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O P I N I O N
When disaster strikes
Are all your processes in place in the event your firm is waylaid by a wildfire, earthquake, hurricane or flood?
T hings were pretty much business as usual in early December with sunny skies and strong Santa Ana winds projected in Ventura, California, when a brush fire broke out 15 miles to the east. It never occurred to me that within hours my neighborhood would be on fire and that the corporate headquarters of our company, Rincon Consultants – as well as much of our city – would be under a mandatory evacuation.
Mike Gialketsis GUEST SPEAKER
The evacuation order for what would become the largest fire in California history lasted three days, followed by several weeks of unhealthy air quality. It’s fair to say that the lives of all our staff were affected by the event, some much more seriously than others. The Ventura office serves as the headquarters for 10 branch offices spread throughout the state and houses key computer servers, all of which have off-site back-ups and some cloud-based resources. The office is not in a high fire hazard area and never appeared to be at risk from storms or other natural disasters, with the possible exception of earthquakes – this is California, after all. While we are very fortunate to have navigated this event with limited negative effects, we did gain several important insights along the way. PREPARING PHYSICAL OPERATIONS. Think of your office without electricity or potable water, inaccessible due to road closures or evacuations and then im- pacted by poor air quality. In advance of such an event, you must ask yourself the following:
❚ ❚ Have you identified the highest priority items to evacuate, such as servers and other high-value por- table equipment and corporate documents? ❚ ❚ How will those items be recovered and where will they be taken? Can servers be reestablished in a secure and safe location to offer work continuity within a short time? Where is that location? ❚ ❚ Can company command and control tools (e.g., serv- ers, databases, email systems, phones) be reestab- lished in another office or location? How long might that take? Will electricity be available? ❚ ❚ In the absence of electricity, do you have lighting that will allow you to evacuate key items? ❚ ❚ Who is responsible and how will communications be achieved in the absence of the traditional office infrastructure? Are all team members’ emergency phone contacts accessible? ❚ ❚ Are there contractual obligations or client expecta- tions that need to be met regardless of the disaster? How will those key business priorities be managed?
See MIKE GIALKETSIS, page 12
THE ZWEIG LETTER April 30, 2018, ISSUE 1246
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