Arjuna Somaratna

Arjuna Somaratna, Director, Somaratna Consultants (Pvt) Ltd. has been accepted for the award of Master Business Continuity Planner membership by the Disaster Recovery Institute International of USA as a result of which he becomes the first MBCP in Sri Lanka and probably the first in South Asia as well. Arjuna Somaratna got interested in Business Continuity Planning when he was studying for his Master of Science in Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore and as a result of that interest he studied Emergency Response Planning as one complete module of the M.Sc. curriculum.

For this module he had to study the systems adopted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency of USA and sophisticated software modules like ALOHA (acronym for Aerial Locations of Hazardous Atmospheres). While still studying at NUS he attended the Seminar on Enterprise Business Continuance conducted by BCP Asia and subsequently the Business Continuity Planning Certification programme conducted by Disaster Recovery Institute International and passed the examination with 87 marks thus becoming the first and the only associate Business Continuity Planner in Sri Lanka. In June last year, he went to Chicago, USA to sit for his Master Business Continuity Planner Case Study Examination along with seven others from other countries and passed the examination. The MBCP is awarded based on the results of this examination and his professional development achievements during the last nine years.

After returning to Sri Lanka from NUS in 1999 he organized seminars to create awareness on Business Continuity Planning and Union Assurance is one company which got a programme conducted by him in early 2000 for its Senior Management team. Subsequently he has provided Business Continuity Planning consultancy services to Thomas de La Rue and NDB Bank. He is the person who brought in a scientific methodology based on the world class DRII Road Map to prepare Business Continuity Plans in Sri Lanka.

He also passed the Master of Science in Disaster Management conducted by University of Peradeniya in respect of which he spent one whole Semester at Marche Polytechnic University in Italy. He holds a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree of the University of Colombo and passed ISO 14001 Lead Auditor Course conducted by SGS Yarsley in Singapore in 1997.

He is currently providing BCP consultancy to two large conglomerates in Colombo and has conducted more than five one-day seminars on Business Continuity Planning. He also lectures Business Continuity Planning at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka.