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AN APPRAISAL OF BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN BY FACILITIES MANAGERS IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1       BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

While governments, not-for-profit institutions, and non-governmental organisations also deliver critical services, private organisations must continuously deliver products and services to satisfy shareholders and to survive. Although they differ in goals and functions, business continuity planning (BCP) can be applied by all governments.

Elliot et al (1999) defines business continuity planning as identifying an organisation’s exposure to internal and external threats and synthesizes hard and soft assets to provide effective prevention and recovery for the organisation, while maintaining competitive advantage and value system integrity.

There is much misunderstanding of business continuity management (BCM) and as yet no commonly practiced methodology for the assessment of an organisation in this regard (Honour 2001). Elliot et al (1999) noted that there is no structured implementation of capabilities to directly address the risks presented to us in the modern world. These newly emphasized risks in partnership with the inherent vulnerabilities resulting from the lack of a structured approach to BCM calls for a more robust and measurable means of protecting our continuity management that is continuity assurance.

As the name implies, continuity assurance is concerned with actively planning to avert the threat or reduce from the act, though this recovery is implicit in the approach detailed in this work.

1.2       PROBLEM STATEMENT

Management of facilities in developing countries like Nigeria is replete with a lot of problems. Prominent among them is the disruption of business operations, delays, ineffective or poor quality service. This is due to lack of clear understanding of those organisations risk profile or portfolio and absence of proactive measures that will ensure the continuation of critical business operations. As a result of the aforementioned, this affects the organisations in many ways, e.g. service provision is poor or substandard, profit maximization is seriously affected and the reputation of the organisation is equally affected, etc.

1.3       JUSTIFICATION OF THE STUDY

Emergency Preparedness and Business Continuity is one out of the eleven (11) core competencies in the management of facilities. This needs a holistic study of the core competencies to see ways and means for effective facilities management. Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is suppose to be properly put in place for any business to strife, be it small, medium or big.

It is in the light of the above that a critical look at plans that are supposed to be put in place by FM for business to continue and also to mitigate any negative effect of any disaster on the organisation.

It is an acknowledged fact that one of the important and necessary conduction for smooth successful and effective management of any facility devoid of any interruption that may have far reaching impact on the organization is the putting in place proactive measure to ensure the continuation of critical activities considering the facilities management practice in Nigeria (being at the development stage) a feedback system is needed or information is needed on how this important activities were undertaken especially the approach adopted, (1) quality of the plan, (2) how they are implemented and (3) problems relating to the implementation and above all the quality of human resource who prepares and implement (facilities management) this will enable the facilities management practice to benefit from such results.

1.4       AIM AND OBJECTIVES

1.4.1    Aim

The aim of this project is to evaluate the business continuity plans prepared by facilities manager in Nigeria with a view to providing guidelines and procedures for an orderly and timely business continuance.

1.4.2    Objectives

a)    To study how BCP is used in the management of facilities in Nigeria.

b)   To determine the factors affecting the effective use of BCP in management of facilities by comparing (a) above.

c)   To assess the perception of stakeholders/facilities managers on how BCP can promote effective management of facilities.

1.5       METHODOLOGY  

The methods used could be summarized under the following sub-headings:

1.5.1        Literature Review

Review of related literature on the subject using magazines, journals, conference proceedings, internet, interviews, etc. This was done in order to articulate existing knowledge on principles, procedures and practice of undertaking business continuity planning in facilities management.