Draft:The PREPARE Framework

The PREPARE Framework

The PREPARE Framework is a comprehensive approach for building and maintaining operational resilience in organizations. It was developed by James Lodge and first published in March 2024 "The PREPARE Framework for Operational Resilience".

Overview

The PREPARE Framework provides a structured methodology for organizations to anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to disruptions that could impact the delivery of critical services. The framework is organized around seven key dimensions:

Principles - Establishing a resilience strategy and culture aligned with organizational priorities

Regulations - Ensuring compliance with relevant laws, regulations and standards

Evaluation - Assessing resilience capabilities and identifying areas for improvement

Procedures - Defining processes to identify critical assets, dependencies and impact tolerances

Adaptability - Cultivating flexibility and agility to rapidly adjust plans based on changing circumstances

Roles - Clarifying resilience roles, responsibilities and governance structures

Execution - Operationalizing resilience through integrated planning, testing and continuous improvement

The framework is designed to be adaptable to the unique operating context and risk profile of each organization. It emphasizes engagement of a broad set of internal and external stakeholders in resilience efforts.

Seven Dimensions

Principles - The foundation of the PREPARE Framework is defining the key principles that guide an organization's approach to resilience. This includes the overall resilience strategy and objectives, key planning scenarios, and embedding resilience into the culture. A focus on continuity of critical services that are essential to customers and markets is core to the principles.

Regulations - The PREPARE Framework stresses the importance of a comprehensive understanding of and compliance with all relevant laws, regulations and standards relating to operational resilience. Organizations should proactively monitor the evolving regulatory landscape in their jurisdictions and industries. Integrating regulatory requirements into resilience planning is crucial.

Evaluation - Under the PREPARE Framework, organizations conduct regular assessments of their resilience capabilities across key domains such as business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management and third-party risk. A range of quantitative and qualitative metrics are used to measure resilience posture and maturity. Resilience gaps and improvement areas are prioritized based on criticality.

Procedures - Establishing robust procedures for identifying critical assets, mapping dependencies, conducting business impact analysis, and setting impact tolerances for disruption is another key dimension. The framework provides guidance on testing and exercising these procedures through regular tabletop simulations and hands-on drills to validate response and recovery capabilities.

Adaptability - PREPARE emphasizes the cultivation of organizational adaptability and agility, leveraging techniques like scenario planning, situational awareness, decentralized decision-making and flexible resource allocation. The ability to rapidly adjust strategies and plans in the face of emerging threats or changing circumstances is crucial to resilience.

Roles - Under PREPARE, organizations define clear roles, responsibilities and governance structures for all aspects of operational resilience. Resilience accountabilities are embedded into job descriptions and performance management. Ongoing training and awareness efforts aim to foster a culture of resilience ownership across all levels and functions.

Execution - The final dimension focuses on operationalizing resilience capabilities on an ongoing basis, through integrated planning, regular exercising, continuous improvement and embedding into day-to-day practices. Executive leadership, adequate resource allocation and measurement and reporting of resilience KPIs and KRIs are stressed.

Industry Applications

Though the PREPARE Framework is built on shared ideas and methodologies, it acknowledges that operational resilience strategies must be customized to the particular risk factors and operational environments of many industries. With an eye towards the unique difficulties, regulatory environments, and new best practices of each industry, the framework offers direction on how to use the seven dimensions.

Organizations should take into account the unique elements that mold resilience requirements and strategies inside their industry when using the PREPARE Framework. Those can be:

• The kind, importance, and possible effects of interruptions on clients, markets, and society at large of the goods or services offered
• The intricacy and interconnections of the infrastructure, technology systems, and supply chains of the industry
• The rate and turbulence of change in the competitive dynamics, technological innovation, and customer behavior of the industry
• The operational resilience regulations and supervisory expectations, which could differ greatly between industries and regions
• History and experiences of the industry with previous crises and disruptions, together with the lessons discovered and best practices that have resulted

Organizations should follow a disciplined procedure of risk assessment, stakeholder consultation, and benchmarking in order to customize the PREPARE Framework to their particular industry environment. This can concern:

• a thorough risk landscape mapping of the industry, covering both conventional operating risks and new ones like cyberattacks, climate change, and geopolitical unrest
• Consulting with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders, including as clients, regulators, trade groups, and subject matter experts, to obtain understanding of resilience priorities and expectations
• Setting resilience practices and skills against those of industry peers and leaders from other sectors to find areas for development
• creating resilience indicators, KPIs, and KRIs particular to a sector that complement the particular performance goals and risk tolerance of the sector
• modifying resilience playbooks, protocols, and procedures to suit the operating environment, technology infrastructure, and legal needs of the sector

Organizations may guarantee that their resilience initiatives are focused, relevant, and successful in handling the particular risks and challenges of their sector by using the PREPARE Framework in a Customized, industry-specific manner. Simultaneously, organizations can promote more cooperation, information-sharing, and interoperability throughout sectors by using the framework's shared structure and vocabulary, therefore facilitating a more coordinated and cohesive strategy to strengthening society resilience.

The PREPARE Framework offers an extensible and flexible basis for improving operational resilience in a variety of sectors and situations. Organizations can position themselves to prosper in an increasingly complicated and unpredictable business environment by adopting the framework's dimensions and principles and tailoring its application to their own industry.