The Noggin Blog

Just last month, there were five named storms in the Atlantic all at once – a rarity last seen in the early 1970s. Nor is the Atlantic the only hotspot for storm activity. The interim Royal Commission investigation into last season’s bushfires also forecasted increasingly “erratic” storms hitting Australia.

For crisis leaders battered by COVID-19 yet still in the path of surging storms, it’s not only time to dust off your severe weather preparedness plans but also to get acquainted with the Incident Command System (ICS).

Most businesses entered the coronavirus crisis with a false sense of confidence in how prepared they were to handle a major crisis. Sure, they might have learned better. But how long will those lessons stick? A good way to tell is by figuring out whether and how often your clients are exercising their crisis response plans and scenarios. 

Buildings, sites, plants and equipment, materials, and other physical assets remain some of the easiest targets for malicious actors. And when surveyed, security professionals usually despair of their organisation’s inability to protect them.

Why’s that? Under-investment in physical security management has left these larger, (usually) older assets dangerously vulnerable to compromise. What can be done? Well, Security Operations Centres (SOCs) give organisations a chance to improve their operational security posture and better secure people and property. 

From tornadoes to floods to explosions, emergency agencies bring experts together in emergency operations centers (EOCs) to manage and coordinate operations. Before the pandemic, they did so largely in person. The risk (and reality) of infection, however, has forced EOCs to go virtual – out of necessity.  

Makeshift affairs, many of these virtual emergency operations centers (VEOC) are virtual in name only. How, then, to get the most out of your VEOC?

It’s been a couple years since work health and safety management system standards got a global upgrade. In 2018, ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 45001 came out, replacing British certification, OHSAS 18001, as the best-practice standard.

Plenty of compliance conscious PCBUs didn’t make the move then. But the British standard is only valid until the end of March 2021, meaning now is the time to upgrade. What are the other safety advantages of ISO 45001?

Your clients probably know that seeking out too much information can be a way of avoiding acting decisively during a crisis. But do they know there’s a whole class of stressors called decision derailers that cause ineffective crisis decision making?

COVID-19 wasn’t the first public health crisis of the 21^st century to come out of Asia Pacific – that would be SARS. But it was the first pandemic to shut down central China after that region had become one of the world’s premier manufacturing hubs. Add to that, over the intervening years, much supply chain resilience had been sacrificed to just-in-time manufacturing. How, then, to regain supply chain resilience in this era of heightened public health crises?

It’s obvious that COVID-19 has shifted the focus of physical security management. Guards, formerly responsible for managing physical threats to people and assets, are now being asked to step into a safety protection and promotion role.

How are they faring? Well, the recent hotel quarantine incident in the Australian state of Victoria suggests that the transition hasn’t been seamless. What could help improve the quality of physical security management in the age of COVID-19?         

In this age of increasing emergency threats, informal volunteer emergency workers often provide critical first responder help, usually search and rescue, first aid, damage, and need assessment.

But because they tend to lack pre-established relationships with emergency managers, informal volunteers can also pose operational risks. Dispatchers, for one, can’t verify training or credentials, so they are unable to accurately match volunteer skills with service areas. And that’s not the only management challenge relief organisations face. What are they?

The imperatives of social distancing during the pandemic have created unprecedented changes to work. Foremost among them: the increased need for people to work alone or in remote arrangements.

For PCBUs (Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking), more people working alone mean more lone workers in need of a new class of safety protections, documented internal policies to keep this high-risk occupational group out of harm’s way. How to go about mitigating the risk so you don’t incur the liability?