The Noggin Blog

Ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements is critical to your business. But crisis and business continuity planning – often mandated by law – shouldn’t be a box-ticking exercise. Unfortunately, too many firms fall into the trap. What risks do those companies face treating crisis preparedness as a compliance-first practice?

For some time now, the research points up clear challenges in interagency response to large-scale emergencies, citing delays in getting assistance and rescue underway, delays in decision making, and lack of clarity in command and control structures, etc. The key question is why, what factors explain the situation on the ground.

Eighty-four percent of organisations have a crisis management plan in place according to Deloitte’s global crisis survey, “Stronger, fitter, better.” Unfortunately, they don’t test those plans regularly.

Security incidents have become increasingly common in schools and universities. And bomb threats, in particular, are on the rise. Just look at the data.

It’s always been common for practitioners to treat safety and security as different properties – not just entities requiring different systems but distinct vocabularies and frameworks, as well. But increasingly the question is asked, how tenable is continuing to silo safety and security management? The answer: not tenable at all.

What integrated safety and security management capabilities do you need?

The story is well known. Hazardous substances were long bedrocks of the industrialized, global economy. But subsequent advances in environmental and health science caused a reevaluation of the use of hazardous waste in industry. In turn, governments installed thoroughgoing regulatory regimes to safeguard the health of workers, especially in heavy industry.

The recent Noggin User Conference in Sydney brought together consultants, technology partners, and service professionals to illustrate what a best-practice customer journey looks like, from initial gap analysis to full system implementation.

As many of you know, we decided, after a short sabbatical, to revive our User Conference initiative, so as to share best practices in safety and security management that we’ve learned over time, best practices which have also informed the development of our next-generation product, Noggin 2.0.

During an incident, emergency managers need to deploy materials, supplies, technologies, and people to the emergency site as quickly and efficiently as possible. Unfortunately, getting resources to the right place at the right time is only half the battle.