Cal Poly Department of Emergency Management (DEM) shot to prominence in early 2020 as it quickly activated the campus Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and for more than two years helped guide the university through the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Under DEM’s leadership and guidance, Cal Poly developed over 170 COVID-19 Safety Plans, including for distributing face masks, implementing and coordinating isolation, providing vaccinations, maintaining surveillance testing sites and processing over 210,000 saliva surveillance tests with systems that were developed by Cal Poly faculty and staff.
Now, two years removed, the department continues its “All Hazards, All Phases” brand of Emergency Management by coordinating the university’s preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation efforts, with respect to disasters and other catastrophic events.
A department within Cal Poly Public Safety, DEM is led by Anthony Knight, the executive director of Public Safety and Emergency Management, and Emergency Services Managers Megan Harrington, Jennifer Marsano, and Dave Lee. Amongst their many responsibilities is working with campus divisions and units to develop and maintain Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) that ensure functions, systems and operations will resume following a catastrophic event.
As with any of DEM’s planning products, these BCPs are based on the university’s campus Hazards and Vulnerability Assessment and Business Impact Analysis and will integrate with exercise and improvement cycles, communication strategies, and training guidelines for campus.
In everyday terms the purpose for continuity planning is to develop a framework and strategies for coping with incidents, including how core critical functions could be maintained so operations and services can continue even while services may be disrupted.
This helps when a disaster does happen. The planning has already been done and processes are put into place so staff know what to do to mitigate disruptions and don’t have to create solutions in high-stress situations. This allows Cal Poly divisions and units to respond with a degree of autonomy and allows for another layer of emergency response and resiliency before the Cal Poly EOC is activated.
These plans consist of a directory of essential personnel and business contacts, a prioritized list of critical functions together with the essential staff, equipment and support activities identified for each function, lines of succession and delegations of authority, alternate operating facilities, procedures for safeguarding vital records, and testing and training exercises.
Under the second iteration of the university’s Business Continuity Planning campaign, DEM hopes to assist all Cal Poly divisions and units in building their respective plans. Ultimately, Cal Poly will have over 50 BCPs to serve all Community Members, making Cal Poly the safest campus within the California State University system.