Disaster recovery plan - Essay Example

DISASTER PLAN For everyone who runs a serious or substantial business or is responsible for a large project that must be maintained, a serious question requires answering: What can be done in the case of a disaster? A serious disaster has the potential to disrupt operations—if large enough the disaster can even destroy operations and capacity completely. It therefore is important to have a disaster recovery plan in place to quickly and effectively deal with damage that occurs and to mitigate as much as possible.

First it is necessary to describe the nature of my operations. I have a detention center that sits on 4.5 acres of area. It’s composed of approximately 196,000 sq. feet of space, comprised of laboratories, faculty offices, administrative offices, auditoriums, classrooms, gymnasium, cafeteria and housing. All of the buildings on campus are constructed with steel frames and supported by concrete spread footing as per the uniform building codes of the State of Virginia. All basement walls are reinforced concrete and are protected by waterproofing through out.

To begin with a few observations are necessary. The construction in this space are all up to code and well-built. That sort of standardization makes coming up with a place much easier. Second, the size of the area is not especially large, but it bigger than an ordinary small business. That must be taken into account. The first step to take is a Risk Analysis. What kind of risks are these operations subject to? Can they be anticipated? How serious are they? Can their impact be minimized? Virginia is not known to suffer from a lot of earthquakes or natural disasters.

The most likely disaster are fires and major storms. The more serious of these—a fire—can be effectively anticipated by a serious sprinkler system and well-trained security personnel. The operations do not take place on the edge of a cliff or near a large body of water so many potential risks are therefore averted. Next it is important to look at the budget for any such plan. How much are you willing to spend. In order to protect from a fire it might be a good idea to make all walls fire retardant—that, however, would be prohibitively expensive.

There is only so much money in the world. Still, it is important to remember than an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Look for effective and efficient way of reducing risk, with an eye to your pocketbook. No plan should be more than five per cent of operating costs. It is possible to become too paranoid about these sorts of things.Once these two things have been done it is time to come up with the actual plan and test. Since it appears the most serious kind of threats might be fire or flooding, plans to prevent these disasters and maintain continuity should be put in place.

A computerized fire prevention system should be installed with sprinklers and patched into the local fire station. A program of vigilance should be adopted so that fires can be prevented in advance. For flooding and storms it is important to watch the weather and have sand bags available for serious turns in the weather. Once the basics are up and running, it’s a good idea to test the plan and run through some simulations with the staff. Test the fire bells and the sand bags. Make sure everything is in working order.

It is important to remember that you only have once chance to avert a disaster.Work ConsultedPearce, Ed. “Sample Plans.” Disaster Recovery Journal. 2008.Roos, Dave. “How Disaster Recovery Plans Work.” HowStuffWorks.com. 2009. http://communication.howstuffworks.com/how-disaster-recovery-plans-work.htmWallace, Michael. Disaster Recovery Plan Step by Step. New York: Vintage, 2004.