Team meeting in a modern conference room for continuity planning
Consulting — Business Continuity

Keep critical operations running when disruption hits

We work directly with you to identify what your business can't afford to lose, build recovery strategies around it, and test the plan through real exercises, so downtime doesn't become the story.

Overview

Emergency management protects your people. Crisis management protects your leadership's decisions. Business continuity protects your operations

A cyber incident, a supplier failure, the loss of a key site, a pandemic, none of these need to be a physical emergency or a reputational crisis to shut your business down. If your critical functions stop and you don't have a way to keep them running or bring them back quickly, the disruption itself becomes the damage.

Most organisations can name their biggest risks. Far fewer know exactly which functions they can't afford to lose, how long they could survive without them, or what the actual recovery steps are the moment something goes down. That gap usually only becomes obvious once it's too late to close it.

We help organisations establish, operate, test and maintain practical business continuity capability. Our engagements combine direct work with your leadership team, practical plans and operating tools, and scenario-based validation, backed by ongoing capability support through the ResponseRise Platform. Our work follows a simple capability lifecycle: assess, prioritise, design, implement, exercise, improve.

Engagement Pathway

A clear path from readiness to sustained capability

Every engagement sits somewhere on this pathway. Most clients start with a Readiness Review, then build, validate and sustain capability from there, in whatever order makes sense for where you're starting from.

01
Entry

Readiness Review

Establish your current position and identify priorities.

02
Build

Capability Uplift

Establish practical governance, arrangements, plans and tools.

03
Validate

Exercise & Validation

Demonstrate capability and identify improvement requirements.

04
Sustain

Managed Readiness Partnership

Maintain competence, plans, evidence and improvement throughout the year.

Our Services

Five ways to work with us, depending on where you're starting from

Tap a service to open it, then use the tabs to see who it's for, what's included, and what typically comes next.

Best suited to organisations that

  • are unsure whether their current arrangements are adequate
  • have plans that have not recently been reviewed or tested
  • have experienced organisational, operational or leadership change
  • need an independent view of their preparedness
  • want a prioritised improvement program before investing in major plan development

What ResponseRise does

  • confirms the organisation's operating context and assessment scope
  • reviews relevant policies, plans, business impact analyses, exercises and supporting records
  • interviews key executives and operational stakeholders
  • assesses crisis management and business continuity capability
  • identifies material gaps, dependencies and implementation risks
  • facilitates an executive findings and prioritisation session

Client outputs

  • executive readiness report
  • capability maturity profile
  • critical and high-priority findings
  • crisis and continuity interface assessment
  • 90-day priority action plan
  • 12-month capability roadmap
  • recommended consulting and platform pathway

Indicative delivery model

  • fixed-fee engagement
  • scaled according to organisational complexity, sites and business units
  • normally delivered through document review, interviews and one executive workshop

Optional additions

  • regulatory or sector-specific overlay
  • site or business-unit sampling
  • executive scenario validation
  • plan usability review
  • supplier or technology continuity assessment
Logical Next Step

Business Continuity Capability Uplift, Crisis Management Capability Uplift, or Exercise and Validation.

Best suited to organisations that

  • do not have an established business continuity process
  • have outdated or inconsistent business impact analyses
  • cannot clearly identify critical operations or recovery priorities
  • rely on untested workarounds
  • have continuity plans that focus on documents rather than operational recovery

What ResponseRise does

  • establishes the business continuity governance and methodology
  • identifies critical products, services and activities
  • facilitates business impact analysis interviews or workshops
  • determines disruption impacts and recovery requirements
  • maps people, premises, technology, information, supplier and equipment dependencies
  • evaluates continuity strategies and resource requirements
  • develops practical continuity plans and workarounds
  • validates selected arrangements through workshops or exercises

Client outputs

  • business continuity policy and framework
  • business impact analysis methodology
  • consolidated critical activity register
  • recovery priorities and tolerances
  • dependency and vulnerability profile
  • continuity strategy report
  • enterprise and business-unit continuity plans
  • manual workaround templates
  • recovery prioritisation process
  • implementation and validation roadmap

Indicative delivery model

  • staged fixed-fee engagement
  • scope determined by the number of critical services, business units and sites
  • may be delivered as a pilot before broader organisational rollout

Optional additions

  • supplier continuity review
  • technology and cyber recovery interface
  • workforce continuity
  • alternate-site assessment
  • regulated-sector requirements
  • continuity exercise
Logical Next Step

Exercise and Validation, followed by a Managed Readiness Partnership.

Best suited to organisations that

  • have plans but have not demonstrated that they work
  • need to develop team confidence and decision-making
  • want to validate recovery strategies or manual workarounds
  • need evidence of exercising for governance, customer, insurance or regulatory purposes

What ResponseRise does

  • confirms exercise purpose and objectives
  • designs a realistic scenario based on the organisation's risk and operating context
  • prepares participant, facilitator and evaluator materials
  • conducts the exercise
  • captures decisions, strengths, gaps and observations
  • facilitates a structured debrief
  • develops prioritised corrective actions

Exercise formats

  • executive decision exercise
  • facilitated tabletop exercise
  • business continuity walkthrough
  • functional simulation
  • communications exercise
  • multi-team or multi-site exercise

Client outputs

  • exercise concept and objectives
  • participant briefing
  • scenario and inject schedule
  • facilitator and evaluator materials
  • exercise delivery
  • hot debrief
  • post-exercise report
  • corrective-action register
  • recommended capability improvements
Logical Next Step

Targeted uplift work or a Managed Readiness Partnership.

Best suited to organisations that

  • have experienced a significant event or disruption
  • need an independent and constructive review
  • have completed an exercise but need deeper analysis
  • are accumulating recommendations without implementing meaningful change

What ResponseRise does

  • confirms review objectives and boundaries
  • collects records, observations and stakeholder perspectives
  • reconstructs key decisions and events
  • identifies strengths, vulnerabilities and systemic issues
  • distinguishes observations, insights and actionable lessons
  • facilitates management review and action prioritisation

Client outputs

  • independent review report
  • timeline and key decision analysis
  • strengths and effective practices
  • findings and contributing factors
  • lessons and recommendations
  • corrective-action plan
  • management assurance and follow-up process
Logical Next Step

Targeted remediation, framework uplift, or exercise validation.

Best suited to

Organisations that need to maintain capability throughout the year but do not require a full-time internal crisis or continuity resource.

What ResponseRise provides

  • scheduled advisory support
  • annual capability review
  • plan and contact-detail maintenance
  • role-based online training
  • quarterly readiness activities
  • executive or practitioner office hours
  • scenario challenges
  • annual exercise
  • corrective-action tracking
  • emerging-risk briefings
  • annual management assurance report

Client outputs

  • maintained plans and supporting tools
  • training and participation records
  • exercise evidence
  • corrective-action status
  • periodic capability dashboards
  • annual readiness and assurance report

Commercial structure

  • annual subscription or retainer
  • defined advisory-hour allocation
  • specified inclusions and response times
  • additional consulting scoped separately
  • optional site, business-unit and user tiers
Who It's For

Built for organisations that can't afford unplanned downtime

Business continuity matters most for organisations with critical operations, regulatory obligations, or customers who depend on you showing up. Hover a sector to see who we work with.

01

Financial Services

Organisations with regulatory continuity obligations, including APRA-regulated entities under CPS 230.

02

Corporate & Commercial

Head offices needing a clear plan for keeping systems, people and operations running through disruption.

03

Property & Facilities

Landlords and operators managing continuity across multiple sites, tenants and shared infrastructure.

04

Healthcare & Aged Care

Providers where continuity of care can't stop, even when systems, staffing or supply chains are disrupted.

05

Retail & Logistics

Supply chain and customer-facing operations exposed to vendor failure, outages and demand shocks.

06

Government & Critical Infrastructure

Organisations under formal resilience obligations where service continuity is a public expectation.

What We Plan For

Built around real disruptions, not just checkbox compliance

Every plan is scoped around the events most likely to stop your critical functions from operating.

Cyber Incident & System Outage
Supply Chain Failure
Natural Disaster
Loss of a Key Site
Third-Party & Vendor Failure
Pandemic & Workforce Disruption
Regulatory & Compliance Failure
Common Questions

Business continuity, answered

01

How is business continuity different from emergency and crisis management?

Emergency management protects your people and controls the immediate incident. Crisis management protects your leadership's decisions and your reputation. Business continuity protects your operations, keeping critical functions running or getting them back up quickly, regardless of what caused the disruption. We deliver all three, and they're designed to work together.

02

Do we need ISO 22301 certification, or just a plan that works?

Most organisations just need a practical plan that holds up under pressure, and we build every plan aligned to ISO 22301 principles regardless. If you do need formal certification, for example as an APRA-regulated entity under CPS 230, we can help you get there too. If you're not sure where you stand, a Readiness Review is the natural place to start, it's a lower-commitment way to get an independent view before deciding what to build.

03

Who from our organisation needs to be involved?

Typically your leadership team and the owners of your most critical functions. We scope involvement around your structure so it doesn't disrupt day-to-day operations.

04

How long does an engagement take?

It depends which service is right for you. A Readiness Review is typically the quickest, usually document review, interviews and one executive workshop. A full Capability Uplift takes longer and scales with your organisation's complexity, sites and business units. We'll scope timing during your consultation.

05

Does this work alongside the ResponseRise Platform?

Yes. Once your plan and recovery roles are in place, your team can complete the relevant online courses and webinars through the Platform, so refreshers and new starters stay up to date without waiting for us to come back on site to run the next exercise. It's a genuine advantage for keeping any business or organisation prepared year-round.

Ready to find out how long your business could actually keep running?

Book a consultation with a Principal Advisor and we'll help you scope the right business continuity engagement for your organisation.