lessons identified Archives

The Cost of the Erith Fire and how much has Ocado Learnt from Previous Incidents?

It is rare to get detailed information on the costs of incidents; so the recent financial update from Ocado Retail, covering the period around the fire at their Erith fulfilment centre, is particularly interesting. Comments by the company’s senior management, also raise a question mark over how much they have learnt from previous fires. A …

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Remembering Pipe Alpha 33 Years On

On 6th July 1988, 167 men died following a devastating fire on the Piper Alpha platform, operated by Occidental Oil in the North Sea. Only 61 people survived, some of whom leapt over 100 feet from the burning platform into the sea. As ever, our thoughts are with those survivors and the bereaved families. The …

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On This Day in History – The Reading Train Crash

On 6th November 2004 the 17:35 Paddington to Penzance train was derailed when it struck a parked car on a level crossing at Ufton Nervet, near Reading. Tragically the car driver, train driver and four passengers died at the scene; whilst another passenger died a few hours later in hospital. Fortunately though, this was the …

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Key Pandemic Lessons Identified in Exercise in 2018

There has been much media coverage today of “Exercise Iris”, an exercise delivered to Scottish Health Boards in March 2018 by the Scottish Government’s Health Protection Division. The exercise scenario was based on an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in Scotland, and media reporting has focused on why the exercise recommendations were not …

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Toddbrook Reservoir – What Went Wrong?

Two reports have now been completed into the cause of the failure of the slipway at Toddbrook Reservoir in Whaley Bridge on 1st August 2019: The “Toddbrook Reservoir Independent Review Report” by Professor David Balmforth, commissioned by DEFRA; and “Report on the Nature and Root Cause of the Toddbrook Reservoir Auxiliary Spillway Failure on 1st …

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Business Continuity Awareness Week 2018

Business Continuity Awareness Week (BCAW) 2018, with the theme “working together to improve organizational resilience”, ends today. As usual there has been a busy programme of reports published, webinars hosted and live events around the globe; but what always interests us is the real business continuity stories going on around all this. For some reason, …

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Big Increase in the Number of Cyber Essentials Certifications

In the week that the publication of “Lessons Learned Review of the WannaCry Ransomware Cyber Attack” concluded that the impact on the NHS of last May’s attack was preventable; there is some good news on the cyber security front…. The number of organisations achieving certification under the UK Government’s Cyber Essentials and Cyber Essentials Plus …

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Business Continuity Awareness Week Day 1

What a start to Business Continuity Awareness Week! The theme for this year is Cyber Resilience’, and the week has started with the investigations and continued fall-out from what has possibly been the world’s largest cyber security event which occurred on Friday afternoon. A ransomware attack has spread throughout 150 countries, infecting more than 200,000 …

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Merlin Fined £5m for Alton Towers Crash

The announcement yesterday that Merlin Entertainments had been fined £5m for the crash at Alton Towers last year in which 16 people were injured came as little surprise. What has been startling though is Merlin’s dramatic fall from grace over the last 12 months. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the operator was being …

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