How Prepared is Your Firm for a Disaster?

When a consultant first advises that a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan (DR/BC plan) is critical to your business, there may be a tendency to roll one’s eyes, silently calculating how much longer this person will take up your time. When clients advise that having such a plan is required to maintain their business, a general outline is at least documented. Today, there’s probably a list of emergency contact numbers for all of the employees somewhere, right?

As a Category 3 storm grew in the Gulf of Mexico, clearly taking aim at the Texas coast, this author’s firm implemented its DR/BC plan, closed its Northwest Houston office, and sent the 50 employees home to prepare. The firm fully expected to be closed a day or two, with the storm delivering a few broken tree branches and lots of rain. What we actually got was much worse.

Hurricane Ike struck the Houston area on September 12 with winds estimated at 90 miles per hour, causing 26 deaths in Texas and nearly $20 billion in damage as it moved north and east across the middle of the country. The fourth largest urban area of the nation was hit hard. This firm’s Houston office had no electricity, no water, no elevators, no HVAC systems, a damaged roof, extensive water damage to the upper floors, and blocked access due to fallen trees. Many of our employees had no power at home, no water, and very limited gasoline and supplies. Initial reports said that the firm’s recovery could take weeks. Suddenly, that DR/BC plan was on everyone’s mind.

Developing a good DR/BC plan is far more complex than a brief article can address, but there are three important items to consider:

▪     Identify early the core team of people responsible for coordination and communication during the event. Too many people trying to help without designated leaders will cause miscommunication and wasted effort during a critical time. Too few people assigned will place an undue burden of the massive effort involved in juggling multiple tasks.
▪     Communication is critical — to the affected employees in the disaster area, to the employees responsible for continuing to operate the daily business during the recovery effort, and to clients and business partners.
▪     Don’t limit the plan to the technology area. While technology plays a very important role in our industry, the computers don’t run the business. Identify processes and people that are critical to daily operation and ensure that you have redundancy, cross-training, and documented procedures.

While no plan is absolutely perfect, ours allowed us to reopen the Houston site within 10 days and to utilize our other locations to continue daily operations throughout. The investment in technology and planning proved invaluable by allowing us to deal with the serious impact to the building and our people, while ongoing business continued without interruption. Having a good DR/BC plan is like having a good insurance policy — you hope you’ll never need it, but if the time comes, you’ll be glad you have one. 

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