six to eight weeks. It doesn’t hit all at one time. It could go on for months and months.”

“Your plan should be developed with the expectation that it might have to be activated more than once over a few weeks or months,” added Milligan. “Take into consideration the effect of two or more waves of pandemic and it’s affect on staff, company resources and client expectations.”

So how are BCP professionals devising plans to deal with a potential pandemic disruption? To begin with, according to Cornelius, they are building detailed plans for specific areas.

The Baltimore-based energy company is currently building detailed plans for all of their support teams such as human resources, security, facilities and IT. Cornelius noted that each area has distinct considerations when it comes to continuity planning. For example, facilities will need to line up cleaning services and acquire cleaning supplies. This will ensure that if an employee or visitor becomes ill, the facilities can be sterilized quickly to mitigate the spread of the disease.

Other materials that may need to be stockpiled include food, drinking water, cots, masks, anti-bacterial cleaners and surgical gloves. Should an organization come under quarantine either by local health officials or through voluntary isolation, planners need to have a process in place to feed and house employees. Planners should also identify several cleaning services to sanitize facilities if needed.

Human resource departments will be a crucial asset when it comes to pandemic planning. Not only will they be able to account for personnel, but they will also be able to provide assistance where needed. But, policies need to be altered before a pandemic occurs.

“HR is very key,” said Cornelius. “We need to think about policies. Employees could be sick, their family could be sick or they don’t want to come to work. This all needs to be thought about ahead of time. Also, we need to think about restrictions on meetings and travel.”

Janko said his team had been providing guidance and business continuity planning tools to Goodyear’s business continuity planners around the world. The local planners are building out the plans with more detail.

“They know their business better than I do,” he said. “Each facility has developed a very resilient plan, which is reviewed and updated as appropriate, on an on-going basis.”

As with many situations, though, most planners said accurate and timely communications are the most important aspect of planning for a pandemic. Organizations need to be able to find important information and package it to employees and other stakeholders in order to let them know how serious the threat is.

“Education and awareness for staff is extremely important,” said Milligan. “Employees need to be knowledgeable about dealing with a pandemic in their personal lives, how and when communications will take place about the situation and the steps the organization will take to mitigate the potential of a pandemic outbreak, such as providing masks, gloves, hand washing facilities and offering expanded access to health care providers.”

“You need to cascade information down to communicate with people and deal with local community services,” added Janko. “The number one key thing is communications. You need to reach everyone via multiple means and make sure you are spreading the right information. We’re in the process of doing an RFP (request for proposal) on emergency notification systems. You have to expect to have a high reliance on an emergency notification system.”

The Akron, Ohio-based tire maker has already begun testing its pandemic preparedness plans. In December, the tire maker held a tabletop exercise involving 170 participants in facilities in 15 countries. Goodyear created a scenario where a key plant in Asia was quarantined and, according to Janko, highlighted, “some key learnings that wouldn’t have come to the forefront without the exercise”. Goodyear is rolling the plan out to all of its other business units.

“You can’t mitigate it away entirely,” said Cornelius. “The whole idea is to make sure you continue to operate and keep the company running. Our take is this is a real threat. It is prudent to build plans. The feeling is that it will have a worldwide impact and the spread to the U.S. will be rapid. The probability of it happening may be low, but the impact will be high. If you don’t have plans in place, it will be extremely difficult to catch up. The time to plan is now.”