Why take Nathaniel Forbes’ BCI’s certification preparation course and exam?
• Save time:  take just three (3) days instead of the usual five (5) days
• The highest-rated BCM instructor in Asia, year after year for 16 years
• More than BCM theory, Nathaniel shows you real-world examples
• 80%+ of the students who’ve taken this course from Nathaniel passed the exam
• Save money: our course fee includes the USD 500 exam fee
• Our ’No Fail Guarantee’: if you don’t pass, you don’t pay again
• The food in Singapore!
• Want even more reasons? http://bit.ly/sVK7cR

Only two 2012 sessions in Singapore: 21-23 February 2012 and October 2012 (dates not set yet).  Sorry, insane offer not available in October. We will have recovered our sanity.

A Peek Inside Course Day 2: RTO vs MTPD
A message from Nathaniel Forbes:  The BCI religion is that Recovery Time Objective, or RTO  – how soon you plan to recover – is not the same as Maximum Tolerable Period of Disruption, or MTPD  – how long before your company’s existence is threatened.  The BCI rule is: RTO is always shorter than MTPD.  You probably won’t pass the exam if you don’t believe that in your heart.

It may be logical, but it’s irrelevant in the real world. I’ve written that MTPD will end up on the scrap heap of history, but you won’t get BCI-certified if you don’t believe in MTPD. I tell students, ‘you may not believe, but you must pretend that you do until after the exam!’

WHY?
• The benefit of certification:  get paid more!
• The benefit of BCI certification: it’s recognized everywhere in the world.

In the real world, however, no Asian companies use MTPD (except the few that are BS25999-certified). For example, did you read my story about Thailand in our December 2011 newsletter? OK, what’s the MTPD for Honda in Thailand? How long before the existence of Honda in Thailand is “irrevocably threatened”? Obviously months, probably years – so their MTPD would be months or years. But would it be acceptable for Honda – or your company, or any company – to have RTOs of  months or years? Only in a complete catastrophe like the flooding, right.  So your company’s RTOs – and Honda’s and most other companies’ – are almost certainly in days or weeks.  So what’s the value of MTPD?

In the real world, the issue is not RTO vs MTPD. The real issue is, how do you measure RTO?  From the time of interruption or from the time you activate your plan? In the Thailand flooding, did the RTO time start when the water reached Honda’s front door, or when the water was knee-deep, or when they abandoned the factory? A difficult decision. The standard BCI course material doesn’t include that discussion.  But I explain that debate on Day 2 in my course because it’s so important to your daily work.

By Nathaniel Forbes, Forbes Calamity Prevention Pte Ltd, Singapore. Posted: 19 December 2011 at 4:26 pm (UTC +8 hours)