Need help with an SOP

Vanity | August 10, 2008 | Ronin

[JerseyHighlander]

Also, how large is your corporation?

some websites:

http://www.fema.gov/business/guide/index.shtm

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/prepared/

http://www.ibhs.org/business_protection/

http://www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance/disasterpreparedness/index.html

http://www.sba.gov/services/disasterassistance/index.html

[Grammy]

"Also, consider getting portable radios with a decent range because phones could be out or the circuits overloaded, maybe one that could communicate on a police frequency. A battery powered scanner tuned to police and fire department freqs would be nice to get some real info."

I do volunteer work with the Red Cross, and part of our preparations has been to hook up with ham radio operators. They are able to provide communications when many other means.... (phone, fire, police) are not operable. Since there are many many hams, all with towers, they are unlikely to lose all communications, as can happen with police, who only have one or two towers. Our county ham group does a weekly net check in for disaster readiness. Once a month they use only emergency power.

Mr G (a ham) has gone to areas devastated by tornadoes and made contacts for people... sometimes police communications, sometimes family notifications that people are OK. A ham can contact another ham out of the affected area, who then phones the family. Also, hams can be in the affected area and relay info to emergency personnel, who cannot get to the area.

[AngrySpud]

Every organization needs an “All Hazards” Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP). Since you’ve got a very short time a good place to start is www.pandemicflu.gov and go to the link for business planning. Pandemic planning and readiness lends itself well to all sorts of disasters.

[Moonman62]

I don’t think parachutes will work from the fifth floor, so get everybody a jet pack. You did say you have a blank check, right?

[Ronin]

It's not quite that bad. The boss gave me the task last Friday and he expects me to have something to show him on Monday. He knows it's not going to have everything covered and its going to go through a lot of revising, but he wants me to prove I can handle this job and in order to do that, I have to have at least the backbone in place. I can add the meat later.

I am getting a lot of great ideas from this thread and am very confident now that I can have something ready for him. Going to be heading down to Shinjuku in a few minutes to take a look at the building, even if I can't get inside today. Photographs, emergency exits, that sort of thing.

[JudgemAll]

Avoid the Katrina/Blanco “scenario”. A good case study.

[Kirkwood]

Oh in that case, then you can do it. Just be sure to cover as many scenarios as you need to: fire, earthquake, floods, tornadoes, chemical leaks, intruders, etc, etc. I did a study for a medical center once and they were mostly concerned with fires and the electrical grid going down, but it turned out they were most vulnerable to armed intruders who had a beef with the clinic staff. They completely overlooked a plan to deal with someone who flipped out.

[Kirkwood]

Don’t forget to implement a phone/text message emergency system. This way everyone gets informed of an emergency even if they are away from the business property. Plus you quickly find out who is not accounted for.

[Ronin]

I don’t think they will be collecting entrance fees at the time, but if so We’ll pay it.

[Ronin]

That’s on the list.

According to the boss, they had tasked some gal with putting that together a few months ago, but nothing happened with it. That’s the whole problem in the nutshell. A lot of the pieces are available, but no one has had the time to put them all together and make a functioning plan. I’m going to get it done.

[eggman]

First, coordinate your plan with the building's security staff. They should already have a plan for evacuation/emergency. Most cities require the building management to have regularly scheduled fire/evacuation drills. You should have a designated person as floor warden and an assistant or two to insure that everyone is accounted for and the offices checked during an evacuation.

They should also have a procedure that you contact them when you have a medical emergency or contact the police. They may also have first aid equipment which may include AED (Automated External Defibrillator) which can be used with minimal training in cardiac arrest. Check with the local emergency services to see if they offer classes for first aid and CPR.

Most important is to have a communications and contacts procedure. If there is an emergency you will want to let people know before they come into the office. A call tree were each person is assigned to notify 4-6 others of the situation. Make sure there is a list with multiple ways to get a hold of each person. Also, make sure everyone knows the plan. You can also have a web site where emergency info is posted for all employees to check. If the building is not accessible for a couple of days they may need to work from home or alternate sites and communication is critical.

Business Continuity - you can't do this in one day but there are some things you can start doing. Compile a list of the resources your business needs to stay in business. Then plan how you would operate if any of those resources were lost for a day, a week, or a month. How would you work with your business partners, clients, and vendors to keep them happy and stay in business. What data, computer systems, programs, processes, tools, papers, etc. need to be replicated and available offsite in case you are not able to get into the office.

[isom35]

flashlight, stick-matches, portable am-radio, a tube of neosporin, pocket-knife (swiss army would be better, a switch-blade would be cooler). I stick all this in a bag and I’m ready for disaster.

[Ronin]

What would be the best way to handle that? That is obviously going to be very important if we want to keep the business running in the future.

[brityank]

What would be the best way to handle that? That is obviously going to be very important if we want to keep the business running in the future.

If your company has a vender/provider for your computer equipment, they likely have plans and/or contacts. Have the DP manager investigate and establish a plan if it's not already in place. If one is in place, find out the last time it went through a full dress rehearsal and the result; if it hasn't been get one scheduled.

[FocusNexus]

Given the shortness of time, I would focus on identifying the areas to address and putting together an approach, a “plan to plan” with a rough schedule. I think if you do that, they will be happy momentarily. People gave you some good links, that you can use to start. But don’t try to do too much in a day.

Since this is a new job, your employer recognizes that this will take time, they probably just want to see you are able to look at the “big picture” so to speak.

You can have areas such as Physical security, Data protection — i.e. how are you going to make sure that the critical data, that every business has, will not get lost in a disaster — you can plan to investigate regular backups and storage of the data at a different physical location, I am sure there must be companies specializing in such things, part of your plan can be to investigate and select an approach, and so on.

I presume you spent some time researching it, then you can put together this approach in a couple of hours, don’t try to have all the details, just the key areas and an additional task to identify additional areas.

I think about half a dozen charts or 2-3 pages will be sufficient, provided you include the approach, top issues and a schedule to complete the plan.
Good luck!

[kitchen]

If the elevators and stairways are blocked by power failure, debris, or smoke and noxious gasses, can you seal yourself in and open the windows? If not, do you need to throw a desk through the glass? Now it's either cable ladders or rope. Is there a place to anchor either? Maybe some place to snap a 'biner accessible to each window. Rappelling requires gloves and a harness these days. If you need to evacuate a spinal injury, is there a basket that takes a spine board and enough robust people to handle the task?

How about if you have to retreat and seal yourselves in because of terrorists? Is the office complex designed in layers, and do you need caches of supplies in several places? Can you lock the entrances to your office complex from the inside?

If the office is filled with smoke or poison gas, how do you see to get out and how long can you go without breathing? Look to the mining industry for self contained self rescuers that will provide oxygen and allow people to function in a carbon monoxide-filled environment.

I'll take a break and tell you a story. When I got my EMT certification, I visited my neighbor to talk about his recommendations of supplies for a jump kit. He was a combat medic who saw his share of emergencies. He said, "Look, you don't need that stuff. The only thing you need to have with you is already in your head." So, I suggest you call it team building or whatever the current term is, but get everyone out to something like the Japanese equivalent of Outward Bound. People need to learn their own abilities and develop trust in their co-workers' abilities. You never know who is going to spaz out when the S.H.T.F., but it is far less likely if you can develop a mutual trust between the people in your organization.

[Ronin]

This is all good information. I am going from link to link right now, making notes, I have a full page of questions that have to get answered... But it’s starting to come together in beginning sort of way.

I am going to start with the basics. Split the company into six teams of five people each under a monitor that will be responsible for counting heads and get the phone tree organized. There is no reason why I that can’t be done in a single day or two at the most.

Then tomorrow I will inventory what supplies we have on hand and compare them with what we should have. I need to get everyone to get their own kit together. Jeans (or other durable trousers, long-sleeved shirt, socks, undergarments, sanitary supplies for the ladies, gloves and a hat. I think I’ll get the company to spring for the hat because having everyone in the same hat is a good way to count heads quickly.

The basic evacuation plan is out the door, down the stairs on the left, across the street into the Temple grounds and muster in the center of the lot. After the inventory, that will probably change.

I am going to task a couple of the younger nimble guys to be scouts and message runners. I’ll head up the first aid, stretcher bearer team because I am one of the biggest people in the office.

So many details...

On an offside, I remember a thread about two months ago where they talked about a handy water-purifier that could take almost any water and make it pure by running it through a ultra-fine filter that gets all the bugs. Anyone remember that? I can’t find it now.

[FocusNexus]

Just remember, your employer is not expecting a full plan in a day.

You mentioned that someone had several months and she didn’t produce, so they know that nobody can do in a day, what is a multi-month project.

They just want to confirm that their faith in you will produce results.

Rather than have one aspect with a lot of detail and not being able to get to the next important aspect, because there are only so many hours in a day and it is humanly impossible to do several months worth of work in a few hours, I can’t emphasize enough the suggestion that identify the key areas, and put together a schedule to a level of details of a couple of weeks or so, with a 2-month total schedule for the initial plan, a final review and a final plan in 3 months, with reviews with management at the 1 month and 2 month milestones. That’s the kind of stuff management wants.

You can add a 2-week assessment of the conditions to address for the beginning.

I would go in with a list, such as:

Physical evacuation:
— coordinate with building security, communicate to employees, hold drills, etc.
— identify and train volunteers to assist in evacuation and emergency medical help

Emergency supplies:
— identify needs for various potential key events, assess current supplies, purchase supplies needed, communicate location of supplies to employees

Data security and persistence:
— identify process to secure data in emergency evaluation
— data back up at a different location — identify archiving processes, location and company to secure it

Then add tasks and schedule. THEN, if you have time, go down into a little more detail under each task, that way, if you don’t get to everything, you will still have identified a plan and framework to produce the plan, and if you forget some details, you will be able to fill it out later.

Some of what you mentioned is a good start, and can include it under details, but since an evacuation plan is very important, it will take more than a day to finalize it, and I would say so in your presentation.

As someone mentioned before, that building itself must have some kind of an evacuation plan, you need to coordinate, also have an accountability list — i.e. leaders of subgroups to account for each person, to make sure someone is not left behind, also a master list of everyone’s emergency contacts, there are a lot of details.

I can almost guarantee you, that if you have as I described above, your management will like it, then you can have a reasonable time to develop the details.

[FocusNexus]

One more thing that is really important:

You need to identify not just WHAT people will do — i.e. down the stairs, out of the building, but to develop a detailed PROCEDURE of how that will be accomplished, COMMUNICATE to all employees, and TRAIN and practice it, there is no time to think, the procedure needs to be ingrained in everyone, to be effective.

Developing the procedure is not trivial.

The WHAT can be “everyone out”. But the HOW is have 5-6 people responsible for 5-6 people in that area, to take account and make sure they get down the stairs, to identify anyone who has trouble getting down stairs ( it could be a permanent disability, or someone with a broken leg at the time of the evacuation) — and have a process of who and how that person will be helped down — a lot of this stuff should already be in the general building evacuation procedures, that you can just follow for the office.

But as I said, it’s non trivial, the more you get into it,the more details you will find you need to address, that is why I was suggesting a top down approach.

[Ronin]

That’s going to be another hard spot. I am brand new and the company. Well, three months if you include the first two months of part time work. There might be some resentment from the more senior staff about putting me in charge. The boss is going to have to let people know what I am doing has his support and they are going to have to listen to me, because I can’t run to him to say “tell them to do that because...” I’ll just have to take that bull by the horns from the start.