Mission Critical Facility Concerns In Today’s World of Global Business Continuity Planning

With the growing demand today for 24×7 operation, mission critical facilities require a revised mindset that starts with facilities management becoming a part of boardroom issues. As our customers have become more sophisticated, and their expectations higher, “zero tolerance” for downtime has become the norm. As you review mission critical facilities ‘sustainability’ – does your management or client(s) expect that facility to be 6-sigma – the concept of essentially continuous operations, with less than one minute of downtime annually? What is the survivability of your mission critical facilities and when was the last time a site survey was done addressing this issue?

With the average mid-sized U.S. company expected to generate up to half its revenues outside the U.S. by the year 2005, companies must protect the direct or joint venture investments they are making in foreign plants and equipment. Continuity of operations planners must maintain constant and close communications with their site or facility management personnel enterprise-wide to keep up to date facility or site inventories and understand how their plan would address recovering and restoring these mission critical facilities.

There must also be close coordination and communication with the local municipal authorities concerning emergency access to an affected facility and/or its perimeter. In an international disaster, this can be more complex in having to deal with operational integration across business and technology boundaries, language barriers, numerous financial markets and currencies, philosophical and cultural differences among the people entering and utilizing these facilities, vendor and supply chain issues, emergency restoration and security concerns, and frequency of terrorist activities.

In addition, attention must be given to emergency procurement of supplies, equipment, specialized personnel or services for these facilities worldwide, as well as relocation of all or part of an operation to a local or alternate site. Specific international insurance issues must also be addressed.

The mission critical facility must be flexible enough to swing power loads and functions among various components so the whole system doesn’t crash in the event of a disaster, and must find the proper balance between automation and human intervention. The mission critical facility should be able to have maintenance done with the facility online and processing underway and the facility should be on a dedicated utility feeder.

All design and construction plans must take 24×7 needs into account. The concept of 24×7 design goes beyond backup generators, un-interruptible power supply boxes and battery systems, and must look to the future. You must project your computer needs two years, five years, ten years from today so that you size your mechanical and electrical capacity to support that ultimate load. In a disaster, in most cases, locating a facility to convert to 24×7 operations is not easy because most speculative commercial buildings were not designed with enough extra space for backup generators, UPS and battery systems. Some organizations build and own their 24×7 facilities to ensure continuity of operations. Where that is not possible, pre-classifying alternate locations that meet their mission critical facility needs is an important part of pre-loss planning.

Furnishings must also be flexible, as there is constant motion in the workplace. The ability to move from one location to another is also important as office and workstation layouts are constantly changing. Also, as teams are formed to solve a problem, once solved, the team is dissolved, and a new one formed with different space and equipment requirements.

Global facility operational and recovery issues must also address evacuation and in-vacuation of a facility (or a portion of that facility) during an emergency, as well as that particular geographical area’s enforcement of building codes, emergency response capabilities and road conditions.

Experience has taught us that in our technology-entwined global marketplace, an earthquake in Asia, for example, can seriously interrupt business in the United States. A loss affecting an entity anywhere in our supply chain can have a direct affect upon our ability to continue our operations and get our finished goods to market or negate our ability to continue providing critical services to our customers.

Our 24 x 7 world requires a new way of managing and maintaining corporate facilities. The requirements of a mission critical facility must be incorporated at every level of a corporate business continuity plan. Only then can management provide continuous operations in the face of the multitude of threats facing our world today.

The content is this article is only a brief overview of mission critical facility issues that must be addressed in preparing for and recovering from disaster. For more information, please contact Pat at (830) 598-1587 or [email protected]