This course provides education, hands-on experience using a case study, and a guide to perform audits of business continuity, emergency management, and crisis management programs using NFPA 1600, 2019 edition.

Auditing business continuity, emergency management, and crisis management programs using a recognized international standard is the best method to identify opportunities to enhance and improve performance. Aspects of emergency management are required by regulations for many industries, and more stringent requirements apply to facilities with significant hazards or with many occupants at risk. Auditing supplier programs is a requirement for some industries. A strong business continuity, emergency management, and crisis management program is a must for organizations with low tolerance for property, business interruption, environmental, and reputational risk, as well as those seeking to enhance organizational resilience.

DRI’s NFPA 1600-based audit course is designed for business continuity, emergency management, crisis management, and communications professionals, environmental health and safety professionals, security managers, facilities managers, risk managers, internal auditors, and consultants who audit these programs.

The course provides the foundation for auditing—the collection of evidence using interviews, reviewing documents, and surveying properties as well as the use of NFPA 1600 as criteria to evaluate each aspect of a business continuity, emergency management, and crisis management program.
The course begins with the basics of auditing using Institute of Internal Auditor’s (IIA) International Professional Practices Framework. Developing an audit work plan beginning with assembling a team, researching applicable requirements, requesting documents for review, and scheduling site surveys and interviews is covered, along with an overview of NFPA 1600.

The overview is followed by 14 lessons providing explanations of NFPA 1600’s requirements, auditing techniques, and evidence of conformity. Each lesson includes interactive class activities and hands-on auditing of a hypothetical company using NFPA 1600 as criteria. Students compile audit findings during each of these lessons.

The course wraps up with report writing, including an extended class activity with students organizing findings from all lessons, prioritizing their recommendations, developing an auditor’s opinion on conformity of the case study program to NFPA 1600, and presenting their opinion and recommendations to the instructor.

Course materials include a comprehensive audit guide for student use when preparing for and conducting an audit. The audit guide identifies documents to review, people to interview, questions to ask, regulations, best practices, and more in-depth guidance. Review of a practice exam is the final class lesson designed to prepare students for the qualifying exam.

Topic areas
- Program management (leadership and commitment, program coordinator, performance objectives, program committee, program administration, laws and authorities, finance and administration, records management)
- Planning (planning and design process, risk assessment, business impact analysis, resource needs assessment)
- Implementation (common plan requirements, prevention, mitigation, crisis, management, crisis communications, warning, notifications, and communications, operational procedures, incident management, emergency operations/response plan, continuity and recovery, employee assistance and support)
- Plan execution
- Training and education
- Exercises and tests
- Program maintenance and improvement (program reviews, corrective action, continuous improvement)
- Auditing fundamentals include planning an audit, gathering evidence, determining findings, developing an auditor’s opinion of conformity, and compiling an audit report.