UW Emergency Management

January 8, 2018

One Year to Husky Ready

Image of Megan Levy sharing her vision to build a continuity plan in a year

Megan Levy, BARC Manager, shares her new year’s resolution vision board for a pilot to “Build Your Plan in a Year.”

When I started in my role as Business, Academic, and Research Continuity (BARC) Program Manager in September, I immediately familiarized myself with our Husky Ready tool, and began the process of sitting down with department stakeholders across the enterprise to find out what they thought of the tool and continuity planning overall. What I heard time and again: The whole process seems daunting and they don’t know where to start.

Updating UWEM’s own plan, I experienced this feeling myself. These plans are based on the work teams are doing every day, but the process of gathering, organizing and recording the data can seem really big. In truth though, it’s a lot of small, easy tasks that when drawn together create the basis for your plans and decision making.

If we’re not starting because it’s all too big, why not start small?

Based on feedback from stakeholder meetings, email surveys, and my own experiences, I developed a BARC New Year’s resolution: make it easier for departments to start their continuity plans. To do this, I am trying out a new process. Instead of simply introducing teams to the Husky Ready tool, and offering my support as they tackle the process, I sat down to outline the steps. My goals:

  • One step per month, with clear instructions, obtainable checklists, and useful resources
  • Clear time commitments and outcomes for each step
  • Teams should be able to get support in the process, through easy to follow instructions, blog posts with useful background, and direct help from the BARC manager

Build Your Plan in a Year

The result was a dozen small processes instead of one big behemoth; one step per month to allow teams to tackle their continuity plans bit by bit with the goal of completing your first plan within a year. Each month, I will publish a blog post outlining that month’s tasks, including time commitments and goals behind each step, as well as useful documentation and instructions on how to add the gathered information to Husky Ready. They will be linked on the Build Your Plan in a Year page, and will be supplemented by blog posts from me as questions arise or I identify key information that might be useful to you in your planning process. You do not need to start your planning in January and end in December. You do not need to complete each step in a month; you can combine two into one month, or spread one over three months. The goal is only to take what is big and unwieldy and make it manageable with clear mini-goals.

The Perfect Process!

Not so fast… 2018 is a pilot year for this program. There will be hiccups–I may be wrong on my timing, the tasks may not flow as easily into one another as I envision, it all may still seem too big. I welcome your feedback, the bad and the good, as you work through the process.

Other Ways BARC Can Support Your Planning

One of the benefits of this step-by-step planning is that it opens me up to spend more time with our departments, supporting them in the planning process. My job is clear: Help grow UW’s business, academic, and research continuity planning. I can support your teams in this process, from facilitated discussions and presentations, to gut checks and reviews of the material you are gathering. If you have a support need, please reach out–I am happy to get creative with the process.

Contact BARC

Megan Levy, Business, Academic, and Research Continuity (BARC) Program Manager, can be reached via email at levym2@uw.edu or via phone at 206-897-8081