A clear understanding of the University of Technology Sydney key priorities and dependencies is essential to build effective business continuity strategies. To achieve this, Fixinc will review and update the current Business lmpact Analysis (BlA) through the facilitation of consultative interviews with faculty and business unit representatives.

For each area of the University, outcomes of the BIA process will include confirmation of: 

• Changes to mission-critical functions. 
• Including up-to-date information on critical business processes. 
• Allowable outages and recovery timeframes for each critical function. 
• Resource requirements and critical dependencies.
• Part of the outcome of the BIA will be a prioritised list of Critical Business Functions that can be transferred into the current Emergency Management Plan.

Fixinc will re-evaluate the currency, appropriateness and relevancy of current information collected as part of previous BIAs, and provide a summary report of all BIA outcomes, including recommendations and guidance on further plan development and implementation requirements.

As part of the BIA process, Fixinc will also facilitate a threat assessment for University of Technology Sydney using our proprietary threat forecasting tools to assess relevant business continuity vulnerabilities and plausible disruption scenarios that may impact critical business functions, as identified in the BIAs. This will include:

• Identification and categorisation of disruption related threats. 
• Review of likely causes, existing controls and potential impacts. 
• Prioritisation of all identified risks based on likelihood and impact ratings. 
• Grouping and prioritisation of risks into key disruption scenarios.

Upon completion of the BIAs, Fixinc will review and update all University of Technology Sydney Business Continuity Plans in scope. This will include a process to identify opportunities to enhance usability and functionality of plans. 

The objective of this process will be to ensure that all Business Continuity Plans are effective to manage a major disruption, whilst still being simple and easy to use. Consideration will also be given to how the currency of these plans is maintained into the future. 

Linkages with Business Continuity Plans and existing emergency management, risk management, IT, cyber and operational measures will be reviewed and updated to ensure an integrated outcome for University of Technology Sydney. This will deliver a standardised and integrated protocol for dealing with business disruptions and will include:

• Establishment of required command and control structures, including management roles and responsibilities. 
• Communication strategies and supporting templates.
• Incident Assessment tools to measure the severity of an event.
• Impact assessment tools to measure the scale and nature of damage to business operations.
• Practical checklists for immediate operational tasks and escalation procedures to aid with decision-making. 
• Staff management plans to assist with relocations and recovery of work priorities. 
• Resource management plans to effectively coordinate recovery efforts. 
• Identification of alternate accommodation and process workarounds. 
• Recovery strategies in the form of highly practical checklists, supported by reference procedures. 
• Resumption strategies to resume business as usual operations. 
• Other supporting tools, documents, and reference materials.

Fixinc will provide training and testing activities to validate the information held within Business Continuity Plans and help build a proactive and embedded business continuity culture, improving the University of Technology Sydney’s level of resilience. 

This will include: 

• Business Continuity training sessions including a practical exercising component. 
• Testing of critical business functions to confirm the ability of University of Technology Sydney to restore these functions within agreed recovery times.

Fixinc’s Learning and Development division will organise all pre-training bookings for University of Technology Sydney and complete training participant records for all sessions.

Prior to a formal engagement meeting, Fixinc will review all of University of Technology Sydney existing business continuity documents to assess the level of preparedness and compliance with key standards. This includes risk assessments, business impact analysis worksheets, business continuity plans and any recent training, testing, and exercising documentation.

Fixinc will then facilitate an engagement meeting with key representatives from University of Technology Sydney to verify the review scope and key business continuity priorities.

When evaluating the existing program, Fixinc will identify strengths that can be further capitalised on to build greater resilience and weaknesses that need to be addressed to ensure a robust capability exists within the organisation. 

Following the Engagement meeting, Fixinc will provide University of Technology Sydney with a project plan that identifies key milestones and will conduct regular project update meetings.