The Project:
To enhance the current Emergency Management and Continuity of Operations (EMCO) Program for Carleton University that will address the university’s current operational risk environment and align with industry best practice.

Why is Carleton University doing this?
In order to meet its service delivery mandates and the expectations of students, faculty and staff, Carleton needs to have contingency and continuity plans in place in the event that classrooms, buildings, research facilities and/or campus services are not accessible following a major interruption.
These plans will allow the university to continue holding classes, conduct research and provide the minimum required support services when it’s not “business as usual” on campus. These plans will take into account the risk to the institution and the Carleton community, based on the level of risk, severity of the disruption, and the anticipated length of time to return to normal.

Project Objectives:

• Clarify the conceptual breadth and depth of Emergency Management and Continuity of Operations (EMCO) at Carleton University
• Provide a status report on current EMCO capabilities at Carleton
• Develop high-level plans for key operations, and build a preliminary framework for the development of subsequent plans
• Propose a way ahead to help Carleton address the current operational risk environment and to align with industry best practice in EMCO
• Provide guidance to implement Carleton’s EMCO program

How are these plans going to be developed?
The bulk of the project labour will come from students in the MIPIS (Master of Infrastructure Protection and International Security) program. The project teams, under the tutelage of MIPIS faculty and trusted volunteer professionals, will interview stakeholders from academic, research and administrative areas including deans, directors and chairs, as well as representative groups of teaching faculty, heads of key research projects and key administrative managers.

Collation and analysis conducted by project teams will be conducted with, and confirmed by, stakeholders and senior management, after which the information will be used to develop contingency plans (emergency management plans, business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans for IT) tailored to each department/unit based on the information gathered.

What do you do when you are first contacted by the EMCO team?
When you are first contacted by the EMCO team, please review the email and preparatory questions, and decide who from your unit can best discuss how you conduct your day-today business. The Student Team Lead will send your Point of Contact (POC) a list of questions for you to consider and make some crib notes. These questions essentially will get you thinking about the key business processes that you perform and the impact if you could no longer perform them at your normal work site or in the timelines set by your manager, and what resources you might need to perform the critical sub-set of your business functions, at an alternate site.

What can you expect during the interview/workshop?
The interview team, comprising a student and an advisor, or two students (one of whom is experienced in business continuity planning), will brief you further on the objectives of the workshop and the scope of the project. They will then systematically walk you through a series of more comprehensive questions going into further detail from the ones that you considered prior to the workshop, with the goal of determining the key functions of your department/unit, what resources are needed and what inter-dependencies you have with other units, as well as any legislative, policy, physical or operational boundaries that are involved in that work.

Why are the interviewers asking me similar questions, or questions which I consider to be the same for most units?
Be assured that there is a reason for each question being asked in the manner that is presented to you. This is necessary to verify and validate information, as well as to put the information received into the proper perspective to populate the EMCO business impact assessment (BIA) spreadsheet. Your frank and complete answers will assist the understanding of the students, and also facilitate information collation and analysis.

The reason that seemingly obvious questions, or questions that are applicable to most units, are being asked is two-fold: first, as part of due diligence the project wants all units to have the opportunity to contribute their requirements, and also to contribute to the overall campus-wide effort; second, the interviewers will use your answers to ask follow-up or clarifying questions to meet the information requirements of different portions of the BIA spreadsheet. Please bear with us, there is a method to our line of questioning!

What is the impact if my unit does not participate in the BIA information-gathering phase?
We will not be able to include your key business functions in our analysis, so they cannot be prioritized and we cannot guarantee that you will be provided with the necessary resources to recover after a major interruption. Your business processes will be relegated to priority 3 “Best Effort” and we will assist you when we can, after the higher priority business processes have been addressed.

EMCO Project Timeline:
EMCO is a two-year project made up of two phases. The project began in March 2012.

What can you and your faculty/department do to help?

• Communicate to all staff about the project
• Encourage participation
• Participate in verification and validation of iterative deliverables
• Assist project team in development of Business Continuity Plans (BCPs)
• Review your department/faculty activities and business functions. Consider the provided preparatory questions
• Attend interviews/workshops as required
• Verify teams’ findings as part of your validation

How can you take a more active role in the project?
Contact the Technical Advisor, Wayne Boone, at ext. 6672 or wayne_boone@carleton.ca if you can spare some time to get trained and participate as an interviewer/scribe. We have a lot of workshops to do and could use your help.