BCDR Test Schedule April 2025 – March 2026

At the December SEC Operations Sub-Committee DCC were asked to make an amendment to the scheduled 4G Maintenance so that this activity is aligned to other regular Maintenance windows. DCC has confirmed that the 4G Maintenance activity can be amended as requested.

In efforts to reduce service impacts the 4G related BCDR Tests were scheduled to run in parallel with 4G Maintenance. The planned 4G related Business Continuity Disaster Recovery (BCDR) Tests will also be moved to retain alignment to the 4G Maintenance. This change is reflected in V1.1 of the BCDR Test consultation now published and shown in Annex One.

We have also provided the draft annual outage plan providing dates of Planned Maintenance and BCDR Tests where service is expected to be impacted.

Business Continuity Disaster Recovery (BCDR) Procedures help to ensure services can continue to be provided with as little disruption as possible for DCC customers and consumers in the event of unexpected outages. BCDR Tests help to prove that services can continue to function or be effectively recovered in the event of a disaster or unforeseen outage.

In collaboration with customers we have evolved our approach to BCDR Tests in efforts to keep the disruption caused by tests to a minimum.

DCC seeks views on:

• Our proposal to schedule 20 BCDR Tests between April 2025 and March 2026 – 10 of these tests will impact service availability for a total of 68 hours. The proposed testing schedule can be found in Annex One.
  
  
• Our draft BCDR Test Approach document – we have developed this in collaboration with Parties, to provide more information on the importance of testing and how we work to reduce the impact of test events. This document will support the progression of a recently proposed SEC Modification to improve the way we communicate with you on BCDR testing.

Parties are invited to respond to the consultation by 5pm on 10 January 2025 to DCC at consultations@smartdcc.co.uk.