Covid-19 lasting the lockdown – our business continuity plans

Like many organisations we have been surprised by the sheer scale of disruption caused by the Covid-19 outbreak. At Alan Boswell Group we took ownership of the situation in mid-March 2020 and invoked our business continuity plan and since then we have been following the advice of government and health authorities. Our continuity plans are designed to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 across our operations and allow us to provide support to our people to enable them to deliver our products and services despite the change in circumstances.

To inform our staff and clients we have created a Covid-19 section on our website containing useful information in respect of the pandemic.

We are geared up to last the lockdown period however long that turns out to be. And throughout the crisis our values will remain – Pride, Integrity & Honesty, Our Service, Working Together, Achieving Results and Creativity. Here are some of the measures we have taken:

Our people

• Our priority is the health and safety of our people and clients.
• Since mid-March 2020 all of our staff have been working remotely and continue to do so in line with government advice.
• We have the technology and capabilities in place to enable our people to work remotely and securely. We are supporting a degree of flexible working which recognises that some of our people are managing support for family and friends.

Our clients

• We have successfully been conducting client meetings remotely via phone or video call and using screen sharing software where appropriate. Client data confidentiality is central to our approach with this.
• We continue to deliver certain services on client sites in person, for example engineering inspection services for key sectors. We will observe social distancing rules in this regard.

Our suppliers

• Whilst we appreciate there may be some short term disruption we are monitoring the business continuity plans and service levels of our suppliers (mainly insurers). We have escalation plans in place where service levels are below expected standards

Community

• The communities in which we operate are incredibly important to us and we have remained keen that our charitable giving supported local causes wherever possible. Our charitable trust will, for the immediate future, look to help those affected by COVID-19.

What we’ve learnt

Change necessitates innovation and we have learnt that we can be adaptable as an organisation, and more crucially our clients have shown incredible flexibility. Projects that would normally be implemented over a period of weeks have been completed in hours or days. Our client service will always be face to face on site, but some virtual meetings can improve our efficiency whilst reducing our impact on the environment. New products will be born in this time of need.