Emergency Operations Plans

Defender Preparedness helps businesses develop clear, compliant, and actionable Emergency Operations Plans (EOPs) that guide your organization through emergencies of any type—natural disasters, facility incidents, technology outages, workplace violence, or other disruptions. We work with leadership and key staff to map your real-world operations, identify risks, and build a plan that is easy to follow under pressure. The result is a practical EOP that strengthens safety, improves coordination, and ensures your team knows exactly what to do before, during, and after an emergency.

Emergency Operations Plan development typically entails and includes:

• All-Hazards Framework: A scalable plan that applies to any emergency, with hazard-specific annexes as needed.

• Risk Identification / Hazard Vulnerability Analysis (HVA): Review of your top threats and operational vulnerabilities to shape priorities.

• Roles & Responsibilities: Clear assignments for leadership, managers, and staff during response.

• Incident Command / Crisis Management Structure: How your company will organize decision-making and control during an event.

• Emergency Procedures: Step-by-step actions for scenarios such as evacuation, shelter-in-place, lockdown, severe weather, fire, medical events, and utility failures.

• Communications Plan: Internal alerts, employee accountability, stakeholder messaging, and media coordination.

• Facility & Life-Safety Planning: Access control, assembly areas, reunification, and coordination with first responders.

• Business & Operational Continuity Integration: How emergency response links to COOP/business recovery priorities.

• Resource & Logistics Planning: Critical supplies, equipment, vendor support, and contingency sourcing.

• Training & Orientation: Staff instruction so everyone understands the plan and their role.

• Exercise & Validation Program: Tabletop exercises, drills, and functional/full-scale exercises to test the plan.

• After-Action & Improvement Planning: Documentation of lessons learned and updates to keep the EOP current.Continuity of Operations

Continuity of Operations Planning

Continuity of Operations Planning (COOP) helps businesses maintain essential functions during emergencies, disasters, or major disruptions. Defender Preparedness works with your leadership to identify what must keep running, how to sustain it when people, facilities, or systems are impacted, and how to restore full operations quickly. A strong COOP plan reduces downtime, protects revenue and reputation, and ensures your organization can operate through events ranging from severe weather and power loss to supply-chain failures or sudden leadership unavailability.

COOP planning typically entails and includes:

• Essential Functions Identification: Define the mission-critical services, processes, and products that must continue within specific timeframes.

• Business Impact Analysis (BIA): Analyze operational, financial, legal, and customer impacts if functions are disrupted, and set recovery priorities.

• Orders of Succession: Establish clear replacement authority if senior leaders are unavailable.

• Delegations of Authority: Document who can make which decisions during a crisis, including spending, contracting, and operational approvals.

• Continuity Staffing Plan: Determine required staffing levels, cross-training needs, and “minimum operational crew” roles.

• Alternate Facilities & Remote Operations: Identify backup worksites and remote work procedures to sustain operations if a primary site is unusable.

• Continuity Communications: Build internal and external communication protocols, including emergency notification, stakeholder updates, and media messaging.

• Information Technology & Data Resilience: Ensure access to critical systems, data backups, cybersecurity considerations, and manual workarounds if systems fail.

• Vital Records & Document Protection: Identify and secure files needed to operate legally and effectively (contracts, financials, HR, SOPs).

• Resource & Supply Chain Continuity: Plan for alternative suppliers, logistics routes, and resource prioritization.

• Reconstitution & Recovery: Step-by-step process for returning to normal operations and integrating lessons learned.

• Training, Testing, and Exercises: Seminars, tabletop exercises, drills, and functional/full-scale testing to validate and improve the plan.