Crisis Management Assignment One -1-

INTRODUCTION

My name is Mohd Rosminizam bin Mohd Daud. I’m a final student from

Human Resources Development (3SZR). My class has 41 student and 3 of us

are navy Cadet Officers including me as one of the navy and will serve the

country in the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN) after the commission. In my final

semester in National Defence University of Malaysia (NDUM) one of my subjects

is Crisis Management. Till today I keep wondering how I can practice every

knowledge and skills that I gain after studying Crisis Management when serving

in RMN. After do some research in the internet and asking to the senior officers

about their experiences in RMN I finally come-up with an answer in how Crisis

Management can help me doing my job in next ten years.

MY JOB DURING TEN YEARS IN ROYAL MALAYSIAN NAVY (RMN)

Actually in the RMN there are three basic traits, first executive, second

technical and third is supply.

ROYAL MALAYSIAN
NAVY (RMN)

EXECUTIVE TECHNICAL SUPPLY

Picture 1: Basic Traits in RMN

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So as a degree holder in Human Resources Development I will be posted

as a Supply Officer in RMN. Differ from the engineering degree holders they will

be posted as technical officers and for Maritime Science degree holders they will

be posted as Executive Officer. As a supply officer my job is to make sure

enough supply such as foods, cloths, armories and fuel to the RMN. It is my

responsible to make sure all the logistic item for the navy personals and fleets in

RMN is enough for the war that might be happen. I also responsible to make sure

enough quality work force and also professional in RMN by recruiting them and

do the promotion to choice the best candidates to join the navy. In simple word, I

will the support team for the executive and technical traits. Without us as a

supplier to both traits the fleets can’t sail and the navy personals can’t eat. My job

is very important to make sure the readiness of the RMN.

Future Assistance Chief of Staff (ACS) Naval Logistic Division

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THE ORGANIZATION CHART

Picture 2: The Organization Chart of RMN1

In the picture 2 there is an arrow pointing to the tree box of my future

highest level as a supply officer in the RMN. Each of the department will be head

by a First Admiral and all of the First Admirals are from supply trait but for the

Assistance Chief of Staff (ACS) Naval Logistic Division the highest rank is Rear

Admiral so I have chance to be post on that positions but I prefer to be

Assistance Chief of Staff Naval Logistic Division. My goal in my future career is to

be one of the highest Admirals in Navy so for the Supply Officer like me the

highest rank is Rear Admiral in Naval Logistic Division. The responsible for the

ACS Naval Logistic Division is to manage all the department under the logistic

division supply the best quality products and item for the RMN so this will help

the RMN to achieving it vision “To Be a Quality Navy”2.

1
Achieved from Wikipedia.com 22 April 2008
2
Achieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Malaysian_Navy#Vision_and_Mission 22 April 2008
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CRISIS MANAGEMENT

A crisis may occur on a personal or societal level. It may be a traumatic or

stressful change in a person's life, or an unstable and dangerous social situation,

in political, social, economic, military affairs, or a large-scale environmental

event, especially one involving an impending abrupt change. More loosely, it is a

term meaning 'a testing time' or 'emergency event'3. Crisis management is the

systematic attempt to avoid organizational crises or to manage those crises

events that do. A crisis is a major, unpredictable event that threatens to harm an

organization and its stakeholders. Although crisis events are unpredictable, they

are not unexpected. Crises can affect all segments of society – businesses,

churches, educational institutions, families, non-profits and the government and

are caused by a wide range of reasons. Although the definitions can vary greatly,

three elements are common to most definitions of crisis4:

(a) A threat to the organization,

(b) The element of surprise, and

(c) A short decision

There are types of crisis that can appear in organization:

3
Definition of the crisis archived from- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis 22 April 2008
4
Definition of crisis management archived from- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_management 22 April
2008
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IT LOST
SECURITY ESCALATING
BREACH EMERGENCY

INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL
EVALUATION ISSUES

HEALTH HOSTILE
PROBLEMS Crisis TAKE OVER

FINANCIAL ENVIRONMENTAL
PROBLEMS ACCIDENT

EXECUTIVE ID/HR
SUCCESION PRODUCT DISPUTE
RECALL

Picture 3: Type of Crisis in Organization

APPYING CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN MY TEN YEAR CAREER

After study crisis management subject and do the linking to my future

career I can imagine these knowledge’s on crisis management will help me in

handling crisis that might be happen. I also try to search some crisis from the

senior officers in supply trait that they have been experienced before. I do such

thing to prepare myself on the crisis and I also try to find a better solution for the

crisis in the logistic division in the RMN. The crisis from the past experienced of

the senior supply officer that has been told to me the usually happen during
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choosing and storage process of the products and items to be supply for all the

personals and fleets in the RMN. I take the armories such as the ship gun bullet

for the example. If we the responsible team choose the wrong bullet handling and

storage the consequences from this will created disaster to the RMN and we

might be lost million of Ringgit and a lot of innocence life.

If above crisis happen I will follow the step from what actually I learn from

crisis management, first step is identify the crisis might be happen to RMN

consequences from the incident . The crisis happen can be classifies as in

Picture 2.

The next step is managing the crisis. In this step I will use a crisis

management model; it is Crisis Time Line Model from Thales Research and

Technology United Kingdom written by Worton Drive and Berkshire.

THE CRISIS TIME LINE MODEL5

5
Emergency Services Liaison Panel, Major Incident Procedure Manual, 6th edition, July
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The Crisis Time Line Model is composed of four main phases as

shown in Figure 1. Figure 1 also shows the different levels of normality

that occur during the crisis and the different things that can be

observed when an incident happen and might bring to worst crisis such

as explosion in RMN armories storages.

Figure 1: Crisis Time Line Model

2004.
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CRISIS PHASE

The crisis phases and their activities are described below:

Figure 2: Detailed crisis activity phases

1. Pre-incident phase: This is a period of time prior to an incident occurring.

Incident pre-cursors may exist, the detection of which will warn of an incident and

enable prevention and preparation to take place. This phase consists of the

following top level activities:

• Prediction – determination of what incident is going to occur, and when it

is going to occur, is the key to minimizing the effects of an incident. Once

the incident has been accurately predicted, prevention and preparation

responses can be formulated and implemented.

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• Prevention – the best way to minimize the damage done by an incident is

to prevent it from occurring, however, not all incidents are preventable,

e.g. natural disasters. In addition, some preventable incidents may be

detected too late to prevent them.

Figure 3: Crisis phases diagram showing crisis prevention phases

• Preparation – there are two forms of preparation:

o Preparation of the response designed to prevent the incident.

o Preparation for the incident. This occurs when an incident cannot

be prevented or it is too late to prevent the incident. In both cases,

the time remaining can be used for preparation to put in place

measures to minimize the effects and resulting losses of the

incident.
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2. Incident occurrence: This is the instance in time at which the incident occurs

(or starts to occur), if it has not been prevented. After this point, the incident will

evolve during the next phase. If not predicted, this is the first time the incident is

detected.

Figure 4: Expanded view of post occurrence and post incident

phases of a crisis.

3. Post-occurrence phase: During this phase, the incident may get worse, e.g.

by triggering other incidents, it may stay the same, or things may improve, e.g.

emergency services intervene to resume normality as quickly as possible. This

phase consists of the following top level activities:

• Recognition – an incident response will vary according to the incident

type, size, location and components (people and things). By recognizing

the incident, and establishing a profile for it (who and what is involved,

potential evolution, etc), the best response can be devised and the
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incident effects minimized. The recognition activity continues throughout

the entire post occurrence phase, thus providing continuous monitoring of

the situation as it evolves.

• Response – using the recognition outputs, an appropriate response can

be formulated. Incident evolution needs to be included in the formulation,

and if the incident evolves in an unexpected way, the response will be

adapted accordingly. The response consists of three stages:

o Initial response – During this stage, the situation is assessed and a

full scale response is developed. As part of these activities,

emergency responders maybe put on stand-by, so they are

prepared in case they are needed, and the situation may be

declared to be a major incident, at which point each response

agency will implement the relevant major incident plans. While the

situation is being assessed and an appropriate response

developed, any immediate issues are dealt with and action is taken

in an attempt to prevent the incident escalating.

o Consolidation - During this stage, the full scale response is

implemented and the incident monitored continuously. Any changes

in the incident’s profile can then be accommodated into the on-

going response. By the end of this stage, the incident with be under

control.
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o Stand down - During this stage, the incident is under control and

the scale of the incident has reduced to a point where a full major

incident response is no longer required by some or all of the

emergency responders. As a result, the emergency response can

be reduced.

• Recovery – the incident draws to a conclusion and normality starts to

return. Activities in this phase consists of concluding the standing down by

the emergency responders and any immediate actions which can be used

to start to restore normality e.g. re-opening roads closed due to the

incident. The duration of this recovery phase does not typically exceed

hours, but this can vary depending on the specific incident.

• Investigation – as soon as an incident is detected, evidence is gathered

for any future enquiries that may occur.

4. Post-incident phase: The incident is likely to have a finite lifetime, e.g. in a

fire, there is normally a limited amount of fuel to consume. Most incidents will

conclude without intervention, however, without intervention the effects of the

incident may be worse and / or the incident may last longer. At the end of its

lifetime, the incident concludes and normality starts to return – the post-incident

phase. This phase consists of the following top level activities:

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• Restoration – once the incident is over, normality returns over a period of

time, which can take months or years for very severe incidents. Immediate

restoration actions have already been initiated in the post-occurrence

phase. Additional longer term restoration actions may be required to get

things completely back to normal. In some cases, if no action is taken,

normality will never return. Short-term restoration involves the actions

which take hours and days to perform, e.g. providing alternative

accommodation for people made homeless by an incident and long-term

restoration involves actions which take weeks or longer to perform e.g.

repair or rebuilding of homes damaged or destroyed during the incident. In

addition, the emergency responders need to carry out any actions which

are necessary to bring them back to full operational capability after dealing

with the incident e.g. restock supplies.

• Investigation – further investigation may be performed after the incident

concludes, to provide information and evidence for any hearings, enquiries

and criminal prosecutions that may arise.

• Post-incident discussion activities – such activities include immediate

incident debriefs and other types of incident discussions occurring some

time after the incident concludes e.g. multi agency debriefs, hearings,

trials and inquiries. The aim of the debriefs is to identity and feedback

areas for improvements. At the end of the post-incident phase, normality

returns and activities return to those of the pre-incident phase.

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WHY CRISIS MANAGEMENT IS IMPORTANT TO ME

In my point of view crisis management is very important because:

1. To save life;

2. To save the organization money;

3. To save the moral and employee motivation;

4. To be prepared for the incident might be happen;

5. To promote safety in the work places;

6. To make sure the image of the organization be well kept;

7. To practice awareness of the dangerous event;

8. To avoid media mine field;

9. To make sure public relation well prepared,

10. And to create responsible team of crisis management.

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REFERENCE:

1. Emergency Services Liaison Panel, Major Incident Procedure Manual, 6th

edition, July
2004.

2. Achieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Malaysian_Navy#Vision_and_Mission
22 April 2008