Lots to talk about as the summer months are upon us! In June we had the great pleasure and opportunity to work with Covestro to develop and execute a large-scale crisis exercise for their Seveso plant in Antwerp. You’ll read more about it below, but first let’s update you about our resilience project.

Resilience at PM: more than a buzzword

Resilience has been one of the buzzwords of 2022. Every organisation proclaims that they must be resilient in these times of climate change, pandemics and geopolitical instability. Google Trends also shows that the term ‘resilience’ has become 4 times more popular in the last 10 years.

But what exactly is resilience and what does the term mean for organisations and companies? Can we measure it and can organisations work on ‘being more resilient’? Is a resilient organisation also a high-performing organisation?

These are the questions we have been asking ourselves at PM for the past 2 years, and the search for answers yielded some interesting insights.

Integrated crisis exercise at Covestro

PM recently developed, implemented and executed a realistic integrated crisis management exercise at Covestro’s Seveso plant in the Port of Antwerp in close collaboration with the company and its staff.

On June 10, 2022, for half a day, our entire team observed how Covestro reacted to a (simulated) crisis situation with heavy (fictitious) implications for its operations, management, communications and stakeholder relations.

Integrated crisis exercises are real opportunities for crisis team members to apply their skills and see how the crisis organisation and its roles truly interact during crisis. They always provide a great learning experience.

Would you like to talk about integrated crisis management exercises? We would be more than happy to share our experiences and insights with you.

Learning from incidents and near misses in the Port of Antwerp-Bruges

The port of Antwerp-Bruges (PoAB) is the largest cluster of chemical companies in Europe. Its port authorities oversee the activities of hundreds of companies and organisations on its premises on a daily basis. All these organisations are confronted with risks and incidents on a daily basis.

In its management role, PoAB is confronted with these non-proprietary risks and can take measures that can limit the impact of incidents on activities in the port. The question arises what network policy PoAB can pursue to better control these risks.

Esger ten Thij tackled this complex issue as part of his final year internship in integrated security studies at Avans University of Applied Sciences, coached by Dr. Hugo Marynissen. Read about Esgers research on our blog.

Master crisis meetings with IBOBBO drills

Crisis management is no rocket science. Looking at the essence of good crisis management, we cannot underestimate the importance of efficient and effective meetings. Fortunately, there is a quick win here, namely the IBOBBO (or RPADASprocess. However, IBOBBO is a true skill!

Skills are mastered by practising. For IBOBBO this means doing short drills focused on the meeting process. We noticed increased interest in IBOBBO drills at PM. For a half or full day, we confront crisis teams with numerous crisis scenario’s with the sole purpose of training the BOB part of IBOBBO: perceiving the situation, making the right judgement calls and deciding.

Curious to hear if these kind of drills might benefit your team(s)? Get in touch!

These heroes saved us from zombie attacks

This year we had the pleasure of introducing many organisations to our most popular serious game simulation: the Zombie Game ©.

In the simulation, participants face a world-wide zombie outbreak, which requires them to be creative in organising themselves to save our planet.

Today, we’d like to celebrate those heroes that didn’t shy away from any sacrifice to save humanity from the outbreaks. Thank you, Port of Antwerp-Bruges, CCNE, Ministry of Rijkswaterstaat, NCCN, Fluxys and more!

In case you missed it: CCNE in Ghent

Last May we were honoured to welcome the Crisis Communications Network Europe (CCNE) to Ghent for the first physical meeting in a while.

For us it was the first meeting with our CCNE partners and friends in person. We look back at many great talks with other members. Additionally, we’d like to thank Katrien Jansseune, head of communication at the National Crisis Center of Belgium (NCCN), once again for her inspiring keynote.

Books we’ll be reading this summer

Here are some books our team has chosen to read on the beach:

  • Robbert is reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, a psychological horror story about a family whose house seems to be much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Long-winding footnotes, changing typography and no set way to read the book make it a rather complicated read.
  • Julien is going to read the Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez. A comprehensive guide presenting a new and simple framework that will increase any project’s likelihood of success. It teaches how to manage your organisation’s projects.
  • Stijn is reading De Brain Balans by Steven Poelmans. The brain balance is a practical model inspired by the ‘Healthy Mind Platter’, a ‘brain diet’ for an optimal neuro-cognitive well-being. Flemish experts in neurosciences discuss about ten activities that lead to high performance.

We wish you a pleasant summer and hope to see you again soon!