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Disaster Preparedness |
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The facilities in which we work and live are the most frequently
overlooked assets in our communities. We simply take for granted that they will always be available. Yet in today’s uncertain social, political and economic environment their availability is anything but certain. In fact, it takes the committed effort of men and women working extraordinary hours to ensure that availability. The importance of developing an effective disaster plan for your facility cannot be stressed enough. The time to develop such a plan is now, while there is ample opportunity to explore alternatives and seek out the best support companies to utilize when a disaster strikes. The purpose of developing a disaster plan is to set priorities for recovery in order to reduce the inconvenience to tenants, ensure quick recovery of the facility, reduce the financial impact of a disaster and make sure that you have the needed support of professional disaster response companies. By taking this important step now you will have the best opportunity to get the support you need and not have to settle for what is available at the time of a disaster. There are two primary types of disasters: those that impact your facility alone and those that are area-wide (regional disasters) and impact the entire community. When confronted with a disaster that strikes your facility exclusively, you will find that you have access to a number of support services for recovery. However, in an area-wide disaster, resources are usually completely allocated within the first few hours. If you do not have a plan with support services already identified, you will be looking for help in an environment that is saturated with requests for support. The plan we are discussing is more than a document, it is a team of specialists capable of working together toward a common goal. Each team member will have pre-defined responsibilities and will arrive at the site prepared to address those responsibilities. All team members will have met each other at annual meetings sponsored by the manager of the facility. This familiarity between team members helps ensure the highest level of interactive support at the disaster site. There are some important characteristics that a recovery team member should possess. First, they should have disaster experience. Working in a disaster environment is different from normal work assignments. The work itself may seem the same, but the work environment is far more challenging in a disaster setting. You should interview each team member to determine if they have the experience that you will need. Remember that a disaster relief project is defined by the performance of the weakest team member. There are also many important factors to consider when choosing a disaster response company. If a company’s team members are inexperienced this will slow them down, and time is one asset that is in short supply in any disaster. The company must also be prepared to operate in an environment where everyone wants to return to the building as quickly as possible for either work or shelter. In addition, it is not uncommon that companies are chosen simply because they perform maintenance work on the building, then the company ends up being over-committed. This is a common mistake, and the end results are often negative. It’s very important that you select the company for the role they are best suited to perform, not because they are familiar to you. You must also consider the company’s financial strength. They must be able to work for 60-90 days without cash up front. Your insurance company may give you an advance for the damages, but there will be any number of necessary uses for that money. Experienced disaster companies know that they will get paid, and will not hold up the repair or restoration of your facility by waiting for an advance. This provides you with flexibility after a disaster, while also ensuring that the project will proceed in a timely manner. The size of the support company is yet another important consideration. In a major disaster you will be faced with widespread damage to your facility. You will need companies that are capable of providing support for the whole building, rather than just one floor. Smaller companies may mean well, but they can easily become major impediments to the timely recovery of your building. During the interview, determine if the company has the staff to support your needs in addition to other commitments they may have made. You must understand that you will find many companies with the ability to support you, but ability alone is not enough. The company must be committed to you. It is the combination of ability and commitment that makes a company a valuable asset at the time of a disaster. If a potential support company has promised service beyond their staffing, then they are clearly more interested in lining up large numbers of clients than in the commitment they have made to those clients. Discovering this fact over a cup of coffee in your office is far less painful than watching your recovery stall because of inadequate support at the disaster site. Another key factor that is seldom recognized until it is too late is survivability. If the company you have chosen for support is out of business because of the same event that impacted you, what good are they? In the interview, you should determine their ability to respond from multiple sites, in case of a regional disaster. Once you have a tested plan in place and team members who have met and are ready to respond together, you are almost prepared to handle a disaster. However, there is one final step that is very critical. That issue is funding. A plan without funding is an exercise in creative writing. After the plan is completed and tested it is time to sit down with the insurance broker and proceed through the plan step by step. Where will you get funds to perform the various aspects of the plan? Will they be funded internally or will they be funded by an insurance policy? At this point you must examine the “limits of liability” as stated in the insurance policy to make sure you have enough funding. You also want to make sure that you understand the policy requirements to get access to those funds. In the example of “extra expense,” many policies require that you show a financial benefit before the insurance company will release those funds. Now is the time to document that benefit and include it in the plan. When you first begin to create a recovery plan, it may seem like an insurmountable project. However, the magnitude of this particular project is directly related to its benefit to you and your facility in the future. Just because a project seems large does not mean it has to be approached in large, time-consuming sections. In order to be effective, a plan must be reviewed and updated several times each year. So start now and take your time. Remember that the document you develop will not be as important as the team that you establish to deal with disasters. General Dwight D. Eisenhower said it best when he said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” In the event that a disaster does strike, your facility may not be the safest place to meet, so you should establish a separate location for your first post-disaster meeting. After that initial meeting, additional meetings can be located at a site that is convenient for all recovery team members. Also keep in mind that you may not be granted immediate access to your facility. Local authorities will have control of the site until they have completed all work and/or investigations into the event. This could be a source of frustration if you fail to prepare for such delays. You should also consider that when a building is unusable because of damage from a disaster, tenants will relocate or evacuate the area. This leaves the manager with the difficult task of trying to contact these tenants to tell them when the building is reopened. One solution to this problem is to set up an “800” number that tenants can access as a source of information regarding the progress of the recovery. This allows them to call at no charge and find out the status of the recovery. You can simply call the 800 service provider with regular updates, saving you the trouble and expense of making multiple calls to tenants who have evacuated. This passive communication system can gain you days or even weeks of revenue that might otherwise be lost following a disaster. After the facility is returned to you for damage repair, the first issue that must be addressed is structural integrity. You must be sure it is safe to be inside the building. This will usually require an engineering evaluation. In order to expedite this, you will need copies of the blueprints of the building. These should be contained in the first chapter of your recovery plan. If the blueprints are stored in the building, they may be lost in the disaster and this will delay the evaluation process unnecessarily. If the disaster damages the structural integrity of the building, you may be allowed – along with your tenants – to enter the structure for an hour or two to retrieve key items. You must know in advance what these items are and where they are located. Putting this information in your plan will ensure that these items will be the first that are removed to safety after the disaster. The recovery process is often long and drawn out, and can easily turn into a project with a life of its own. The way to avoid this is to hold two meetings every week. In these meetings you should evaluate progress and set schedules that include milestones. The progress toward these milestones must be constantly reviewed. If you let the project develop its own inertia, it will – and that can lead to extended recovery time. Control is the key to achieving recovery in the shortest time period possible following a disaster. There are several key tools you need to manage the restoration of your facility to operational status following a disaster. These are a talented support team, a plan with priorities to recover the facility, and a recovery process to set goals and measure progress toward reaching those goals. Remember, it is not your job to restore the use of the facility. It is your job to manage and control the recovery process so it has the least possible impact on your tenants. You can rest assured that if your tenants see that you are in control of the situation, they will respond by showing confidence in you and your ability to resolve any problems. FSM |
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