Organisational resilience

Organisational resilience depends on a deep-seated culture that permeates an organisation. It cannot be attached or acquired; the only way to achieve it is to embrace it wholeheartedly and make sure everyone in the organisation understands it and takes responsibility for their part in it. Resilience builds over time, with experience, practice and commitment. At UK Power Networks we have been building this culture over many years and it is an important element of our way of working.

We were not subject to any events in 2023/24 that tested our readiness to withstand a crisis. That does not mean, however, that we did not continue to scan the horizon ceaselessly; if anything, it gave us the opportunity to refocus and deepen awareness throughout the business. We have a programme of communication and awareness-raising that reaches all levels of the business.

Revised British Standards Institution (BSI) guidance

We align our organisational resilience with the BSI guidance (BS 65000). In 2023/24, this was revised to view resilience in more breadth, placing emphasis on the dependencies and interrelations of functions. It further suggests that an organisation’s strategy, business model and risk management are fundamental to building and maintaining organisational resilience. This fresh approach chimes with our own and we are matching our activities with this new Code of Practice.

A resilience dashboard

We are beginning to be more explicit in how we measure our organisational resilience, as we recognise that what we choose to measure is what gets done. We are developing a dashboard that helps our leadership team track factors of resilience and issues relating to them and to identify areas where we should concentrate our efforts to reinforce our position.

Introducing the principle of the pre-mortem

In 2024, we started to encourage the use of pre-mortems more widely in resilience planning. A pre-mortem involves identifying a potential crisis that we could face as a business and defining it in as much detail as possible. Working backwards, we proceed to determine the steps and decisions that could have led to the event and our imagined failure to manage it. This technique is a valuable way of discussing the threats that face us and analysing them systematically. It also allows us to identify what actions we might take to prevent the circumstances arising.

Response to extreme weather

As a DNO it is a fundamental aspect of our role to be able to operate in spite of extreme weather. Traditionally, this has referred to storms but, increasingly our preparation includes measures to deal with extreme heat.

We prepare our plans meticulously in anticipation of every major event and we hold reviews afterwards to ensure we learn the lessons they teach us and make the relevant improvements. This aspect of our resilience planning proved to be crucial during the extreme weather conditions experienced throughout 2023 and the beginning of 2024. A series of named storms, which caused nationwide disruption, stress-tested every element of UK Power Networks’ severe weather response plans. Particularly noteworthy was Storm Isha, which was classified by the Met Office as a ‘red’ weather warning for high winds; this is the agency’s highest warning category. Within 24 hours, over 90% of affected customers had their electricity supplies restored. To ensure continuous improvement, we conducted a review of our response to the storms and we implemented improvements across the organisation.