Natural disaster planning for commercial tenants Posted 2011, 18 January The impacts of natural disasters on people around the world and close to home have been top of mind for us all in the past few months. It brought home to me how vulnerable we are wherever we live and work. I had a personal experience working with relocating businesses affected by the Christchurch earthquake, and it gave me a firsthand experience of how devastating this sort of disaster can be. And of course those impacts are continuing with the ongoing aftershocks. Now too the impacts of flooding, both in Australia and here in Queenstown, are also right on our doorsteps. West Coast communities too are continuing to suffer the impact of the Pike River Coal mining tragedy. There are several important factors that spring to mind for businesses and their premises and being prepared should natural disaster strike. And these catastrophes can come in all shapes and forms; from earthquake, volcanic eruption, flooding, storms and tsunami, to power blackouts and accidents. One area that has come to light is the need to be well insured. This responsibility falls to both tenant and landlord alike. It is very timely to check right now to make sure you are well covered. Do you have adequate ‘business interruption’ insurance? Does your cover extend to all types of natural disaster? Could you replace all your equipment and fittings adequately? It is also timely to think about what sort of contingency measures you have in place to keep trading if you are not able to use your usual premises. A ‘remote working’ plan can be very useful so that employees can continue to work from home. This can fulfil the dual purpose of keeping a business afloat and fulfilling obligations to keep employees in work if your commercial building is severely damaged. Another key question relates to the location of your computer servers. Do you have a backup either at a different site or ‘in the cloud’? How easy would it be for your staff to work from home? People are starting to think about emergency plans for their home due to the encouragement of public awareness campaigns for civil defence. But equally we need to make sure our workplaces are well set up for times of emergency and that we are clear about how dependent our businesses might be on everything onsite being fully operational.
