Contingency Plan Templates – MS Word + Excel

During Project Implementation, you need to create several important documents: test plan, operation plan, configuration management system, acceptance test plan, and the contingency plan. In this contingency plan template, we have outlined the tasks and steps you need to perform to manage this activity.

Contingency Plan Templates

This template pack includes a 20-page Contingency Plan Template in MS Word, and 9 Excel spreadsheets. You can use this template to write your first contingency plan. It includes helpful explanatory text that walks you through the process of setting up your first contingency plan project. You can change everything in the document – text, images, and tables. There are no special plug-ins, macros, or installation files. Just download the templates and get started.

Contingency Plan Definition

A Contingency Plan is a formal document that outlines the steps to be taken to control an emergency or disaster. Contingency planning provides a template on how to prepare for a disaster scenario, the steps to take, and its relationship to other parallel activities, such as disaster recovery procedures.

In the Quality Milestones chapter, we’ve added a nice Note to the text to display some instructional text.

Contingency Plan Purpose

The purpose of a Contingency Plan is to help you return to daily operations after an emergency or disaster scenario.
A Contingency Plan helps Operations Managers to:

Assign responsibilities
Identify key staff
Minimize customer inconvenience
Protect resources
Prepare budgets
Prepare an action plan

Template Design

The templates include specific styles to help you ensure consistency across the document, reduce rework and formatting, and give your document a more polished appearance.

Examples of Styles for the Body, Bullet lists, Notes, Table text and headers

Examples of different notes, message, and warning styles you might want to add to your contingency plan

This sample screenshot from the Software Development template pack shows you how to apply the Body style to text.

Who is this template for?

This template was written for the following:

Senior staff members responsible for contingency planning, including funding to develop, test and maintain the plan.
Contingency plan coordinator or manager responsible for developing and maintaining the plan.
Operations Managers, especially those who may be new to this area and are looking for a little direction on how to get started.
In a small business, this person may be the owner or a senior line manager.
The forms, checklists, and spreadsheets will also help you get up to speed fast.

The cover page, legal text, and the preface

The Table of Contents of this Contingency Plan template is as follows:
1. Introduction
1.1. Document Overview
1.2. Purpose
1.3. Applicability
1.4. Scope
1.4.1. Planning Principles
1.4.2. Assumptions
1.5. Relationship to other plans
2. Concept of Operations
2.1. System Description
2.2. Line of Succession
2.3. Responsibilities
2.4. Testing and Maintenance
2.4.1. Tabletop Testing
2.4.2. Technical Testing
3. Notification and Activation Phase
4. Recovery Operations
4.1. Recovery Goal #1
4.2. Recovery Goal #2
4.3. Recovery Goal #3
5. Return to Normal Operations
5.1. Original or New Site Restoration
5.2. Concurrent Processing
5.3. Plan Deactivation
6. Appendix A: Contingency Plan Approval
7. Appendix B: Definitions
7.1. Definitions, Acronyms, and Abbreviations

MS Word Templates and Forms

Her are some examples of the MS Word templates and forms that you’ll get in the download file.

This is the cover page, documentation conventions and guidelines, and legal text.

Here we have the first chapter of the Contingency Plan. You can change these levels if you wish.

The Recovery Operations chapter

This chapter shows you how the text, tables, and bullet lists are presented.

You can see from this that we use white space to make the document more readable.

Excel Spreadsheets

You also get nine spreadsheets to help track, plan, and monitor the progress of different QA tasks.
Here are some examples of the excel spreadsheets that you get.

Note that the first tab is the Table of Contents. If you click on the links on it, it opens each of the spreadsheets.

Use this checklist to capture the decisions that need to be made to contain a disaster scenario and implement the contingency plan. Identify the categories that will be affected, such as Organisation or User groups, then identify the risk, the likelihood of this occurring, and the difficulty of making a decision.

Enter the number of days to complete the tasks.

In this example, the min number of days is 1, the max 10. This means that a Red arrow is shown for tasks that, on average, tasks that take less than four days; yellow means they are on track, and Green ahead of schedule. You can change the numbers to suits your needs.

In each column you add your own risks, instead of the ones listed.
State here the value of the risk: probability of occurrence * impact.
Remove the X (sample placeholders) and enter an x if a risk is still open.
Color these cells Red is the risk is closed or Green if it’s still open.

Contingency Plan spreadsheet

[Use this Risk Log to capture all known risks, the likelihood, severity, and impact (in financial terms) of a disaster scenario; the action required to resolve this; who is responsible for each task and its status. You can also use the Status Report spreadsheet to monitor the progress of each task.]

We also show you how to apply conditionally formatting to your spreadsheets, including adding status icons.

Technical Details

The Contingency Plan template is 20 pages in MS Word, 3962 words, and written in US English.

Page Count – 20 Pages
Word Count – 3962 words
Language – US English

File Formats & Contents

The templates are in Microsoft Word and Excel format.

Contingency Plan Template Blue Theme in MS Word .DOCX format.
Contingency Plan Template Red Theme in MS Word .DOCX format.
Contingency Plan Template in MS Word .DOT format.
Contingency Plan Template PDF Sample.

9 x MS Excel spreadsheets

Risk Log
Risk Register
Risk Plan
Status Report
Checklist
Document Plan
Failure Analysis
Questionnaire
Contingency Plan Budget