Contingency Planning

A plan which would be realised in the event of potential and undesirable events occurring. The events would typically have a very low likelihood of occurring, but would cause serious negative consequences for an organisation, at least in the short-term, if little consideration is given to them as part of risk management or business continuity planning.

Contingency planning can also be applied to more routine activities, with examples including medium to longer term staff shortages, machinery breakdown, budget shortfalls, work programmes with a contingency built in for weather variabilities rather than assuming conditions will always be ideal, or contract work where unforeseen circumstances frequently occur.