Accountant gains new award for resilience

Dec 23 2009 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

ACCOUNTANTS and business advisers PricewaterhouseCoopers has become the first major professional services firm to gain certification for a world standard business continuity management certificate. The BS25999 (Part 2), certification covers all 41 of the firm’s locations in the UK.

Paul Woolston, senior partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Newcastle, said: “Achieving certification to BS25999 is extremely important for us as a business. Our clients expect us to demonstrate that we have resilience within our business to a major disruption and certification by an independent third party provides clear evidence of that.

“The assessment process was very stringent with seven of our sites actively audited, as well as our national business continuity team and central business continuity management system.

“To maintain our certification, we shall be subject to an ongoing assessment each year, ensuring our business continuity programme remains compliant with the standard.”

Continued operation in the event of a disruption, whether due to a major disaster or a minor incident, is a fundamental requirement for any organisation.

BS25999, developed by a broad- based group of world-class experts representing a cross-section of industry sectors and the government, has been developed to help organisations minimise the risk of such disruptions.

It does so by providing a basis for understanding, developing and implementing business continuity within an organisation.

Neil Austin, director, PWC risk assurance services, said: “Lessons learned from the economic crisis have placed business resilience much higher on the board agenda.

“At PwC we believe in good risk management and business continuity planning and are very aware that to be credible advisers to our clients in this area, we have to practise what we preach.

“We are investing heavily and expanding our team to further build our capability in all aspects of business continuity management to help our clients embed greater resilience into their own business operations.”