Recovery Plan Owner
SmartSuite for the Recovery Plan Owner
A Recovery Plan Owner owns a business unit's continuity or recovery plan and is accountable for team readiness and execution. They manage recovery tasks, map upstream and downstream dependencies for critical processes and validate readiness metrics after each test.
Reports to:
What you own
A Recovery Plan Owner owns a business unit's continuity or recovery plan and is accountable for team readiness and execution.
- Own and maintain the business unit's continuity or recovery plan
- Map dependencies for each critical process
- Assign recovery tasks and verify updates from participants
- Lead the unit's participation in exercises
- Validate readiness metrics and raise improvement actions
- Activate and execute the plan during a disruption
At a glance
The GRC processes this role owns, touches and depends on.
Owns
accountable for the process
Touches
contributes or approves
Depends on
consumes its output
How the GRC processes connect
Three lines of defence set the frame; the chain shows where each process hands off to the next. Colours follow the Recovery Plan Owner: navy is owned, blue is touched, grey is depended on.
- First lineThe business and its control ownersRun the processes, own the controls, fix the issues
- Second lineRisk, compliance and the domain programmesSet the frameworks, assess, monitor and advise
- Third lineInternal auditIndependent assurance to the board and audit committee
Reporting lines
Who this role reports to, who reports to them, and the peers they work with most.
Reports to
Direct reports
Works closely with
Business Continuity Analyst
See the roleCrisis Response Coordinator
See the roleIT Disaster Recovery Lead
See the roleBusiness Continuity Manager
See the roleHow SmartSuite supports the Recovery Plan Owner
A Recovery Plan Owner is accountable for one business unit's continuity plan being current, mapped and executable when the Business Continuity Manager, an auditor or a regulator asks. SmartSuite keeps the plan, its tasks and its readiness metrics together, so ownership is a steady routine rather than a scramble before each exercise.
Own the plan and the dependencies behind it
Your continuity plan carries its owner, version history and review cycle, and the reminder arrives before the plan goes stale. Each revision is kept, so the Business Continuity Manager sees a plan that was maintained, not one rewritten the week before audit.
Operational Resilience suiteEach critical process in your unit is mapped to the systems, facilities, vendors, data and teams it relies on, so the recovery sequence is derived from real dependencies. When the IT Disaster Recovery Lead changes a system, you see which process it touches.
Operational Resilience suiteRecovery tasks are assigned to named participants with automated reminders, and their updates are verified in the record rather than assumed from silence. You can see who has confirmed their role and who still needs chasing before the next exercise.
Operational Resilience suiteWork alongside continuity, crisis and IT recovery
When the Business Continuity Analyst plans a tabletop, your unit's tasks arrive automatically, participation is tracked and outcomes are recorded with full traceability. You lead your people through it; the logistics and the evidence are handled by the workflow.
Operational Resilience suiteCrisis response playbooks automate escalations, notifications and decision paths, so when the Crisis Response Coordinator activates a response your plan is triggered with its communication paths ready. Activation is a step in the playbook, not a phone tree from memory.
Operational Resilience suiteRisks, controls, incidents and dependencies are linked to the critical services your plan protects, so a change in the risk register or an incident in another unit shows against the processes it could affect in yours.
Operational Resilience suiteProve readiness to the Business Continuity Manager and auditors
Readiness metrics, testing status and impact ratings for your unit update as tasks are confirmed and exercises recorded, visible to you and the Business Continuity Manager on the same dashboard. Reporting readiness is reading a number, not compiling one.
Operational Resilience suiteFindings from each exercise become improvement actions with owners and dates, linked to the plan they change, and the plan update that closes them is recorded. The next exercise can test whether the fix worked.
Operational Resilience suiteFull histories of the BIA, tests, reviews, controls and ownership changes sit against your plan, which is what FFIEC examiners, SOC 2 auditors and ISO 22301 assessors ask an owner to show. Named accountability is on the record.
Operational Resilience suiteOperational resilience. Gives plan owners clear responsibilities, automated reminders and real-time readiness metrics, with dependencies mapped for each critical process.
Issues and actions. Tracks recovery tasks and improvement actions with verification from participants.
Reporting. Shows the unit's readiness scores, exercise results and recovery timelines.
Products this role uses most
Industry reference
ISO 22301:2019 requires each documented plan to have a defined owner responsible for its maintenance, activation and the team that executes it; the BCI Good Practice Guidelines describe the owner's role in BIAs and exercises. The IIA's Three Lines Model places this accountability in the first line.
Regulators check that plans are owned and current. FFIEC examiners and UK operational resilience rules expect named accountability for important services; CMS requires hospital department plans to be exercised; FEMA continuity guidance assigns plan ownership to program managers; SOC 2 auditors look for approved, tested plans.
Related roles
Explore Further
Guides and definitions from the GRC Knowledge Center and the What-is glossary, chosen for this role.
Frequently asked questions
A Recovery Plan Owner is responsible for one business unit's continuity or recovery plan: keeping it current, mapping the upstream and downstream dependencies of each critical process, assigning recovery tasks and verifying that participants have done them, leading the unit in exercises, validating readiness metrics afterwards and raising improvement actions. During a disruption they activate and execute the plan. ISO 22301 requires every documented plan to have a named owner; this is that person, sitting in the first line.
Operational Resilience gives plan owners clear responsibilities, automated reminders and real-time readiness metrics, with dependencies mapped for each critical process, so the Recovery Plan Owner knows what is due, who owes it and how ready the unit is without chasing by email. The dependency map, built from the Business Impact Analysis (BIA), shows which systems, suppliers and teams each critical process relies on, which is what the plan has to recover in order.
SmartSuite tracks recovery tasks and improvement actions with verification from participants, so when an exercise shows that a contact list was stale or a workaround did not work, the improvement action is assigned to a named participant and closed only when they confirm it is done. The Recovery Plan Owner sees open actions for the unit, and the Business Continuity Analyst sees the same list across units. Nothing raised in an exercise is lost between one test and the next.
SmartSuite shows the unit's readiness scores, exercise results and recovery timelines, so the Recovery Plan Owner's report to the Business Continuity Manager is a current view rather than a self-assessment form. Readiness is read from whether tasks are verified and dependencies mapped; exercise results and the recovery timeline achieved sit beside it. The Crisis Response Coordinator and the IT Disaster Recovery Lead see the same unit view when they plan a joint exercise.
Less than keeping a plan in a document, because the reminders do the chasing and the readiness metrics do the scoring; the owner's time goes to the dependency map, the exercise and the improvement actions. Getting started takes the existing plan, the critical processes it covers and the people who hold recovery roles. The Business Continuity Manager usually sets up the structure and the Recovery Plan Owner maintains the unit's part of it, which is how ISO 22301 expects ownership to work.