The ability to continue essential functions during disruptions is critical for every organization. Hagerty provides continuity support across industries, including energy, transportation, healthcare, education, and all levels of government. With extensive experience designing and testing continuity programs nationwide, our team helps clients at every stage of the planning cycle, regardless of the maturity of their program.
Hagerty delivers a comprehensive range of services, including continuity of operations (COOP) and continuity of government (COG) planning. Our professionals also provide functional training and exercises to strengthen institutional capacity and resilience.
Hagerty’s All-Hazards Approach
Our team takes a unique all-hazards approach to continuity projects. By focusing on essential functions and the resources that sustain them, we build programs that remain resilient to both expected and unexpected hazards—including low-probability, high-impact hazards. Our plans also account for non-disaster disruptions that can significantly impact operations, such as the closure of a critical facility.
A keystone of Hagerty’s approach is the development of process flows that map each step of an essential function and illustrate how departments work together. Process flows simplify continuity response by making it easier to:
- Identify disruption points, chokepoints, and single points of failure.
- Adjust processes in real time to minimize operational impact.
- Strengthen risk assessments by linking operational steps to resilience measures.
Integrating Partners Into Continuity
For maximum effectiveness, continuity planning must align with both emergency preparedness and information technology (IT) disaster recovery. In today’s increasingly technology-dependent environment, continuity plans, Emergency Operations Plans (EOP), recovery plans, and IT disaster recovery plans may activate simultaneously during the same incident.
Our team helps clients streamline these interdependencies by ensuring that all plans share common leadership, structures, and operational concepts. As a result, organizations can deliver a more coordinated and effective response.
Our Continuity Capabilities
Hagerty offers a comprehensive suite of continuity services, including:
- Program Assessments: In-depth evaluations guided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Continuity Assessment Tool and the Planning, Organizing, Equipping, Training, and Exercising (POETE) model, offering actionable recommendations for improvement.
- Programmatic Design: Collaborative development of continuity programs that engage diverse stakeholders, establish clear objectives, and align leadership structures with existing emergency response capabilities, strategic plans, and organizational policies.
- COOP Planning: Facilitation of planning through structured information gathering and data collection, including in-person or virtual meetings, surveys, and reviews to produce actionable continuity plans.
- COG Planning: Development of operational plans that protect critical governance functions, built through inclusive stakeholder engagement to ensure buy-in and long-term sustainability.
- Training: Flexible training delivered through in-person sessions, virtual workshops, recorded seminars, web-based modules, and training-in-a-box deliverables, designed to build lasting institutional capabilities and enable organizations to maintain programs independently.
- Exercises: Design and facilitation of continuity exercises at all scales, from discussion-based tabletops to relocation and communications drills, focused on participant engagement and plan validation.
Our Experience
Continuity Program Assessment
Hagerty developed a detailed Findings Report for a large state university to evaluate its emergency response and continuity programs. To gather relevant data, we reviewed over 400 documents and conducted a week of in-person interviews across university departments. Our team synthesized the data into key areas for improvement and produced a recommended implementation roadmap to guide prioritization.
Process Flows and Risk Assessments
For a county transit authority, we analyzed the operational impact of losing its headquarters facility. Through interviews, process flows, geographic data, and document review, we identified essential functions tied to the site. Next, we assessed potential impacts if the facility were unavailable and compared them to the authority’s restoration goals. Where capability gaps were found, we provided targeted next steps. The resulting risk assessment provided a practical tool for planning, budgeting, and exercise design.
Plan and Program Design
Hagerty supported a newly formed state agency in creating its first continuity plan and program. To accommodate evolving staffing, we adjusted stakeholder engagement to ensure accurate information gathering and build consensus. The final plan established a new continuity steering committee and provided clear guidance for plan maintenance to simplify quarterly updates.
Hagerty can help you sustain continuity.
Continuity planning is an ongoing effort that requires deliberate investment, structured processes, and regular evaluation. Hagerty partners with clients at every stage of the process, with the goal of leaving organizations more independent, confident, and resilient than when we arrived.
