Tips for Contingency Planning

• Include crisis management as part of the organization's strategic meetings management program.
• Form a crisis management external advisory committee, including people from outside the organization (e.g., meeting destination and facility representatives, attorney, insurance representative, law enforcement, etc.).
• Create a written crisis management plan for each meeting.
• Form a crisis management team, including long-term and event-specific internal personnel as indicated by the threat and vulnerability assessment.
• Ensure there is an off-site data back-up system and data privacy program for critical meeting data.
• Create a strategy for minimizing the impact of a crisis on meetings.
• Develop methods to inform meeting attendees about appropriate crisis prevention and response measures (e.g., emergency contact information, collecting medical emergency information on registration forms, posting and announcing evacuation routes, etc.).
• Conduct a legal and financial threat, vulnerability and capability audit for each meeting.
• Communicate information about large meetings with local law enforcement and emergency response entities such as police and fire, plus destination representatives like CVBs.
• Establish an emergency communication system for communication within staff (on-site and at the office) and with vendors, venue and destination representatives to be used in the event of a crisis.
• Improve crisis management communication to top management, meetings department staff and those outside the meetings staff who will be on-site.
• Improve crisis management communication to meeting participants.

source:http://www.meetingsfocus.com