Wednesday 27th April 2016
Top 10 Incident Control Challenges for Education Establishments
At ICR we have worked with a variety of education establishments and hear on a daily basis the challenges they are faced with when it comes to handling and recording incidents on a campus.
See below the Top 10 challenges that come up time and time again.
- Incident Control Inefficiencies – Traditional paper based Incident Management solutions are naturally restrictive, the documentation can be rigid and inflexible. Admin and resource inefficiencies are commonplace with issues regarding version control, duplications of work, unclear workflows, the Incident Control Team (ICT) being reactive as opposed to proactive, as well as issues regarding incident handling out of core business hours.
- Deploying Plans across a Distributed Environment – Deploying up to date plans across the group is a key challenge for the client given that team members work across multiple buildings, campuses, and geographical regions. There is a requirement for plans to be accessible on mobile devices, as well as on PC’s, and laptops to support remote working and the changing technology landscape.
- Consistent Response to Incidents – Teams need to be able to ensure plans are actioned, no matter who is responding to the incident based on pre-determined Incident Response Plans, as well as reporting on incidents in a consistent manner globally. A lack of standardisation & irregularities with limited training time, can cause major concerns for incident management going forward.
- Multiple Incident Management – Managing multiple incidents from minor to major crises consecutively across facilities can be a major challenge for the ICT. Incidents also range from unforeseen / unpredictable sequences of events to more common occurrences, teams must be prepared to deal with either as they occur.
- Live Incident Updates – Providing live incident updates to key stakeholders can present a major challenge given that many travel on a regular basis and are not necessarily always available. A lack of live incident information can mean incident decisions take longer to resolve, communication is slower and more inefficiently dealt with.
- Connecting Teams during Incidents – During incidents, the ICT would usually use email, instant messaging, sms and phone to connect with others. When communicating across many channels, it can be very difficult to maintain a common operating picture for the leadership team.
- Report Generation – Establishments need to be audit ready in order to meet the standards set out by the relevant auditing authority. There is a requirement to capture and report key information from a particular incident, preferably date & time stamped.
- Collating Metrics & Analysing Trends – Collating data from incidents across a large organisation entails a lot of administration effort, especially when it comes to distributing the right information to the right people based on their position in the organisation structure.
- Managing Business Continuity in a Changing Environment – It can appear to be costly to roll out and update Business Continuity plans across an organisation, with seemingly high level entry costs. Keeping these plans up to date with evolving technology changes can also create a challenge.
- Ensuring the system works during infrastructure failure – If an incident includes infrastructure failure such as a power outage, key equipment can also fail when you need it most. Without secure backups this could leave you without access to key information.
If any of these challenges resonate with you at your campus, ICR can help. Contact us today to see how.