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certification resources
Joint Recommendation to Congress for the Establishment of a Voluntary Business Preparedness Certification Program by John Deere, Wal-Mart, Raytheon, Goodyear & InterCEP
December 14, 2007 4:37 PM
Several leading U.S. corporations came together in support of the establishment of a voluntary business preparedness certification program during the initial stages of consideration by the U.S. Congress. These corporations spanned various elements of heavy equipment manufacturing, technology and defense industry, transportation and retail. These corporations were Deere & Company (John Deere), The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, the Raytheon Company and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
These corporations joined InterCEP in supporting provisions in the initial Senate sponsored version of the legislation (Senate Bill 4) which called for the establishment of a voluntary certification program. The support of corporations and InterCEP was based on the reflection of a number of key elements and considerations to be reflected in any final program. These included the following extracted from the statement of support.
- Voluntary in Nature: We believe that such a program should be voluntary on the part of business and definitely not a general regulatory requirement.
- Independent of Government: While government may choose to endorse and/or designate one or more programs which certify emergency management and business continuity, these programs should exist independently of government.
- Consensus-Based Reflecting Private Sector Stakeholders: Any accreditation body should reflect a consensus-based approach which includes a majority of private sector representatives.
- The Program Must Be Scalable for Different Sized Businesses & Different Industries: The standard should be general in scope and allow a business to determine how it wishes to address criteria (performance based not prescriptive in nature) and should not require a full management system approach.
- Protects Proprietary and Confidential Information: The process should provide safeguards to protect information that is propriety and confidential to the business.
- Allows for Self-Assessment as well as Second and Third Party Assessment: We support the establishment of a program which would provide the option to a company of all of the following:
- self-assess its own program and self-declare its conformity with a one or more preparedness standards (first party assessment),
- allow an interested party such as a key customer to assess a business’ program (second party assessment) or
- allow an independent third party to assess and certify its emergency preparedness and business continuity program (third party assessment).
- Address any Potential Conflicts of Interest: Prohibit any entities with conflicts of interest from conducting any accreditations and/or certifications.
- Be Constituted Appropriately: Such program should be administered by one or more bodies which have been constituted appropriately based upon voluntary consensus-based standards approach and include sufficient liability insurance.
- Facilitate Market-Based Incentives where Feasible including benefits in mitigating legal liability, acknowledgement in insurance (voluntary on part of the insurance companies), and rating agency consideration by inviting involvement by representatives from these industries into the program development and operations process.
The full statement of support with the listing of key elements is available here.