Events like the London Olympics 2012 are also fantastic opportunities to see BC planning in action, hopefully along the lines of business continuity plan best practice. https://www.opscentre.com/business-continuity-methodology/
For the 2012 Olympics in London, various government agencies are making a visible effort to get everyone up to speed with the information website http://www.getaheadofthegames.com.
The message for businesses is clear: they “must plan for severe disruption during the Games”. The impact on business activity whether positive or negative will also be felt over a wide area, as the events are not confined to London, but spread out over several cities.
Besides general advice, the site also offers a number of case studies for different types of organisations and business continuity plan best practice. Construction, hospitality, logistics, maintenance services, medical companies, public sector, retail and entertainment, and even charities are all listed as examples. The charity in question is the YMCA in central London with its focus on opportunities for people to actively improve their well being and that of their communities.
How does this compare with the 2008 Olympics in Beijing? At the time, some accounts of the situation warned of supplier shutdown within a 200 km radius of the city from July 20, 2008 to September 20, 2008. A number of companies from other countries working with Chinese suppliers or subcontractors made their contingency plans on that same basis. Since then, sources of information on what finally happened have become harder to locate.
For the moment interested parties will have to wait and see which of the approaches of four years ago of “shut it all down” compared to this year’s “keep it all running” turns out to be the more reasonable in terms of business continuity plan best practice.