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TDG: The Benefits of BS 25999 Registration

Summary

Needs

• To protect the business from risk by the threat of disruption
• Ensure that solid plans are put in place to provide business continuity and assurance of supply in the event of disaster
• To demonstrate best practice to customers.

Benefits

• Provided greater understanding of difficulties that could arise
• Company now has full confidence in providing business continuity in the event of crisis
• Gained competitive edge in the marketplace.

Background

TDG plc has become the first logistics company in the world to achieve a certification to the new Business Continuity Management Standard, BS 25999.

The company is one of Europe's leading supply chain management companies and has 7,000 employees across 120 sites in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Holland and Belgium. Its head office is in London.

TDG plc is responsible for the seamless movement of goods and materials for its customers. Logistics and supply chain management involves getting goods to wherever in the world they are needed, on time, every time.

Customer Needs

Following a review of their approach to Business Continuity Management (BCM), TDG took the decision to run a pilot project designed to provide one operation with a Business Continuity Management System (BCMS), developed and implemented following the BS 25999 code of practice.

The project had three objectives: To obtain early certification to the BS 25999 standard, to develop and implement an effective BCMS system for a site representative of a ‘normal' TDG operation, and to develop a revised Business Continuity Management strategy for the company taking account of experiences learned along the way.

The first step was to develop a better understanding of current business continuity thinking and use it to develop a detailed project plan.

"The best piece of advice I got was to keep things simple and follow the BS 25999 code of practice sequentially in developing the system," said Simon Beesley, the company's Business Continuity Manager. "My research sometimes led me to explore different routes and methodologies but in the end I always came back to the code of practice as the methodology that made the most sense."

What was involved

With a plan agreed, TDG plc decided that its facility at Rugby would be the best site to work with. This is the national distribution centre for general merchandise products for one of the UK's top supermarkets, J Sainsbury.

The project kicked off with an overview of the project aims and objectives, at which point everyone on the team realised that there is more to BCM than following existing emergency procedures.

Team members listed every activity they undertook, the frequency, the services or processes supported by the activity and the perceived importance of the activity in terms of supplying products to Sainsbury's stores. This resulted in more than 80 separate activities being detailed on post-it notes.

These were then sequenced in order to demonstrate the interdependencies between activities, something which enabled the function heads to see a far broader picture than the one they manage on a day-to-day basis. From this, the team identified eighteen core activities which had to happen to fulfil demand from Sainsbury's stores, and these became the focus for the business impact analysis (BIA) process.

Working closely with the Sainsbury's team allowed TDG plc to understand the issues created not just for customers in stores but also for colleagues in other areas of the supply chain and within the head office functions.

The final step of the BIA process was the catagorisation of the criticality of each activity, which enabled the company to confirm the sequence for recovering activities following a disruption.

With data from a number of sources including the risk registers for surrounding counties and the knowledge of site personnel, TDG plc began the risk assessment process. Using its standard risk assessment matrix, each potential event was assessed firstly against the likelihood of occurrence and then against the scale of the impact it would have on the operation's ability to deliver products to stores.

Using the best practice and compulsory elements of the existing incident management plan, a new plan was developed. This included an overall plan used for the management of all incidents, supported by a second level of incident-specific plans covering a wide range of disruptions detailing the procedures to be followed in specific circumstances. Throughout the process TDG worked closely with personnel from Sainsbury's.

The hardest plan to write was for the loss of access. While the individual processes used within the operation were already documented, there was no record of the steps that were required to source, equip and fill a 300,000 sq, ft warehouse.

Once all of the plans had been written, they were reviewed by a cross section of employees from different departments. There were numerous suggestions as to how the plans should be improved, and by listening to and acting upon this feedback TDG strengthened the involvement from employees and gave them a further sense of ownership for the plans.

The final part of TDG's project plan was the BSI assessment. Undertaken over three days, it rigorously examined not only the documentation but the way the system had been implemented.

Five months after the project had started, all elements of the plans had been exercised and a rolling twelve month plan agreed which would ensure both the plans and the role-holders would undergo further exercises on a regular basis.

The system will be audited every six months, with key components being reviewed on each audit and the remainder every second visit.

The outcome of these audits will be just one of many inputs into the six-monthly management review process. The output of the first review at Rugby generated a site BCMS improvement plan, capturing all improvement actions required that relate to the BCMS, their owners and due dates. This, allied to the site BCMS calendar, documents all activities that are planned, in progress and completed, so allowing the Senior Management Team to get a BCM snapshot at any point in time.

Benefits of BS 25999 Certification

TDG gained a greater understanding of the possible difficulties that could arise, and has been able to put in place plans for these situations: "For example, the risk assessment showed that we would need to cover not just loss of IT, but also loss of people, skills and access-to-site in our business continuity plan," Mr. Beesley explained.

Achieving the certification has also given TDG a competitive edge: "Our major clients such as supermarket retailers have long insisted that we prove we have solid plans in place to provide business continuity and thus assurance of supply. Now that we have BSI's certificate, proving that fact is considerably easier. We will now be insisting on it from our suppliers and expect it to be widely adopted throughout our industry," said Mr. Beesley.

BSI's Role

Mr. Beesley said: "BSI has been very helpful throughout the whole process and kept us right on track. They were always able to provide assistance where we needed it. It has been a steep learning curve for us, but one which has been incredibly rewarding. Not only does the site have a robust system that everyone connected with the operation is aware of, but the management team's understanding of their business has been broadened by the process. At times the task seemed daunting but we worked methodically and carefully, and are absolutely delighted with the BS 25999 award."

During the certification process the company was advised by Julian Thrussell, BSI Management System's BS 25999 product manager. BSI undertook a gap analysis audit to compare what TDG had done to date and its subsequent project plan, against the BS 25999 code of practice.

Mr. Thrussell said: "This gave us confidence that TDG was heading in the right direction from a registration perspective, and that the standard was workable."

Having achieved certification for its Rugby facility, the company is now looking at obtaining certification at five more of its sites.