Continuity Coordinators

Faculty and staff who are responsible for developing COOP plans are known as continuity coordinators. The Office of Business Continuity Planning utilizes a unique template to capture critical information about each business unit. Completion of COOP plans is very straightforward and the process is flexible. The following terms may be useful in understanding the technical side of COOP planning:

Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP)

The Business Continuity Institute (2010) in "Dictionary of Business Continuity Management Terms" defines COOP as a plan to deal with specific sets of adverse circumstances, e.g. loss of power, infrastructure, data, key staff, or limited building accessibility. All business units will develop a COOP plan that lists typically three to five steps per contingency.

Business Continuity Plan

A documented collection of procedures and information that is developed, compiled, and maintained in readiness for use in an incident to enable a department to continue to deliver its critical products and services at an acceptable predefined level (BCI, 2010). Business Continuity Plans are used at the department and University level.

Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

The process of analyzing business functions and the effect that a business interruption might have upon them (BCI, 2010). The Office of Business Continuity Planning will complete a BIA for each department once a department's units have successfully completed their COOP plans. The BIA provides information needed to complete a department specific business continuity plan.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

The target time for resuming the delivery of a product or service to acceptable level following its disruption (BCI, 2010). In other words, your business unit(s) have been affected by a recent disaster causing downtime. The RTO will be the amount of downtime your business unit can withstand before a lapse of operability begins to impact other operations or campus operations. Typically those business units with "short" RTOs like 12 hours or less than seven days for example are responsible for critical business functions.

Critical Business Functions

The functions or processes that are essential to the core mission or objectives of a unit, department, or the University. There are many critical business functions across campus and the first step for any continuity coordinator is to identify the most essential functions or processes within their unit or department.