Latest Updates

If the pandemic did nothing else, it certainly provided a renewed focus on how we work. For some people, this was a radical change – their home became their office and their private and professional lives became entwined. Now – with COVID still about but not the same restrictions – these workers have fallen into a hybrid situation with often informal guidance on what that means.

Resilience First is delighted to announce the appointment of a new Executive Director, Martyn Link.

Effective 1 September Martyn has joined Resilience First. He will enhance our development for the benefit of members and the wider networks to continue to build business community resilience.

We were deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and offer our deepest condolences to the Royal Family at this difficult time.

As people around the world are mourning this great loss, we would like to thank Her Majesty for her dedication, service, and extraordinary resilience throughout the seven decades of her reign.

Greater Manchester is made up of ten districts which includes two cities, Manchester and Salford. The region has a population of almost 3 million people and represents the biggest economic area in the UK outside of London.
It’s been at the core of resilience thinking for the last 20 years and released its own Resilience Strategy in 2021.
Its population is predicted to grow by 10% over the next 20 years. This will require around 179,000 new homes in the region by 2037.
Can it remain resilient in light of such significant growth and what can other cities learn about urban growth from the Greater Manchester story?

Convenience foods have been around a lot longer than we might imagine. By their nature they reflect work practices of a given time as they’ve always been about keeping productivity going. As a barometer of resilience, there is much that convenience foods can tell us.

As the climate changes, physical risks brought on by heat waves, flooding, wildfires, droughts and hurricanes will have a greater, sustained impact on businesses. Direct damage to assets or supply chain disruption could mean significant financial consequences.

Collaboration between the private and public sector has never been more vital for building climate resilience.

The recent raid by German police and financial regulators on the offices in Frankfurt of DWS – the majority-owned Deutsche Bank asset manager – has made everyone sit up and take notice of Environment, Social & Governance (ESG). Latest news stories of celebrities and football teams using up carbon for what many feel was unnecessary travel is further example that people are giving a greater green scrutiny to those in the public domain.

Resilience First was privileged recently to have NATO’s former Deputy Assistant Secretary General, Dr Jamie Shea, speak at one of our regular Leader’s Forums. He gave us his perspectives on the NATO approach to the Russia/Ukraine conflict and shared with us the four key lessons we are learning from it.

Resilience First is delighted to join the ICSI’s Board of Directors, with Tom Lewis as its representative.

ICSI is an engineering-led coalition with the aim to make resilience and sustainability a cornerstone of every decision in the infrastructure lifecycle of every community around the globe.

Resilience First and ICSI have been working together to speed up the implementation of sustainable and resilient infrastructure.

When any emergency strikes at the heart of society, we often need ways of getting information out to as many people as possible. We saw this during recent pandemic lockdowns, and it’s very evident again with the UK’s first ever red heat warning and temperatures expected to approach 40C in southern Britain and across much of western Europe in the coming days.

This digital Guide for Non-Executive Directors on Operational Resilience delivers essential information to assist with Board discussions on resilience broken down into People, Place, Preparation, Process and Performance.

The British Standards Institution (BSI) has released a new infographic setting out its key sustainability-focused standards across construction, infrastructure and building efficiency.

Resilience First shares the latest thinking on the role of business in managing the response to and the recovery from terrorist activity in the capital. If the capital is to be resilient towards terror activity in the future, then the business community has a critical role to play and needs to work more closely with emergency services to achieve this.

Developed in conjunction with Accenture and Cranfield University, the report examines the impact of technology transformation driven by AI, quantum and cloud computing.

With 75% of us projected to live in cities by 2050 we better get used to the challenges that city life can bring. And getting a sustainable supply of healthy, nutritious and convenient food to everyone is going to be one of those challenges.

To many of us in western Europe, the UK included, modern slavery is thought to be something that happens in other parts of the world, mostly involving people from poorer regions. So, you might be surprised to hear that over 10,000 people in the UK were identified as victims of modern slavery in 2020 alone.

Ever wonder what might be round the next corner? Few of us predicted a global pandemic on the scale we’ve just seen. Not that many factored in a Russia-Ukraine conflict into their 2022 planning. There will always be ‘known unknowns’ but it helps to be better prepared.

As we seek to recover from the pandemic’s disruption to manufacturing and retail, the impact from the Russia-Ukraine conflict is certainly being felt through supply chains and transportation corridors and, of course, through disruption to yields, even temporarily, in food commodities, including wheat and sunflower oil. Now added to this are impacts from China as the country continues to try to achieve COVID-zero status.

Resilience First CEO, Mike Rooney, recently took part in FPA’s podcast on Resilience. The main message from Mike is that resilience is about leadership, governance and empowerment and is much more than just keeping a risk register. Businesses need to be adaptable and agile.