Hello all!

We had our AGM recently, and thank you to those that attended! And an especially fond thanks to those that elected me as new chairman to follow on from George Berrich - a tough act to follow! We already have a series of events and breakfast briefings in the planning stages, so keep checking the web pages, your twitter feed, and your mailboxes! You'll soon see details appearing, so please register early and I look forward to seeing you at some of our events!

I have to say we invariably get great feedback about our events - not least the fact that they are great opportunities to network with peers and discuss what's happening outwith your own organisation, so I'm sure you'll enjoy any you come along to.

Hopefully see you soon!

Chris Tunnah

Chairman

3 months to go until another Resilient Scotland Conference 2017 (Thursday 23^rd February 2017) and planning is well under way!  Crescent Events has worked with Scottish Continuity since 2007 organising this event so we’re now planning the 11^th event.    We’ve helped increase the number of delegates and also the number of exhibitors, and are proud to be working with Scottish Continuity.  But where has the last 11 years gone to?

So now the planning commences.

Venue finding?  There are a myriad of elements to consider, not least the venue, and depending on which venue you wish to use, it is often the case that it needs to be booked 12 months prior and immediately following the previous year’s event.   Suitable, cost-effective, venues are in huge demand so we need to act early.   For the 2^nd year we are returning to Royal Bank of Scotland at Gogarburn.  A very prestigious venue and location and Scottish Continuity is delighted that RBS is allowing them to return again this year.   

How do we ensure there is an interesting programme? Well, there is a conference planning team who take account of comments received from delegates and exhibitors as well as trying to incorporate as many new / topical subjects as possible.   We learn about interesting speakers from other conferences and, if relevant, we approach them.   We also get approached by organisations / companies wishing to speak.   There are a few new Board members who, this year, are involved in programme planning, so we hope that you will find the Resilient Scotland Conference 2017 very interesting and topical.

What happens between now and then?   We are tasked with selling exhibition space; leaflet inserts; securing sponsorship.   Without income from all these areas, the event simply could not happen.  We have a good membership base but we need to cover the costs by bringing in this income.  The logistical elements need to fall into place ie registration; confirmations; venue logistics; catering options; audio visual; speaker liaison; exhibition liaison; marketing of the event; pulling together of information which results in an Event Guide; catering; dietary requirements and the ever dreaded risk assessment.  It takes time and effort by all concerned, but it is worth it when the end result is a successful conference with attendees leaving the event having learnt something new.

So over to you?   So that we can expand the membership and interest of Scottish Continuity and the Resilient Scotland Conference, please distribute the information to your colleagues and get the message out about the event.  Delegate spaces are limited so we would encourage you all to book early.   For SC members attendance is free of charge, which is a fantastic benefit for your £50 individual membership fee.  £100 for non-members is also good value for money – and we would encourage non-members to join so they too can benefit from the very reasonably priced membership. 

And ….. Not just the Resilient Scotland Conference!  Scottish Continuity are now developing a range of Learning Events.  Organised approximately every 3 months, they are running 2 hour learning events for members and non-members to get involved and hear first-hand about specific subject matters / current issues and is a fabulous way of extending your knowledge but also meet like-minded business continuity / resilience / disaster recovery colleagues.  

The future?  Scottish Continuity is looking for members, ideas and suggestions, venues for future events, speakers, sponsors; exhibitors – and for your help in getting the message out about the organisation and how it would benefit others from being involved. 

When sending out membership renewal invoices (in my role as Treasurer), a few people have asked what we do. This has highlighted the fact that members (and even board members) do not visit the website, read these blogs or visit our Facebook page. On checking, I discovered that some members do not receive invites to events as their company email systems block our Mail Chimp bulk email management system as they filter out all such emails as "spam candidates".

I did also have to apologise for the fact that some of our past events still had the future tense in the website events page - so I have started a tidy up as we need to get the small details right and keep our content relevant, up to date and accurate.

So - as an experiment - if you read this blog, let me know by adding a comment to let me know. 

Communication is everything!

We do have a lot in the pipeline and have held some fantastic events - we just need to ensure that our paths of information are open and well visted

After over 12 years as Treasurer of Scottish Continuity Group - Douglas has stepped down, handing over the Accounts Book and quill pen to Gordon Mackie. We are pleased to say that he has agreed to continue as a member and we have awarded him Honorary Life Member status in recognition of all the work he has done for us over the years.

For those who did not meet Douglas :-

Douglas is a Member of the Business Continuity Institute and before retiring was Group Business Continuity Manager (UK & Ireland) at Prudential plc. He was a Board Member of the Scottish Continuity Group since 2001 and Treasurer since 2004.

Douglas is the Chairman of Pickering's Gin.

Douglas is also the National Convener of the Traditional Music & Song Association of Scotland (TMSA) and performs throughout Scotland on the folk-singing scene.

I am sure that he will be tempted to attend any social occasions and will be seen at the annual RCE events as well.

The board wish him all the best and happy bowling!

The 2016 elections at the AGM and the new focus on events have revitalised the Scottish Continuity Group.

As Douglas Craik stepped down from the role of Treasurer, Gordon Mackie took over and will be working on member retention, recruitment and bringing back lapsed members.

Joyce Borthwick of Crescent Events (who has organised all SCG events in recent years) has joined the board to drive through our very exciting events in 2016 and beyond. Sandra Riddell of CSC has also joined the board and will assist Joyce and, in addition, will run Education and Learning streams.

Paul McGowan will continue to build relationships with the Scottish Resilience Development Centre. Expect a blog on the subject from Paul soon.

Nikola Brown of City of Edinburgh Council has agreed to join board with a focus on 3^rd party relations

Jerry Marshall has agreed to join board with a focus on Resilient Communities, those with long memories will remember Jerry as the first Chairman of SCG in the early 1990s. We are really looking forward to having Jerry back on board.

George Berrich has been in meetings with the National Centre for Resilience and will post a blog with an update.

Richard MacLennan of the Law Society of Scotland is creating a group business plan, strategy, objectives and priorities paper. This will be published soon.

THE 2017 ANNUAL CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD ON THURSDAY 23 FEB 2017 - once again, we are delighted to announce that The Royal Bank of Scotland are hosting this in their stunning Gogarburn Conference Centre.

Proposals are under discussion for the 1^st small event - ‘Starting Position on BC/DR’ on Tue 23^rd Aug between 1-3 at the Law Society of Scotland.

As I am sure you will agree - these are exciting times for SCG and we will also be making more use of Social Media to keep members informed.

Almost another year almost over, and we are finishing on a high! A big thank you to all of you that attended the 2014 Resilient Scotland Conference on Nov. 19th for making it such a success, and to all the sponsors (especially our principle sponsor, Phoenix!) for their support to make it possible. By all accounts the day was a success, and the capacity audience (sorry if you were too late to get a ticket - try and book earlier next year, and see what you missed here!) had a great day:

Niyi Oludipe, Sainsbury’s Bank: "What an excellent  conference this has been! Very relevant topics and excellent  speakers".

A big thank you for all the feedback on the day - that will help us make next years conference even better!

However, the year is not over yet. We are hosting one of our Breakfast Briefings on 4th December - see "News & Events" for details - so please come along to discuss resilience over a coffee and croissant!

Looking forward to next year, we will be announcing the date and location of our AGM soon (February sometime!), so please renew or join us and come along and help shape Scottish Continuity for the future.

Thank you!

First of all I must apologise, it has been a while since I have updated this page, I like the other memebers of the Board are here as volunteers, and often our day jobs get in the way of the stuff we do for the love of the profession. It is for this reason that I shall not be standing for re-election as Chair. I will however be hoping to stay on the Board as I do enjoy working with Scottish Continuity and I think there are a great bunch of folk involved. If you would like to be involved there are a number of positions up for election, so don't be shy, put your name forward!

The last year has been an interesting one, we have grown in some areas annd reduced in others, it is increasingly difficult to justify membership of external bodies however good value for money they are, and I am even finding that in my organisation. I believe that we offer excellent value for money, the Annual Resilience event alone is worth the membership fee and you would struggle to get anything coming close in the UK in terms of value for money.

The 2012 Resilient Scotland Conference, from both my own perspective and from the feedback that we have received a very successful event. We moved away from the "talking point" location this year focussing on getting the layout right, so no quirky rooms this year, just a good old school conference venue. Despite some issues with seeing the screen from the back (which was probably as much from the enthusiasm of the presenters in passing on as much information as possible) it was a great event. We had a number of very good speakers who I felt complemented each other very well and the exercise in the afternoon run by Needhams 1834 was extremely popular. As with the last 2 years we had around 100 attendees, and these people were from a wide range of sectors and organisations, gone are the days of these events being 50% financial services and 50% government bodies.

The move to a conference venue also allowed us to bring in sponsors to offer members their products, or at least tell members about their products again this proved popular with the stands remaining busy during each of the breaks. Most of these people have asked to be involved again next year.

Over the course of the year Scottish Continuity, mainly through Debbie and Gordon have offered a drop in "surgery" every month or so, although the take up has not been great those who have come along have been very positive about the experience. 2013 will see a number of intitiatives being piloted as part of the new membership strategy so watch this space!

The AGM will be held on Thursday 21 February from 12.30 at Onyx at the Gyle. Following the AGM G2G3 will be running an Incident Management Simulation Exercise. Anyone involved 3 years ago will remember how frantic this was.... but great fun. Come along (and let us know you are coming), it will be great to catch up with you!

Finally I would like to express my thanks to Debbie Ward who joined the Board at the same time as myself and has decided to stand down (2 years as Secretary will do that to anyone!). Since she took up the role she has kept smiling and kept us right on more occassions than I care to remember, even taking it in her stride when I suggested that I had not received a "proper action" (I had), you can rest assure the following month I was in no doubt whatsoever what were my actions, thank you Debbie!

See you on the 21st

Jon

On 19 November Scottish Continuity will be running its annual Resilient Scotland Conference. The venue this year will be the Hilton Grosvenor Hotel in Edinburgh and it promises to be an excellent day.

In our line of work, and in current economic climes managing to get a day out of the office is becoming more and more difficult, however, it could be argued that simply staying solely focussed on our own organisation and fire fighting issues we are only ever treading water and not actually drving our business forward. We need to look and listen to what is out there to understand how we can improve our own proposation, and this conference is a perfect opportunity.

Personally I enjoy Conferences, I like finding out what new thinking there is in our sphere and I enjoy networking with peers from other industries, but they are not cheap with a 2 day Conference in the South of England setting your orgnaisation back between £700 and £1000 (based on a 2 day Conference taking place in London today and tomorrow!). There are other conferences that take place that are free, but these invariably have a sales element to them, and none of us are fans of that! Our Conference is free to members of Scottish Continuity. Non-members are allowed to come as well, but have to pay £100. By Conference standards £100 is still pretty good value for money!

Of course it is not strictly speaking free, delegates have to travel to the Conference, but more costly is taking a day out of the diary to attend. In our line of work there is rarely a good time to be away from the office and quite often events booked in advance can be scuppered by a technology issue, the weather, protests or even a Black Swan!

So what will the day involve? As with previous years (and following extremely positive feedback from the last 2 conferences) the morning will be made up of presentations:

Mike Osbourne from Phoenix will be talking about the Journey from Recovery to Resilience. A topic especially relevant at the moment as businesses looking to not just react to an invocation but try and build their defences so they are not required to invoke in the first place.

Andrew Elliott from the Scottish Government who will be talking about Business Resilience and the Three Estates whidh promises to be an interesting discussion.

Aidan O'Brien from the National Australia Group will be taking about Implementing BCM Frameworks a topic we have probably all had some experience in, but I know I will enjoy hearing how someone else has done it, and if I can pick up some ideas all the better!

Joe Holden from FIOR will then be presenting on Incident Reaponse Planning - People, Planning and Proofing which will be an interesting subject and will lead us nicely into

The afternoon session which will be a table top exercise facilitated by Needhams 1834, a long established Business Continuity Consultancy who have recently opened an office in Edinburgh. I will not give away any details of this, but of the tenders we received to run the exercise this was the highest standard and quality and I am personally really looking forward to taking part in it!

It all sounds like a pretty good day, and certainly a bargain for £100, let alone FREE to members! I touched on the benefits of networking earlier and on top of this you can use attendance at the conference for Continuous Professional Development. I believe that the BCI are in the process of making CPD a prerequisite for maintaining Membership (its also pretty useful at apprasisal times too!)

If you have been umming and aahing about attending you have a week to decide. Booking will run until noon on 15 November. if you are interested contact Joyce.Borthwick@crescentevents.co.uk

If you are interested in sponsoring or promoting your organisation please also contact Joyce!

See you there!

At the end of May Niall Kinloch and myself were invited to the prestigious CIR Business Continuity Awards to present an award for the Business Continuity Management Planning Software of the Year on behalf of Scottish Continuity. On its own this was a fantastic honour and a priviledge (not to mention a great opportunity to spread the word about what Scottish Continuity does!) This year the awards had a number of Scottish individuals nominated for awards:

Business Continuity Manager of the Year
Gillies Crichton, head of assurance, BAA Glasgow Airport

Public Sector Continuity Manager of the Year
Mary-Ellen Lang, council business continuity officer, City of Edinburgh Council

Business Continuity Team of the Year
Standard Life

Student of the Year
Nikola Brown

An absolutely fantastic achievement to be nominated, but special mention must go to Mary-Ellen Lang who took home the Public Sector Continuity Manager of the Year. Now most of will know Mary-Ellen not only as a Board Member of Scottish Continuity, but also as the person who runs the extremely successful Edinburgh Resilience Week. At the awards ceremony I managed to speak to one of the judges who informed me about Mary-Ellen's nomination was not only what she had managed to achieve over the course of the last year but also the fact the she had done it on a shoe-string, great work Mary-Ellen, good to see you getting the recognition everyone who works with you here knows you deserve!

The picture shows Mary-Ellen flanked by Australian comedian Adam Hills and one of the judges from the panel, Colin Lowe (Head of Business Continuity at Bupa Healthcare)

For information the prize that was being presented by Scottish Continuity was:

Business Continuity Management Planning Software of the Year and it was won by ClearView Continuity (which was somewhat of a relief to myself, as this is the company that was chosen for our BCM Planning Software after an extremely long tender process!) For information, Scottish Continuity had no say in who picked up the prize, as with all prizes this was determined by a panel of independant judges!

All in all it was a top night and watch this space for next year when following a long discussion with Niall we feel that there is a category that would perfectly fit with what Scottish Continuity do in Scotland.

As I write this blog I am reliably informed that we are 80 days from the Opening Ceremony. This is only half the story though, we are actually 10 days from the start of the Olympic Torch Relay which will go through every major Town and City in Scotland including Orkney, Shetland and the Isle of Lewis, over 1000 communities across the UK, and the flame will come within 10 miles of 95% of the UK population. There will almost certainly be disruption as a result of the relay (although possibly less than when the Torch passes through Northern Ireland on the Queen's Jubilee!). It is worth checking the Olympics site to see when it will be near your locations:

http://www.london2012.com/torch-relay/route/

OK, so there's a bit of a run going through my town, but that's about it isn't it? Well no, there is a football game or 8 happening in Glasgow. The Olympic football tournament is bigger than the World Cup and there will be disruptions, the Olympic Route Network (ORN) will be in opertion in any City hosting the Games, i.e. there will be lanes that will be purely reserved for Official Olympic traffic.

OK, so there is the run and a few games of football, but that won't really affect me, will it? Possibly, but this is the biggest sporting event in the year, it is highly likely that your staff will want to see certain events. Is it worth planning for this in advance? Are there communal areas where a TV can be put up for certain events, possibly lead to happier staff and a reduced likliehood of "sickness". Are you looking to understand annual leave levels at the moment, or is this done closer to the time? It is worth checking that we have enough staff to carry on critical activities.

OK, apart from all that, its really just a London issue isn't it? Well apart from the torch relay all over the UK, football games in Manchester, Coventry, Newcastle, Glasgow and Cardiff and sailing in Weymouth it is.... but what about your suppliers? Where are they based? Do you have London based suppliers who may be impacted during the Games? Do your suppliers have suppliers who may be impacted during the Games? There are questions that need to be asked, to just make sure we are in the right place during the games.

Anyone who has been in Edinburgh or Glasgow Airport first thing in the morning knows how many people travel to London on a weekly basis. Many firms will look to reduce this during the games and utilise other communications methods, such as Telephone or Video Conferencing. With the massive increase in data usage that will be seen during the Games have you spoken to your conferecing provider to gain assurances that they will be able to continue to provide you with the service you require? And what about staff who "need" to continue travelling to London, have you factored in hotel rooms at 4x current prices (if you can get a room at all), or the travel disruption once they get there (an extra 750,000 people travelling every day on an already overcrowded underground?

OK, so football gams and the ORN, the Torch Relay, possible staff absence and cost and travel disruption for anyone travelling to London, I guess we will be impacted, is there anything else I should be aware of? It is probably worth bearing in mind that in 2 years time the Commonwealth Games will be coming to Glasgow. A smaller scale than the Olympics but still likely to lead to a great deal of disruption in the City. Ideally there will be some important "lessons learned" coming out of the Olympics but a large number of folk currently working on the Games will rapidly disperse to their next assignment as soon as the Games finishes so it would be better not to wait for the end of the Games to commence planning for the Commonwealth Games.