Engineer Abdullatif Ali Al Yafei Chairman of the Business Continuity and Resilience Conference
Doha, Qatar: Over 130 companies will take part in the upcoming third edition of the Business Continuity and Resilience Conference which will discuss the key role that risk management plays in ensuring the development process of diverse projects.
Speaking to The Peninsula, Engineer Abdullatif Ali Al Yafei, Chairman of the Business Continuity and Resilience Conference and recipient of the 2018 Personality of the Year Award for the Middle East region in Business Continuity and Resilience, said, “We have finalised the programme and secured the speakers who are from Qatar and abroad, from different sectors such as logistics, city management, infrastructure projects, banking, food security, and cyber security.”
The third edition of the Business Continuity and Resilience Conference (BCRC), will take place on November 27, under the esteemed patronage of Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.
The conference program will include 5 sessions in the presence of many experts and a leading keynote speaker in this sector. The event will aim to preserve the legacy that “we have achieved in our preparation period for the FIFA World Cup 2022, where risk management, business continuity and crisis management systems had been applied in many companies in various fields, such as entrepreneurship, trade, industry, oil and gas, food security, logistics and health services, communications, transportation,” Al Yafei said.
He added, “We expect more than 130 companies. This year our strategic partner is the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and the institutional partners are Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) and Institute of Risk Management (IRM) who are key partners of the conference.”
Speaking about small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) Al Yafei noted that SMEs sector is vital for the country and needs to be supported. “From our side we encourage them to adopt and implement risk management and business continuity systems. Businesses have faced many challenges and learned valuable lessons from COVID-19. These lessons can vary depending on the industry and location, but some common quick examples include the accelerating need for digitisation. Emerging businesses have recognised the significance of this specific aspect, alongside understanding the role of resilience in business continuity, including financial resilience and the imperative of maintaining a financial reserve.”
Regarding importance of risk management and business continuity in the development of projects Al Yafei said, “No project can run without having risk management; identifying of risks and at the same time business continuity plans.” Citing example of FIFA World Cup, he noted that companies had risk management and business continuity in place in order to ensure that they can deliver stadiums on time prior to the World Cup.
Al Yafei further said risk management, business continuity plans, and resilience have now become a fundamental pillar for ensuring the continuity of any project given that they provide a ready alternative for project owners and companies in the event of any crisis, such as what happened during the pandemic. The requirement of risk management and business continuity has become almost mandatory for companies in Qatar. For example, “we have the listed companies they need to have risk management as part of their governance. So this is required to ensure that we will be able to achieve our Qatar National Vision 2030.”
He added that business continuity has become mandatory in logistics, oil and gas, banking and many other sectors. “We encourage those companies in Qatar to continue and ensure that these systems are implemented to have business continuity plans and ensure that this is part of the company. It has to be part of the normal operations and day to day activity of the company.”
As for the types of 2023 National Excellence Awards, this year’s edition will present 6 awards which include - National Resilience, National Provider of Continuity and Resilience, Newcomer to National Continuity and Resilience, National Continuity and Resilience Specialist (Public sector), National Continuity and Resilience Specialist (Private sector), More Effective National Recovery.
“We encourage all entities in public and private companies to attend and benefit from the conference as we are bringing experts in this area, Al Yafei said.
