1. Home
2. Conferences
3. 2017 Extension Risk Management Education National Conference

The Code Red Document a Contingency Planning Tool

Bryan Overstreet and Kelly Heckaman

Summary

The Purdue Women in Agriculture Team developed the Code Red tool to meet the need for farm families to have one central location to collect critical business information required for day-to-day business operations. The need to know where to find information about the people in the business and their contacts is critical to farm operations and businesses alike. So, Code Red was developed as a spreadsheet based document to become the collection point of all critical information. In the event of a crisis, the business would now be able to continue with minimal disruptions because they could easily locate this information.
It has two main sections, Personal and Farm Business with 16 related sub categories. The Code Red document is designed to be easily modified and flexible to fit any business or operation’s needs. Since the release of Code Red in February 2015 over 300 farm families have gone through Code Red Training with over 1300 flash drives distributed across the state and Midwest. A recent survey of Code Red users showed 60% are using the tool for contingency planning and 40% as a form of communication. A Code Red user shares “I think it's something everyone should be using. There is so much going on with this business that when you lose key people it'll be a good resource to their information.”

Details

---