Business Continuity in the Resources Industry

Natural disasters, epidemics, industrial action, the rise of political and sovereign risk and other unforseen events can strike anywhere at any time with little or no warning. Recovering from one can be stressful, expensive and time consuming, particularly when no plans have been made to deal with such possibilities. In a period of increased volatility and uncertainty in the global environment, the speed of business change makes the need for a more dynamic way of responding to crises ever more important-including developing organizational resilience capability and the people skills needed to take control of unexpected events. More importantly, the implications vary from one industry to another, and the resources industry has its own specific set of challenges. In the mining and oil and gas industries, particular emphasis shifts to the resilience and recoverability of key plant and equipment, together with the technical personnel and specialised computer applications that support the continuance of the supply of products.

As such, it is important for businesses to have pandemic strategies, crisis response and business continuity plans in place. The event will look at some of the key areas impacting business continuity such as: Industrial action Epidemics Natural disasters Disaster recovery Political and sovereign risk In turn, these incidents have an effect on: Supply chain management Business planning Financial management and minimising loss Process control and technological systems Risk, incident and emergency management Security issues - the physical security of mine sites/oil and gas sites & information, community & environmental issues.