Free template
Business Continuity Plan Template
A business continuity plan (BCP) documents how your organisation keeps critical functions running through a disruption and recovers afterwards. The template below covers every section a plan needs to be usable under stress — by someone who didn't write it.
Copy the structure, or skip the blank page entirely and generate a populated plan from your processes, risks and recovery objectives in Resilira.
What's inside
What this plan covers, the sites and processes in scope, and what is explicitly out of scope.
The objective triggers that put the plan into effect, and who has authority to invoke it.
The continuity/crisis team, their deputies, and decision-making authority.
Ordered notification cascade with primary and backup contacts — kept live, not pasted.
Per critical process: ordered, owner-tagged steps from detection to stand-down, each with a time target (RTO).
People, systems, vendors, facilities and data each procedure depends on.
Internal and external messaging, holding statements, and regulator/stakeholder notifications.
RTO, RPO and MTPD for each in-scope process, traceable to the BIA.
Owner, approval, version, and the next scheduled review date.
Generate it automatically with Resilira
- Resilira builds plans from structured blocks — activation, call trees, recovery procedures, resources, communications — never freeform text, so nothing important is forgotten.
- Recovery objectives flow in automatically from each process's BIA, so RTO/RPO/MTPD are consistent and defensible.
- Approving a plan freezes an immutable, versioned snapshot with a 'data as of' stamp and sets a review reminder — and exports a branded PDF that works offline.
Best-practice tips
- Write procedures as numbered actions with an owner, not paragraphs of prose.
- Every recovery procedure needs a time target — an RTO with no number is a wish.
- Keep contacts in one live directory and reference it; never paste phone numbers into the document.
- A plan you haven't exercised is a draft. Schedule a tabletop within 90 days of approval.
Frequently asked questions
- What should a business continuity plan include?
- At minimum: purpose and scope, activation criteria, roles, a contact/call tree, per-process recovery procedures with time targets (RTO), required resources, communications, recovery objectives (RTO/RPO/MTPD), and version control with a review date.
- How is a BCP different from a disaster recovery plan?
- A disaster recovery (DR) plan restores IT systems and data; a business continuity plan is broader, covering people, facilities, suppliers and processes. DR plans usually sit inside the overall BCP.
- How often should a business continuity plan be reviewed?
- At least annually, and after any major change or incident. Resilira sets a review-due reminder automatically when a plan is approved.
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