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13 March 2009
When the siren sounds
Country: UK
Emergency planning and business continuity are increasingly important for ports.
Felicity Landon reports
Suppose a laden tanker collided with another vessel in your harbour, leading to injuries, fire, explosion and pollution. Imagine your port control centre was hit by freak flooding. Or there was a total power failure for a week. Or 75% of your staff were laid up in a flu pandemic. How would the rest of the team cope? Would they be found frantically flipping through emergency response manuals and wondering who to contact, or would the port’s emergency planning strategy swing seamlessly into action?
“Most ports will have emergency plans that will take several different formats – i.e. separate ones for pollution, collision, etc,” says David Faulkner, marine manager at consultant Eagle Lyon Pope. “But in amongst all of them, there has to be a common theme. Staff should be able to pick this up and know which way to go with it. They should know their way around in the event of an emergency, because that is the very time when you really need to know.
“They don’t want to be scrabbling through books deciding ‘what am I supposed to be doing here’.”
Perhaps in years past emergency planning was somewhat neglected in ports, says Mr Faulkner, but today the whole area of risk assessment, emergency planning and business continuity only grows in importance – partly because of increasing legislation that expects port authorities to be able to respond proactively to a crisis.
Some ports keep the exercise largely in-house; others bring in outside consultants. “Obviously each port is unique,” he says. “Some handle tankers and some do not. Some have no tugs stationed in the port, others have 20 tugs. Size of vessels comes into it as well. These issues clearly make a big difference in how geared up you must be and your response capability.
“But the only way to plan for emergencies is to go through everything – start from scratch, assess the risk and plan.”
An outside perspective can be a clear advantage here, he says: “If you have been in any job or environment for many years, you can sometimes miss the obvious. You can keep tripping over the same thing day after day – and it isn’t until someone points out that you are going to fall over one day, that you move whatever it is that’s in the way.”
At the UK's Port of London Authority (PLA), a gold-silver-bronze system is in place for managing emergencies in a crisis.
Steve Taylor, the PLA’s contingencies manager, whose responsibilities include business continuity, explains: “A dedicated ‘gold’ strategic facility at Gravesend would be used in the event of a major incident in which strategic decisions are required. We have two dedicated ‘silver’ facilities, which would be used for tactical decision-making. And within the structure we have arrangements to put a ‘bronze’ facility in place, at operational level – this would be located dependent on type and location of emergency.
“The whole thing is a constant process of renewal and updating. We have an annual programme of training events and hold regular exercises. We have a group of volunteers from our staff ready to provide admin support and back-up to operational staff if we had an emergency incident.”
Meanwhile, UK-based consultant and training service provider Emergency Planning Solutions (EPS) is working on its first specifically port-related project, although it has had port staff attending its training courses over the years.
“Our experience gained from working with the port is that there is a serious approach to emergency planning and a desire and willingness to ensure good cooperation with the emergency services and local authorities as well,” says Alan Elwood, EPS director, business continuity services. “As to why ports should conduct emergency planning, this is straightforward.
“Emergency events can and do happen – look at the Stena Line HSS incident [on the Irish Sea service] in January, for example. Ports need to be clear on what it is that they would do in an emergency situation, how would they interface with the emergency services, what is the command and control structure required, how will they look after passengers once ashore, how will they cater for the friends and family of survivors arriving at the scene and, importantly, how can they get their business up and running again and, in so doing, look after their clients?
“Throw into the mix the need to deal effectively with the press and the requirement to satisfy legal or regulatory issues, and you can see clearly the requirement to plan and, perhaps more fundamental than that, to exercise in a multi-agency fashion.”
EPS, which provides emergency planning and business continuity management across Europe and Africa, works with both public and private sector, including governments, local authorities, airports and legal firms.
Its current port project includes designing, developing and delivering an exercise to validate the port’s own emergency response capability and enhance “interoperability” with emergency services, local authorities, government departments and ferry companies.
Reproduced by kind permission of Port Strategy at www.portstrategy.com.
13 March 2009
When the siren sounds
Country: UK
Emergency planning and business continuity are increasingly important for ports.
Felicity Landon reports
Suppose a laden tanker collided with another vessel in your harbour, leading to injuries, fire, explosion and pollution. Imagine your port control centre was hit by freak flooding. Or there was a total power failure for a week. Or 75% of your staff were laid up in a flu pandemic. How would the rest of the team cope? Would they be found frantically flipping through emergency response manuals and wondering who to contact, or would the port’s emergency planning strategy swing seamlessly into action?
“Most ports will have emergency plans that will take several different formats – i.e. separate ones for pollution, collision, etc,” says David Faulkner, marine manager at consultant Eagle Lyon Pope. “But in amongst all of them, there has to be a common theme. Staff should be able to pick this up and know which way to go with it. They should know their way around in the event of an emergency, because that is the very time when you really need to know.
“They don’t want to be scrabbling through books deciding ‘what am I supposed to be doing here’.”
Perhaps in years past emergency planning was somewhat neglected in ports, says Mr Faulkner, but today the whole area of risk assessment, emergency planning and business continuity only grows in importance – partly because of increasing legislation that expects port authorities to be able to respond proactively to a crisis.
Some ports keep the exercise largely in-house; others bring in outside consultants. “Obviously each port is unique,” he says. “Some handle tankers and some do not. Some have no tugs stationed in the port, others have 20 tugs. Size of vessels comes into it as well. These issues clearly make a big difference in how geared up you must be and your response capability.
“But the only way to plan for emergencies is to go through everything – start from scratch, assess the risk and plan.”
An outside perspective can be a clear advantage here, he says: “If you have been in any job or environment for many years, you can sometimes miss the obvious. You can keep tripping over the same thing day after day – and it isn’t until someone points out that you are going to fall over one day, that you move whatever it is that’s in the way.”
At the UK's Port of London Authority (PLA), a gold-silver-bronze system is in place for managing emergencies in a crisis.
Steve Taylor, the PLA’s contingencies manager, whose responsibilities include business continuity, explains: “A dedicated ‘gold’ strategic facility at Gravesend would be used in the event of a major incident in which strategic decisions are required. We have two dedicated ‘silver’ facilities, which would be used for tactical decision-making. And within the structure we have arrangements to put a ‘bronze’ facility in place, at operational level – this would be located dependent on type and location of emergency.
“The whole thing is a constant process of renewal and updating. We have an annual programme of training events and hold regular exercises. We have a group of volunteers from our staff ready to provide admin support and back-up to operational staff if we had an emergency incident.”
Meanwhile, UK-based consultant and training service provider Emergency Planning Solutions (EPS) is working on its first specifically port-related project, although it has had port staff attending its training courses over the years.
“Our experience gained from working with the port is that there is a serious approach to emergency planning and a desire and willingness to ensure good cooperation with the emergency services and local authorities as well,” says Alan Elwood, EPS director, business continuity services. “As to why ports should conduct emergency planning, this is straightforward.
“Emergency events can and do happen – look at the Stena Line HSS incident [on the Irish Sea service] in January, for example. Ports need to be clear on what it is that they would do in an emergency situation, how would they interface with the emergency services, what is the command and control structure required, how will they look after passengers once ashore, how will they cater for the friends and family of survivors arriving at the scene and, importantly, how can they get their business up and running again and, in so doing, look after their clients?
“Throw into the mix the need to deal effectively with the press and the requirement to satisfy legal or regulatory issues, and you can see clearly the requirement to plan and, perhaps more fundamental than that, to exercise in a multi-agency fashion.”
EPS, which provides emergency planning and business continuity management across Europe and Africa, works with both public and private sector, including governments, local authorities, airports and legal firms.
Its current port project includes designing, developing and delivering an exercise to validate the port’s own emergency response capability and enhance “interoperability” with emergency services, local authorities, government departments and ferry companies.
Reproduced by kind permission of Port Strategy at www.portstrategy.com.
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