In June this year, Sheffield was hit by severe flooding, following some of the wettest weather on record in the UK. On Monday (25 June), Irwin Mitchell's Sheffield offices, located across two buildings in the centre of the city, were badly hit by the flooding. The ground floors of both buildings were engulfed with water.

Irwin Mitchell's business continuity team alerted business continuity specialists SunGard to the likely danger at around 5pm on the day of the flooding. By 6pm, the firm's head of IT operations Gary Thomas rang SunGard, to call on its services and put into action its recovery plan.

Fortunately, the flooding hit the building after the firm's call centre had closed for the evening, but it was essential for Irwin Mitchell and SunGard to ensure that normal services could be resumed the following morning.

While SunGard put the firm's recovery plan into action, the business continuity team worked through the night, drawing on localised plans to bring a makeshift call centre into one of the higher floors of the building. Irwin Mitchell would eventually relocate around 50 of its contact centre staff to its local SunGard recovery centre, based in Elland, West Yorkshire, with the remainder of the team staying in the makeshift facility. Irwin Mitchell was to become the first organisation to use the site in a real situation, following its summer launch.

As part of the business continuity plan, SunGard kept 30 of the IP phones used in Irwin Mitchell's call centre at the recovery centre in Elland. By 1am on Tuesday morning, SunGard had two recovery suites available, ready with 100 PCs and 30 IP phones.

As part of the recovery, SunGard mirrored Irwin Mitchell's call centre PC systems, so employees would have exactly the same information on screen. SunGard shipped in a further 70 IP phones from its mobile recovery centre in Leicester and by 4am, Irwin Mitchell had access to 100 call centre positions, each of which was identical to those in its own offices.

To all intents and purposes, the recovery centre became another Irwin Mitchell building.

Keeping staff up to date

Another important part of Irwin Mitchell's recovery plan was to keep staff updated with developments and to inform them of what they should be doing. The firm had set up a staff information line, a free 0800 telephone number which the company uses in emergencies. This number is a key component of Irwin Mitchell's crisis management strategy, and is printed on staff ID cards and explained during inductions.

On the morning following the flooding, everyone knew exactly what they needed to do. Call centre staff were informed that they should travel to work as normal and that they would then be transferred to the SunGard recovery site in Elland by bus. The smooth, fast recovery ensured that the call centre was able to meet its service level agreements despite the flooding.

Logistical problems

Irwin Mitchell ended up using only one of the recovery suites put aside for it at Elland as some staff continued to use the boardroom as a makeshift call centre. Fifty staff were transferred from Sheffield to Elland and continued to work from the Elland site for more than two weeks – a necessary disruption as there were ongoing issues with power while the utility companies patched up the city. One of the major challenges for the business continuity team during the flooding was the logistical challenge of transporting staff to and from Elland when all of the local transport networks were severely disrupted due to the flooding.

The firms ended up booking hotel rooms for our call centre staff in Elland as it was impossible to transport them on a daily basis. What is usually around a 40-minute journey from Sheffield to Elland was taking more than two hours.

A successful recovery

Effective planning, a good IT infrastructure based on voice over IP technologies and a rapid response by SunGard ensured Irwin Mitchell continued close to normal functioning. Irwin Mitchell staff at Elland were able to receive client calls and forward them to all corners of the Irwin Mitchell enterprise.

Irwin Mitchell was able to maintain its normal level of service despite the severe floods which caused more than £2m-worth of damage to the firm's buildings. Indeed, it is unlikely that the firm will be able to reoccupy the ground floors of both of its Sheffield buildings before Christmas 2007.

Irwin Mitchell prides itself on the fact that it answers 98% of its calls within 15 seconds. On the day after the floods, this dropped only marginally to 96%, an impressive performance given the circumstances.

From an operational and technical point of view, the recovery worked beautifully. Our clients would not have noticed any drop in the level of service and the feedback from our staff has been overwhelmingly positive. Considering that we did not call on SunGard until the Monday evening, it was a remarkable feat to be fully operational again for the start of business at 8am the following morning. SunGard delivered a very smooth, professional service: we were in constant contact with its technical team at Elland and they provided us with the expertise and re-assurances that we needed in what was quite a stressful time.

Irwin Mitchell has now relocated its call centre back to an alternative space within its Sheffield offices while the flood damaged areas are repaired.

Irwin Mitchell viewed the success of its recovery from the floods in Sheffield as vindication of its investment and focus on business continuity management.

Business continuity is often something that organisations begrudge paying for as it can be hard to see any immediate return on investment. However, our board has always recognised its value and this one invocation gave us that return. Having a clearly-defined business continuity plan in place helped save the company. The damage we would have sustained otherwise is incalculable.

Irwin Mitchell is now working closely with SunGard towards gaining accreditation for BS 25999, the new British Standard for business continuity management.

Working with SunGard towards these new industry standards keeps us focused on our information availability. The floods have proved the importance of our availability planning and we are determined to keep working on it as our business evolves.