PRESENTATION OUTLINE

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE 1. What is Crisis
Management Planning (CMP)? definitions and
misconceptions 2. Evolution of CMP at
Monash 3. The CMP process 4. The crisis of
21 October 2002 5. Lessons learned 6. Key
ingredients for the successful implementation of
CMP
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What is Crisis Management Planning (CMP)?
definitions and mis-conceptions Ross Campbell in
his book, Crisis Control defines a crisis as, an
adverse incident or series of events that have
the potential to seriously damage an
organisations people, operations and
reputation. Campbell goes on to define crisis
management planning as the development of a
system to minimise the impact of a crisis on an
organisations people, operations and reputation
and to assist an organisation to recover from
such an event. It is different to emergency
management which he defines as the development
of an effective incident response focussed on
controlling an emergency event.
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Millar and Smith from the U.S. Institute of
Crisis Management in their 2002 publication,
Crisis Management and Communication (Second
Edition) define a crisis as, a significant
disruption to an organisations normal activities
that stimulates extensive media coverage and
public scrutiny. Millar and Smith then go on to
talk about the some common fallacies of crisis
management namely that Most organisational
crises result from natural events (storms etc.)
or from industrial accidents (fires, explosions
etc.) which occur suddenly. Their research
indicates that 75 of organisational crises are
caused by slow-burning events such as fraud,
executive dismissal, sexual harassment,
misleading advertising etc.
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The nature of organisational crises has remained
relatively constant over time. Their research
indicates that there has been a dramatic increase
over the last 10 years in the number of
organisational crises precipitated by class
action lawsuits, sexual harassment and fraud.
Employees and /or nature cause most crises Their
research indicates that management actions cause
75 of all organisational crises. Heavy
manufacturing is the most crisis prone
industry Their research indicates that the
banking, stockbroking and insurance industries
top the list of industries that have experienced
the most crises over the last decade.
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• Evolution of Crisis Management Planning at
  Monash
• Origins in the Y2K event/non-event and from a
  number of risk management projects conducted
  across the university
• Support for the concept particularly from
  external members of Council who were on the
  Boards of banking and finance companies
• In June 2001, University Council on the
  recommendation of its Audit Committee approved a
  project for the implementation of crisis
  management planning across the University.
  Project to be managed by the Audit and Risk
  Management Office
• ARM Office developed a project plan and tenders
  were sought from external experts in this area to
  co-source the project.

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• The CMP Process at Monash
• A corporate crisis team was established at
  Clayton Campus comprised of the Vice-Chancellors
  Group and the Heads of the various Administrative
  Divisions
• Separate crisis teams were then established on
  each of the other 7 campuses including the 2
  offshore campuses, comprised of senior staff at
  those locations
• Workshop sessions were conducted at each
  location. These sessions comprised an outline of
  the roles to be performed by various team
  members the identification of those various
  threats that if they were to occur, would
  constitute a crisis for the campus/university
  and a desktop crisis simulation to test the level
  of responsiveness to a crisis

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• Following each workshop, a draft manual was
  developed with a request that details of each
  team member and a plan of the crisis control room
  be completed and returned to the ARM Office for
  consolidation into a crisis manual and plan for
  the campus
• In February 2002, a full-scale crisis simulation
  involving the corporate crisis team and members
  from the Caulfield team was conducted.
  Ironically, the simulated exercise was a major
  security event. Learnings from that exercise were
  then incorporated into the corporate crisis plan
• In September 2002, following the initial
  development of crisis plans on each campus,
  Council approved revised organisational
  arrangements to ensure the currency of the
  various plans with a senior officer from within
  the Vice-Chancellors Office given on-going
  responsibility for the co-ordination of crisis
  management on all campuses
• In October 2002, the Universitys crisis planning
  process was put to the sternest possible test.

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The Crisis Event At approximately 11am on 21
October 2002, a fourth year honours student
armed with a number of handguns opened fire on
his classmates in an econometrics tutorial room
on the 6th floor of the Robert Menzies Building
at Clayton Campus. Two students died instantly
in the attack and another 5 people were wounded
before staff and students in the room disarmed
the gunman. It was estimated that there were
approximately 2000 people in the Menzies
Building at the time of the shootings. Three of
the wounded students fled the building and ran
into the adjacent Student Centre building to seek
medical attention.
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Within 10 minutes of the shootings the
Vice-Chancellor convened an urgent meeting of
corporate crisis team. I arrived at the crisis
control room 5 minutes later by which time the
Police and the media had already arrived. The
Police established their crisis command centre at
the crime scene and sealed off the Menzies
Building. They then went about their business of
controlling the immediate crime scene, arresting
the perpetrator, taking witness statements and
arranging for the removal of the dead and
wounded. Responsibility for managing the rest of
the Universitys people, operations and
reputation lay squarely with the corporate
crisis team which remained bunkered down till 8pm
that day and re-convened at 8am the following
morning and on several occasions immediately
after the event.
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• Lessons learned
• The crisis event re-affirmed that
• The number of decisions/actions that need to be
  taken both during and after a crisis are enormous
  and well beyond the capacity of any one person
• The range and number of a Universitys internal
  and external stakeholders is staggering
• Any plan is better than no plan
• Crisis plans need to be tested regularly and
  where relevant, emergency services personnel
  invited to attend as observers at crisis
  simulations
• Plans can quickly become out of date

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• Need to establish a crisis control room with
  appropriate facilities and to have a back-up
  control room
• Critical to have current and effective plans in
  place in key operational areas such as, IT,
  switchboard, student counselling, security,
  marketing etc.
• Need an effective message strategy and in
  particular, a member on the team with direct
  responsibility for to internal communications
• Need effective communication channels between the
  Police and University control rooms particularly,
  in this case as the mobile phone network quickly
  became overloaded
• VC should have the public spokesperson role on
  the crisis team with a senior DVC having the team
  leader role
• All decisions of the crisis team should be
  logged.

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• Key ingredients for the successful implementation
  of CMP
• The support and direct involvement of top
  management
• Adequate resources both at the implementation
  stage and on going basis
• A consistent and appropriate methodology and
  approach
• Well-developed plans to underpin the crisis plans
  such as, emergency response, business continuity
  plans etc.
• A well developed message strategy to ensure
  effective communication to all stakeholders. The
  strategy should include the various technologies
  to be used in a crisis e.g.email, voicemail,
  call-centre etc.
• Effective arrangements to ensure crisis plans are
  regularly tested and kept up to date.