BCP Confidential

By Nathaniel Forbes

Blueprints for Business Continuity Planning

Sample influenza business continuity plan

Monday, September 07 2009 05:41 PM

My colleague and fellow IAEM Asia member Chew Lip Heng and I started writing a sample corporate incident action plan (IAP) for influenza in 2005 during the H5N1 panic. This is an Adobe Acrobat PDF version and this is the version in..... Read more ť

Tags: Stage, World Health Organization, H1N1 Flu, Business Continuity, Influenza, business continuity planning, financial, Singapore, Plan, SARS

No blood test for influenza

Tuesday, July 21 2009 05:31 PM

There is no such thing as a blood test for influenza. If you've been searching for one, you can stop.

Influenza is a respiratory disease, so specimens preferred for influenza testing come from the respiratory system: nasopharyngeal swab (from the upper part of the throat behind the..... Read more ť

Tags: Patient, Asia, H1N1 Flu, AIDS, HIV virus, hepatitis, Influenza, Singapore

Getting tested for H1N1 flu in Singapore

Saturday, June 06 2009 12:13 PM

A colleague of mine returned to Singapore on Wednesday, May 27 from Boston, USA, where he'd spent the week between May 17 and May 24. He came back with a cold, a bad one.

He was sure it was a cold, not the flu: his temperature had not..... Read more ť

Tags: Doctor, Patient, H1N1 Flu, Cold, Nurse, SARS, blood pressure, Nurses, payment, Singapore

Is Tamiflu 'better' than Relenza?

Tuesday, May 12 2009 05:04 PM

I can find no clinical evidence that Roche's Tamiflu is more effective than GlaxoSmithKline's less-prescribed Relenza against Type A influenza like H1N1 and H5N1.

Tags: Roche Holding AG, H1N1 Flu, Influenza, GlaxoSmithKline Plc., business school, pharmaceutical company, Tamiflu, Relenza, Neuraminidase, Gilead

BCM standard discovered in Malaysia

Monday, March 16 2009 03:15 PM

I have upbraided SPRING Singapore and the Singapore Business Federation for failing to promote effectively Singapore's erstwhile business continuity management (BCM) standard TR 19 between its birth in 2005 and its demise in 2008.

But for stealth and invisibility, it's hard to beat the..... Read more ť

Tags: Malaysia, Tax, Business Continuity, business process, Singapore, marketing, computer, Southeast Asia, ISO, chairman

Sub-prime BCM certification in Asia

Monday, January 26 2009 06:32 PM

What does it really mean for an individual to be "certified" in business continuity?

Like the euphemism "sub-prime", the word "certified" is losing its meaning in Asia as the number and variety of BCM certifications and their purveyors grow like vines in a jungle. Attend a course, get the certificate..... Read more ť

Tags: Certification, Asia, Business Continuity, Exam, certified public accountant, training, emergency management, motivation, recruiting, worker

Singapore BCM Standard SS540: TR19 with a facelift

Monday, December 01 2008 08:23 AM

In July 2008, I wrote that Technical Reference 19 (TR 19:2005), Singapore's proposed international standard for business continuity management (BCM), appeared to be dying a slow death and suggested that the prognosis for it might be terminal. I was wrong.

It turns out that the patient just needed cosmetic..... Read more ť

Tags: Certification, Business Continuity, Standard, Singapore, marketing, incentive, health care, ISO, ISO 9001, process improvement

Emergency excitement online

Wednesday, October 29 2008 03:16 PM

Video game Zero Hour: Americas Medic lets responders try out real-time strategies in hazardous virtual environments, with sound effects and human conversations, just like those in the hugely-popular Halo game series (don't know Halo? Ask a male teenager). The game was created by those..... Read more ť

Tags: George Washington University, virtual environment, homeland security, video game, video, game, strategy, America

Templates published for mass fatality incidents

Wednesday, October 29 2008 02:51 PM

Many hospitals are unprepared to deal with large numbers of dead bodies--a mass fatality incident, or MFI--that would result from an earthquake or flu pandemic. A "mortality surge" would overwhelm morgue capacity, as it did in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for example.

U.S. hospitals are required to develop MFI..... Read more ť

Tags: Asia, Hospital, Human Resources, Business Continuity, HR professional, insurance benefit, business continuity planning, company executive, insurance, action plan

Emergency response the weakest link in organizational resilience

Thursday, October 16 2008 10:52 AM

I think of organizational resilience as a chain that links security, emergency management (EM), disaster recovery, business continuity management (BCM) and crisis management. A resilient organization deploys appropriate security, has an IT disaster recovery plan, exercises its business continuity plan and has a separate crisis management plan.

But most organizations..... Read more ť

Tags: Asia, Security, Emergency Manager, Business Continuity, business continuity planning, information technology, Manager, Plan, Business Continuity Manager, Emergency Response

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About the blogger

Nathaniel Forbes

Nathaniel Forbes is the director of Forbes Calamity Prevention, a Singapore-based consulting firm providing business continuity, crisis management and emergency response advice and training to multinational companies, with a focus on companies with offices in Asia. The firm is 10 years old. FCP's current and past clients include Singapore Exchange Ltd, OCBC Bank, AXA Insurance, The Gillette Company, Siemens and ABN Amro Bank. A former President of the Singapore Computer Societys Business Continuity Group, Nathaniel passed the DRIIs Certified Business Continuity Planner (CBCP) examination in 1997. He has lived, traveled or worked in Asia since 1973.