As the boxer Mike Tyson reminds us, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” In the facilities management realm, such a situation arises when an emergency strikes and tests an organization’s resilience: How prepared is it to respond to the emergency and recover from it, then return to full operations? The recent winter storms in Texas that crippled the state’s power grid and left many facilities without power and water have many managers now revisiting those questions.
Texas companies aren't the only ones that might need to revisit business continuity and resilience plans in the aftermath of the state's uncommonly severe winter weather, according to TechTarget. The power outages and bursting pipes that crippled millions of residents and businesses in Texas also took a toll on companies and government agencies in states ranging from Florida to California.
Bob Gill, a research vice president at Gartner, said his advice on business continuity to those that did experience an outage remains the same. He says if a business can't get by without that data center being down, have it replicated somewhere else, adding that facility executives and managers should have their eyes wide open from the perspective of business continuity around the country and should be multi-region.
Dan Hounsell is editor of Facility Maintenance Decisions.
