Utilities are often mature in their capability to react to service delivery interruptions - small or large. They have mutual aid agreements with other utilities in neighboring areas to assist if their service teams are fully committed. They also do well in reacting when they lose a tactical element of their infrastructure, whether it be a pipeline or a power generating facility. Unfortunately, in some organizations, these capabilities are often mistaken for business continuity – in reality, reacting to service interruptions is a business function like everything else in a utility.

The scope of a utility’s planning effort is based on their day-to-day products and services:

• Utilities often start with planning for technology downtime because technology is the “eyes” of the utility and a major enabler of customer service (most states have stringent regulations regarding response time to a customer service interruption). Additionally, technology enables a number of internal business functions critical to the financial success of the organization, to include billing, payment processing and service order receipt. Systems are clearly important, and recovery capabilities are tested regularly.
• Most utilities have strong crisis management capabilities, together with crisis communications. These are tested frequently using table top exercise processes. Typically, the CFO or COO chairs the Crisis Management Team. The Finance or Risk Management function often owns business continuity in a utility.
• Most utilities have business continuity capabilities for customer service and service monitoring with recovery objectives of less than 4 to 8 hours, often driven by regulatory requirements.
• More and more utilities are developing business recovery capabilities for centralized (shared services) processes that are either customer facing or internal and required to efficiently deliver services.
• Power generating stations and transmission centers (gas and electric) are often addressed by emergency response and robust security processes, but not “true” business continuity. Internal power and gas capacity can cover downtime, as could buying power on the retail market.
• Energy trading and marketing is an area critical to many utilities, particularly those without (or without adequate) generation or natural gas production. Utilities need to optimize their buys and sells, and they need to be positioned to flex in order to meet higher than expected demand.

Utilities which develop a business continuity management capabilities are often very successful at the effort, particularly when they leverage their experiences with emergency response and service interruption processes.