Business Continuity: ESB signs up for emergency accommodation!

Ever wonder what you would do if your normal place of work in ESB was destroyed or rendered inaccessible for several days or even weeks?

These may be low-risk scenarios, but 'denial of access' is certainly not unthinkable. Just ask your colleagues in Newcastlewest (flooding) or Clanwilliam House (power loss) about their experiences within the past 18 months. The impact on day to day business and general staff life could be quite severe in the absence of a well conceived contingency plan. Luckily, most of you don’t have to worry unduly about such unsavoury possibilities. However, it is a central issue within ESB’s busy Business Continuity (BC) Management programme where a new 'hot site' contract has recently been negotiated with Hewlett Packard.

The concept of a hot site has been at the heart of our BC planning for many years now. In a nutshell, it involves ESB contracting with a specialist third party for the right to move selected personnel to a well equipped 'walk in' building within hours of a major incident. The latest contract with HP provides for a minimum guaranteed occupancy of 90 days.

ESB’s main hot site facility is based in Swords in Dublin and is well known around the Business Units due to the many BC exercises conducted there each year. Now, for the first time, a second hot site is included in the contract, located in Marina Commercial Park in Cork.