Corporate emergency-recovery plans have changed significantly over the last 10 to 15 years. Numerous firms now depend on teams to take proactive measures. "What we typically see, as well as individual team action plans, is an overall site plan, for example, for the company's manufacturing site or distribution center--an overarching plan showing how it all comes together so that activities can be coordinated," explains Deloitte's Rick Cudworth.

Speaking with employees and making certain they are safe is crucial after an emergency so that protocols can be enacted correctly. This frequently requires contingency planning. Marsh's Martin Caddick says that companies need to focus on what is really important when an emergency happens and on ways to recover that. He stresses that good crisis-management instruction is crucial. Businesses must back up their data on a regular basis. Some firms back up information and then have a live feed transmit it to back-up facilities so it is twice-protected. It is also important that businesses study their supply chains and determine how a problem at their suppliers could impact their leading operators.

If the worst happens and a business suffers a flood or terrorist incident, companies will have an action plan to cope with the aftermath and get their operations back on track as quickly as possible.

However, the sophistication of the plan can vary widely according to the size and type of business.

"Companies with a turnover of £2m should have a proper business continuity plan in place, but those with four or five people probably will not have a formal plan in place and we are relaxed about that. If the business was hit by fire, they would probably work from home or have a clear plan," says John Heaney, business continuity expert at Hiscox, the insurance company.

Recovery plans have evolved dramatically over the past 10 to 15 years when they were little more than simply evacuation plans and lists of employees' phone numbers. "Now it might be a document of a couple of hundred pages with a large detailed section around areas of more sophisticated operations," says Mr Heaney.

Many companies rely on teams to have action plans.

"Individual teams will have their actions, know what to do, where to go and who to talk to," says Rick Cudworth, head of business continuity in Europe, the Middle East and Asia for consultants Deloitte.

"What we typically see, as well as individual team action plans, is an overall site plan, for example, for the company's manufacturing site or distribution centre - an overarching plan showing how it all comes together so that activities can be co-ordinated," he says.

Communicating with staff and ensuring their safety is vital after an incident so that action can be taken in the proper way at the right time.

Often this needs contingency planning as demonstrated by incidents such as the 7/7 terrorist attack in London in which telephone landlines and mobiles were unreliable in the immediate aftermath.

Martin Caddick, head of the business continuity practise at Marsh, the insurance brokers, distinguishes between emergency res-ponses to evacuate staff and protect people and property and the business recovery process needed to get a company back up and running.

"Businesses need not plan to recover everything: that would cost a fortune. Instead they need to decide what is truly important and concentrate on plans to recover that. You may not even want to recover everything," he says

"We had one example where a local operation spent millions recovering a facility that their head office had earmarked for closure. In another, a business spent three days loading the recovery tapes. Had they picked out the key systems, these could have been back within hours."

Good crisis management training is vital, he says, as poor crisis communications do more damage than the initial incident: "You have to understand the difference between managing an incident such as a fire and the management of a crisis," he says.

"In a real crisis, you should have your board on side and ensure the chief executive is saying the right things at the right time."

Recovering lost data held on IT systems is often another important area for companies that may wish to continue their operations at a back-up location.

Keith Tilley, executive vice president of Sungard Availability Services, says: "If you look at the business you need to see how quickly it needs to be recovered. Can you afford to lose some of the data or does it all need to be there?"

Some companies back up data and then have a live feed sent to back-up centres so it is backed up twice. Sungard has back-ups for technology and physical locations.

But not all companies are backing up their data as often as they should.

Mr Heaney says: "For large companies, maintaining IT data and records are imperative and this should be regularly backed up - possibly weekly or daily or even hourly."

However, Mr Cudworth says some firms are not investing enough in IT disaster recovery.

"There are large volumes of data and back-up techniques which were OK in the past and are not appropriate now. A company may feel two data centres are enough but if you look more closely at the design, if one centre goes down it may bring down the other as well," he says.

Companies also need to look at their supply chain and assess how a problem at their suppliers could hit their main operations. One example is that of a hospital using a laundry company to clean bed linen.

A hospital might send its sheets to be laundered but if a laundry floods or goes bust, hospital staff cannot change the beds and without clean beds they cannot admit new patients.