As much as we can try to avoid disruptive events and emergencies, we can’t always prevent them.
Sometimes these events are emergencies that need immediate action to ensure safety of our customers and staff and sometimes they are events that disrupt our business. Sometimes they are both. You can see how [PDF, 177 KB] we decide what we are dealing with and what we do.
Disruptions to business can be caused by equipment failures, loss of supplied services, loss of utilities, unavailable staff, deliberate action or natural disasters.
In those instances we need to ensure the Transport Agency has the back up systems and processes in place to ensure we can keep our essential business functions going – this is business continuity planning.
We have developed business continuity plans for each Highways and Network Operations office location, integrating them with emergency response plans and incident management plans at those offices.
Each plan outlines the critical functions, the way in which we would expect them to be affected depending on the type of event, who the key stakeholders are, what the likely impacts are, and what contingencies we have in place to respond.
The plans also clarify what key decisions need to be made, where those responsibilities sit, and who the primary and alternate contacts are within the Agency for each area of responsibility.
By mid 2017 all the plans will have been completed and we will be running ongoing tests of these to ensure they stay current and are fit for purpose.
There is also an example of our business continuity plan template [DOCX, 94 KB].
For further information contact resilience@nzta.govt.nz.
