It’s That Time Again – Are You Prepared?

Well, it’s that time of year again – winter. Are you prepared? Last year’s snow fall and our previous and infamous ice storm should have taught us a lesson in preparedness, both personally and professionally. Weather emergencies don’t respect jurisdictional borders, let alone economic environments facing large, medium and small businesses. The general public (your customers) expect  all public, private and not-for-profit entities to be able to effectively deal with a business disruption, even if its weather related.

We have a tendency to think in terms of building fires and other catastrophic events when we think of preparedness. Did you know that winter storms rate #1 on our City/County Hazard Identification and Vulnerability Analysis, but a preparedness survey of over 3oo in Spokane County say that power outages are most likely to affect them? When you think of the secondary events caused by storms, such as power and other things, the need to prepare is further amplified.

How would you handle this one? One of my clients recently suffered a catastrophic failure associated with the heating and cooling system. The parts required to fix the situation will take weeks to arrive and to be installed. Fortunately it is not a heat related part, but what if it had been? Better yet, what if this was your organization? How would you handle it – could you handle it? Technology failures lead the list of reasons for disaster declaration. How would you operate? How would you supply the goods and services expected of you by your customers? Where would you go? What about technology: your systems, applications, and your data?

Now is the time to prepare. Prepare at home and prepare your business for a major business disruption. Consider the weather, but I recommend that you take an All-Hazards approach to your planning efforts.

Ask yourself this question – ARE YOU PREPARED FOR AN UNPLANNED EVENT?