Project Recovery, by Corinne Maddox, CCM, CFM

With hurricane season upon us, there are two important lessons learned on disaster recovery for projects - communications and scarcity of resources. Colleagues as well as key contractors, consultants and vendors must be accessible. Before power, phone and computer system outages or destroyed files make your contact data irretrievable, create a hardcopy of project contacts, including home, cell and emergency phone numbers. Take that and important electronic and hard copy files home in the event your office is closed and you have to work remotely. Many have seen bare shelves in stores during a storm, where water, batteries and plywood once stood. Both materials and labor resources needed to prepare for and recover from a storm should be secured as early as possible. After other hurricanes, those who had not lined up the available generators, pumps, dryers, document recovery contractors, movers and other resources, were left at the end of a very long line.