Business Flood Planning is at the fore-front of many people’s minds following recent events in the UK. Here are my top ten tips to help your business survive flooding whether it happens to you or how you can plan to prevent it:
1. Be aware of the flood risks in your business’ local area. Ordnance Survey are going to make their maps and statistical data available for free online from next year, making it even easier to instigate business flood planning for specific properties at risk.
2. Ensure that you have appropriate plans to enforce defences and employees on stand by, knowing what they should be doing should a flood affect your offices during the day or overnight. Flood protection doors, brick work covers and other preventative items should be invested in and employees trained in their use.
3. Install a warn and inform system to let all or some key customers, suppliers and employees know that the offices are at risk of being flooded and that they should not come into the office, or simply to tell them what you are doing as a company in response to a flooding risk.
4. Ensure that company business interruption or general insurance covers for flooding and loss of productivity due to denial of access to your building. But remember that insurance is slow to be paid out and won’t cover the full cost of the ‘business outage’.
5. Incorporated into your business flood planning should be equipping all ‘knowledge’ workers who do not need to be physically in the office to perform their job role with IT equipment to enable them to continue to work remotely by accessing corporate networks and directories securely.
6. Ensure that you are able to re-route any incoming calls to your organisation to a recovery site, mobile phone or alternative landline numbers so that you can continue to keep in contact with customers and suppliers so that you can continue to do business.
7. Install secure voice recording of incoming and outgoing calls to provide a record of who said what before, during and after any flooding occurs in order to mitigate any misunderstanding or transfer of blame.
8. In the unfortuate event that you are flooded, do not throw away any damaged items which you plan to claim for on insurance, until the claim has been settled. Take photographic or video evidence of damage wherever possible.
9. Think of the long term plans to re-locate employees to work remotely from any location, whilst employing a specialist company such as Balfour to come and repair/ restore your offices back to working order.
10. Flood water can be contaminated with bacteria, so all items to be salvaged should be thoroughly dried and disinfected. All food preparation areas should be thoroughly disinfected before re-use and clothing used during flood recovery should be kept clear from uncontaminated clothing and disposed of if they can’t be machine washed. Employ a specialist company such as Document SOS to salvage any key documentation, or indeed all your damaged paperwork.
Business flood planning in the UK should be an essential element in any company’s business continuity and disaster recovery plans, as Cumbria has shown how devestating it can be. Climate change is making flooding more common each year so all businesses need to be fully prepared.
