MacKay Emergency Management Consulting Inc.

I operated MacKay Emergency Management Consulting Inc. for sixteen years, until I dissolved it in 2017. It provided me with opportunities to work with a wide range of organizations and and emergency management and business continuity related projects as are outlined below. .

Emergency Management Consulting

The focus of my consulting was to help governments and private sector organizations develop risk based emergency and continuity management programs.

Emergency Public Notification

Between 2003 and 2006 I represented Community Alert Network as Manager - Canadian Operations. Community Alert provided telephone emergency public notification services for nuclear facilities, chemical plants and municipalities throughout Canada and the United States.

Networking Emergency Managers

Partnerships Toward Safer Communities (PTSC) was an initiative to prevent and more effectively respond to industrial accidents, developed by government and industry under the Major Industrial Accidents Council of Canada (MIACC). Under the sponsorship of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs and with financial support from Public Safety Canada I developed and operated PTSC-Online, an on line version of Partnerships Toward Safer Communities. It effectively networked emergency management personnel across Canada using an IGLOO Software on line community, until funding was withdrawn for the project.

There were many opportunities to work with other emergency management related organizations and work for a wide range of federal, provincial and municipal government clients, private sector businesses and not-for-profit organizations.

The focus of my work was on helping organizations become more resilient by assisting them with:

  • risk based emergency and continuity management programs

  • management systems to ensure program sustainability and effectiveness

  • technology for cost effective program development and operation

After MacKay Emergency Management Consulting Inc. was dissolved, I continued to do some work on emergency management program development and volunteered my services to the ISO / TC 292 Technical Committee until December 2020, to support the development of international emergency management related standards and guidelines.

Consulting

We assist clients develop new or upgrade existing emergency management and business continuity programs. Our focus is on maximizing client involvement for efficiency, to facilitate knowledge transfer and for program effectiveness. We provide assistance where needed or recommend our associates or other professionals depending on the clients needs and program implementation schedule.

Program evaluation ranges from assisting clients select appropriate program evaluation tools to conduct a self assessment, to conducting a thorough independent assessment of a program to applicable standards using appropriate protocols.

Program evaluation may also focus on evaluating specific aspects of an emergency management program such as plans, training, exercise program or communication and warning.

Our recommended aproach in most cases is to conduct an assessment of an existing emergency management program to identify strengths and gaps, prior to providing an estimate to help correct any identified deficiencies. This approach works effectively even where there is no formal emergency management program in place, because most organizations have some systems and procedures in place that can be used within an emergency management program.

Training

To meet current standards, an organization must implement and maintain competency based training and education to support their emergency management and business continuity program. Our approach focuses on providing training and other learning options to enable personnel to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to develop, maintain and operate the organizaton's emergency management and business continuity program. Training options are slelected to develop the necessary skills while minimizing the time and effort required by management and employees. Key steps in the training process are:

  • Identify competencies required for personnel with assigned reponsibilities within the program

  • Work with personnel to identify individual competency gaps

  • Develop learning options to address competency gaps

  • Develop personalized capability development plans which normally involve a combination of group training and other individual learning options

Where training involves personnel in different geographic locations technologies such as web meetings, on line training and on line communities can be used to facilitate delivery of training in the most efficient manner. These technologies are described in more detail in the technology section.