Continuity Planning prepares departments to maintain essential functions, minimize the impact, help us return to normal operations as quickly as possible after an emergency or disruption,.
Take Action Today - Build Resilience in Your Department: Continuity planning is simpler than you think—and it starts with you. By creating a plan, your department can adapt and thrive through unexpected disruptions. Contact PSU Emergency Management at emr-mgmt@pdx.edu to get started and protect what matters most. Our goal is to keep continuity planning simple and not create unnecessary work.
What Is Business Continuity?
Continuity planning is the effort to ensure that the capability exists to continue essential functions across a wide range of potential emergencies. Continuity planning helps departments respond to a disaster or disruption so that essential functions can continue with minimum downtime. Planning involves identifying your department’s essential functions and creating strategies to ensure they continue during disruptions. This proactive approach prepares departments to:
- Protect critical teaching, research, and operational functions.
- Adapt to disruptions like power outages, severe weather or staff shortages.
- Collaborate with other departments to maintain essential services.
A continuity plan is a collection of resources, actions, procedures and information that is developed, tested and held in readiness for use in the event of a disaster or major disruption of operations. A continuity plan helps prepare PSU departments and organizations maintain essential functions and return to normal operations quickly following a disaster.
Why Continuity Planning is Essential
Emergencies can strike with little warning. Consider the following scenarios:
- A fire damages your office, forcing evacuation.
- A sprinkler head malfunctions and floors your office.
- Winter weather disrupts travel, closing roads for days.
- An infectious disease outbreak affects half your staff.
PSU's University’s mission is to Let Knowledge Serve the City. Every academic, research, operational and administrative department supports PSU's mission and perform functions that are essential to the ongoing success of our University. Examples include:
- Academics: Ensuring students can continue learning, whether in person or online.
- Research: Safeguarding critical projects, equipment, data and highly skilled people to continue innovative research and meet project timelines.
- Operations & Administration: Keeping systems running to support the PSU community.
Effective continuity planning ensures your department can adapt and recover quickly, no matter the situation. Together we can build PSU's resilience.
How Is a Continuity Plan Different from an Emergency Plan?
Often times continuity plans can be confused with departmental emergency plans. Both plans are essential and complementary.
Continuity plans focus on resuming operations after a disruption, some critical functions must even be resumed before response efforts are complete.
Emergency plans address life safety and immediate actions during a crisis (i.e. how to put out the fire or how to evacuate the building).
Steps to Create a Continuity Plan
Departments are responsible for completing their own continuity plans.
- Get Started
- Feel Empowered: Remember, YOU are the expert on your department's operations. Your input is critical.
- Designate a Continuity Planning Champion: this This person will: schedule planning meetings and complete the continuity plan.
- Reach out for Support: Email us at (emr-mgmt@pdx.edu) to learn more about how to begin the planning process.
- Schedule a Workshop: Request a session with the Emergency Management team.
- Assemble a Planning Team
- Invite key stakeholders to join your efforts.
- Discuss continuity planning at a staff meeting.
- Review Functions, Programs, Offerings, and Services
- Understand Your Department
- What does your department do - functions, programs, offerings and services during normal operations?
- What services do you provide to internal and external stakeholders?
- What benefits do your customers rely on?
- Identify Essential Functions
- Which activities are critical to your mission and/or impact PSU’s goals.
- Essential functions are services, programs, or activities that are crucial to operations and would directly affect the university’s mission if disrupted.
- Identify Critical Infrastructure
- Based on your essential functions, determine the infrastructure needed to support them.
- Critical infrastructure includes but are not limited to: emergency response services, utilities, communication systems, internet, authentication, and communications and waste management.
- Assess Risks - Analyze potential disruptions that could affect essential functions and critical infrastructure:
- People: Public health issues, winter weather, understaffed or labor disputes.
- Place: Fire, explosions, renovations, system failures or loss of utilities.
- Things: Supply chain issues, power outages, IT equipment or network failures, water damage, flooding or theft.
- Develop Recovery Strategies: Work with stakeholders to prepare strategies to maintain or quickly resume operations, including but not limited to:
- Remote work options
- Backups for critical data
- Alternative workspaces or suppliers.
- Document the Plan: Use PSU’s Continuity Plan Template to outline essential functions, recovery steps, resources, and key contacts.
- Review and Approve the Plan
- Submit the Plan: Send your completed continuity plan to the Business Continuity Program Coordinator for review.
- Get Approval: Once reviewed, have your plan approved and signed by your department head.
- Test and Update the Plan - Regularly review, practice, and update your plan to ensure it remains effective and relevant.
Key Planning Principles:
- Focus on Functions, Not People: The plan should focus on the department’s essential functions, not specific individuals. Remember, the people available to fulfill these tasks may change during a crisis.
- Planning Process Matters Most: While the plan is important, the process of planning helps you make better decisions in a crisis. Being prepared is more about your ability to adapt than following a set plan.
- Departments Don’t Have to Cover Everything: If your department isn’t responsible for things like food or security under normal circumstances, it doesn’t need to plan for these areas in the continuity plan.
Continuity Planning Tips
Plan for Disruptions
Everyday issues like power outages or inclement weather campus closures can cause major problems. A comprehensive plan helps your department adapt and recover quickly.
- Document Your Work: List all aspects of normal operations, daily tasks and identify the most critical and time-sensitive functions.
- Find Weak Spots: Look for areas where a single problem could stop your work. Come up with solutions to address those risks.
- Be Ready for “What If?” Scenarios: Consider how you will adapt to unexpected disruptions to keep things running smoothly?
Think About General Impacts
Many find it more useful to consider non-hazard specific types of impacts instead of focusing only on specific emergencies. Consider broader problems that could affect your work. For example:
- Access Issues: You might not be able to use your office, equipment, or records.
- Service Interruptions: Networks, communication, or utilities could be disrupted campus-wide.
- Record Damage: Critical hardcopy and digital records could be lost or inaccessible.
- Staffing Challenges: Employees might not be able to come to work due to transportation issues or emergencies at home.
Understand Interdependencies
Departments at PSU depend on each other to keep things running smoothly. Work with other departments to prioritize critical tasks and develop a plan to address shared responsibilities. Collaboration ensures everyone is better prepared to handle disruptions. Consider:
- What Do You Rely On? Are there other departments you depend on for essential services like IT, payroll, research, or facility maintenance?
- What Do Others Rely On You For? What tasks or services does your department provide that others count on?
- What’s Essential? Identify which of these shared tasks are most important to keep operations going. Are there function that need to happen on a specific date?
Prioritize - Start Small
To learn the continuity planning process, focus on your top five essential functions.
- Assess Sensitivity to Disruption: Identify which functions are most sensitive to interruptions due to people, place, or things.
- Evaluate Flexibility: Determine which tasks lack flexibility within the scope of your operations.
- Identify Campus-Wide Roles: Consider if any of your functions play a role in campus-wide response or recovery efforts.
- Address Non-Scalable Functions: Highlight functions that cannot be scaled down during a disruption.
- Prepare for Urgency: Focus on functions that require immediate attention to avoid significant consequences.
Planning Pitfalls - Avoid These Common Mistakes:
- Planning for Specific Scenarios: Instead of focusing on specific events like floods or fires, plan for general disruptions, like if your office or building becomes inaccessible.
- Getting Caught Up in Extreme Scenarios: Avoid planning only for the worst-case situation. Focus on practical, likely disruptions that would have a real impact on your department.
- Planning for Past Emergencies: Each disruption is unique. While “lessons learned” are valuable, make sure your plan covers a range of possible situations, not just the most recent crisis.
- Assuming the Normal Management Hierarchy Will Work: In a crisis, the usual decision-makers may not be available. Plan for alternate decision-makers and ensure they are empowered to take action if needed.
Resources
Emergency Management is working to create PSU-specific checklists and training opportunities by Fall 2025. For now, explore resources from other universities to guide your planning. Reach out to us with any questions.
- Get Started
- General Audiences
- Research and Laboratory
- Worksheets
- Other