Disaster Recovery Journal

EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD

Establishing a Right-Sized
Emergency Operations Center

Kathleen Aris, CMP
SunGard Availability Services Inc.

Anna M. Bathon, MBCI, CBCP Bank of America

By PETER LAZ, MBCP, MBCI

An emergency operations center (EOC) is a critical tool that allows effective, effi- cient, and economical management of any event that could (or does) impact business operations. While some organizations request inordinate resources to extensively equip an EOC, it does not have to be a large, expensive, high-tech room to be viable. Let’s explore a few ideas that will help establish a useful EOC without requiring a large expense.

First, a clarifying definition: an EOC is a central physical location of decision makers who are responsible for the overall management and direction of a disruptive event. Collectively, the decision makers are an organization’s incident management team (IMT), whose primary functions include collecting all the incident-related information; coordinating all the response, recovery, and restoration activity; and communicating appropriate information to stakeholders.

Minimum Resources
In today’s distributed world, several members
of an IMT are geographically separated. However,
to apply a best practice, there is a necessity for a
central physical location for certain resources.
Many organizations that have a successful, mature
BC/DR program use a standard conference room
for their EOC by provisioning a few essential tools
and capabilities that are needed for successful inci-
dent management. Some of the most critical are:
u a few phones;
u a high-quality speaker phone;
u an audio-conference bridge line dedicated for
incident management purposes;
u plenty of whiteboard space;
u access to corporate phone directory and the Internet;
u easy access to restrooms and
u full coverage by the building’s generator.

Also critical is the authorization to immediately commandeer the conference room 24x7 for the duration of the incident. While some of these essential tools and capabilities are required to be installed in advance (e.g., phone lines, network connections, generator coverage), some resources can be stored in a cabinet or closet nearby.

My recommendation is to maintain an EOC
activation checklist of the tasks necessary to con-
vert the standard conference room to a functional
EOC. Such items on the checklist would include,
but not be limited to the arrangement of tables/
chairs, set up and test communications (voice and
data), and take out supplies (log forms, paper,
recovery plans, etc.). I would categorize these as
minimum resources.