UW Emergency Management

November 28, 2017

Meet Megan: UWEM’s New BARC Program Manager

Head shot of Megan LevyWe are excited to welcome UW Emergency Management’s newest staff member, Megan Levy. Megan joined our team at the end of September to manage our Business, Academic and Research Continuity (BARC) program. Megan joins us after time at Microsoft and the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region. She is a Washington alum, having received her master’s in Infrastructure Planning and Management from the UW College of Built Environments. In her role, she will drive business, academic and research continuity planning system-wide.

What is business, research and academic continuity?

The overall goal of BARC is to support business, academic and research teams across the University as they develop their own continuity plans to ensure that the necessary steps are taken to identify the impact of potential losses, maintain viable recovery strategies and recovery plans, and maintain continuity of services. Learn more on our business, academic, and research continuity page.

You don’t want to wait until after a disaster or other event that disrupts your day-to-day to start wondering how to get back to work. Instead, through BARC, we help you to make plans ahead of time to guide decision making when the time comes.

How can UWEM help me?

Megan is here to serve as a resource for your team in developing your continuity plans. The process of getting started, identifying your critical operations, making a plan to circumvent disruption, and analyzing and testing that plan can be a daunting one. Megan can support you along the way, including:

  • Assisting you and your team with navigating the HuskyReady tool
  • Sharing best practices, tips and guidance on how best to tackle planning and the planning process
  • Providing presentations and facilitated discussion to help you better understand business continuity and the planning process
  • Leading discussions and exercises to test your existing plans
  • Supporting your planning in other ways as requested

She just can’t write your plan for you! You know what you do every day, and you probably also already have a list in your head of your priorities and critical programs. The continuity planning process just helps you get those priorities out of your head and onto paper, identify how you can keep up with them if your operations are limited, and ensure anyone in your organization can start the rebuilding process if you aren’t available. Megan will help you break the process into small steps to spread out the work—eating the proverbial elephant one bite at a time!

Ready? Ok!

Contact Megan today at levym2@uw.edu or 206-897-8081 or log in to HuskyReady to review your existing planning or get started!