Achieve Business Continuity after Disaster Strikes

Gilbane’s Reconstruction Service (GRS) teams have been involved in major efforts for residential and commercial entities since Superstorm Sandy made landfall in 2012.  Many other states have suffered tremendous loss caused by natural disasters including the fires in the West and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and the most recent, Florence, still battering parts of the Carolinas.  We’ve learned a lot through our experience and share the insights below to help you plan, communicate, assess, and reconstruct to achieve business continuity and restore operations with integrity.

Prepare and Test Your Disaster Recovery Plan

Keep your disaster recovery team alert even when things are calm.  Maintain the relationships with your insurance contacts to ensure coverage is adequate.  Also check in with first responder consultants so they are aware of changes to your operations and facilities, including major new equipment installations and planned capital upgrades. If you don’t have a plan, you can get started by reviewing ideas from Travelers Insurance for business continuity planning and disaster preparedness checklists for your business and family.

Crisis Communications Help Employees Feel Safe and Reduce Stress

Maintain consistent communications with your most important asset, your people, while disaster is imminent.  Technology today allows for multiple channel communications, check-ins, and updates that will help to reduce stress.  Test your systems regularly to ensure the plan is effective, ask for employee feedback, and integrate disaster response partners into the plan.  With so many remote construction workers on jobsites all over the world, Gilbane has a dedicated crisis hotline and a crisis management plan in place to protect our employees and mitigate impacts.

Emergency Response and Assessment

When it is safe to do so, an emergency response team will assess the scope of damage.  A causation analysis, engineering investigations, loss estimates, building code impacts, and more will be assessed and reported.  Repair versus rebuild scenarios will be discussed with cost and schedule impacts.  Ensure your team has the right information to make the most informed decisions.  Don’t fall into the pressurized urgent decision-making mode that you will ultimately regret later.

Intelligent Reconstruction Recommendations

As you consider reconstruction options, review critical path schedule milestones, detailed labor rates, cash flow analysis, and pricing with confirmed lead times for materials and equipment.  Consult with your reconstruction experts to ensure your enterprise is not victim to price gouging and crisis-level wage rates.  Certain premium pricing can be expected but be aware of all line items and their basis.  Demand real-time, open-book project reporting to ensure no surprises.

The trust and relationships you build during disaster recovery planning efforts will provide you with confident crisis management protocols based on integrity.  Learn more about Gilbane’s Reconstruction Services and our experts.  Stay safe out there! 

Thomas M. Laird, Jr.

Tom oversees the firm’s Central/Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, Southwest, Western and Southeast offices where his operational responsibility includes profit and loss and ensuring the execution of the company’s ‘One Company’ vision, strategy and business plan.  He also oversees Gilbane Reconstruction Services which provides clients with disaster response services.  Follow Tom on LinkedIn.

Jack Halliwell

President of Halliwell Engineering Associates, Inc (HEA) a forensic
engineering and architectural firm, Jack has over 30 years of experience in the investigation and
analysis of construction-related damages and failures. Jack  also provides program
management for large scale CAT losses and litigation strategy for complex claims. Follow Jack on LinkedIn.

Donald Lombardo

With over thirty years of design build construction experience, Don has extensive knowledge of industry methods, codes, and regulations.  His technical project knowledge combined with disaster reconstruction claims experience provides clients with peace of mind at the most critical time. Follow Don on LinkedIn.