Business Continuity
While Trinity cannot ultimately control when or where all disruptive events will occur, we can manage our preparedness and ability to continue, or quickly restore, operations through our operational resilience.
Business Continuity is part of the College’s resilience capability and specifically, it is responsible for the planned delivery of prioritised services and activities, within acceptable timeframes, at a pre-defined capacity during a disruption.
Business Continuity Management is a new function within Trinity and it is being established to identify potential threats to the University and the impact that those threats if realised, could have upon its operation, to provide a framework for creating the business continuity plans to respond to disruptions and then running a range of exercises to validate these plans.
Why do we do it?
- We want to protect our people, our teaching, our research and our reputation
Incidents impact on student experience and research quality
- It is sound business sense
Business continuity reduces costly disruption and protects Trinity’s priority activities
- We want to continually improve
Effective response requires rehearsed and flexible plans
Disruptions take many forms, including cyber-attack, fire, floods and infectious disease outbreaks. The better prepared we are, the less damaging the impact will be on our people, our research, our reputation and our finances.
How do we do it?
The Business Continuity Management process should be viewed as a continuous lifecycle, always a work-in-progress and subject to regular review. The principles for the approach we follow are:
| Principle 1 | Whole of Trinity College approach to business continuity & resilience |
| Principle 2 | Always Minimise the Risk |
| Principle 3 | Follow Professional Standards (ISO\BCI) |
| Principle 4 | Plan, Do, Check, Act Cycle Management Standard |
| Principle 5 | A clearly defined relationship for Business Continuity Management, Emergency Response & Disaster Recovery |
The components of Business Continuity are:
- Policy and Programme Management – establishing the College’s approach to Business Continuity and how it will be implemented.
- Embedding – considers how to integrate Business Continuity awareness and practice into routine activities and College’s organisational culture.
- Business Impact Analysis – identifies the priority activities and the impact of disruption over time. Where are the key risks & threats? What are our dependencies? What resources do we rely on?
- Design – creates and selects appropriate solutions to achieve continuity in the event of a disruption.
- Implementation – develops Business Continuity Plans to meet the requirements identified during analysis and using the solutions identified in the design stage. It also includes the development of a Response Structure.
- Validation – confirms that the Business Continuity function meets the objectives as per the policy and that the plans are effective. Exercising the plans is vital: it ensures familiarity and always generates ideas for improvement.
For more information or any questions regarding Business Continuity at Trinity College, contact: Lee Mills, Head of Business Continuity: Business.Continuity@tcd.ie