Storm’s Coming

CASE STUDY

Resicom is relied upon for all types of emergency maintenance.  But usually emergency is defined as a broken fitting room door, or a damaged cash wrap, maybe an overnight leak.  However, in this instance, Resicom was contacted to assist facilities in their preparation against a pending category 5 Hurricane fast approaching the coast of Southern Florida.

Scope

The scope of work needed to execute this project included:

1. Protect our clients’ property with preventative measures against possible hurricane damage and to keep subsequent water out of the stores.
2. Measures must be completed within 24 hours in meet our clients expectations and beat the storm.
3. Budget has been set at 4K per store. 
4. There are 35 stores in Southern Florida that need to be protected.  

Challenges

The constraints of this project included:

1. The area requiring service is located 1,200 miles from Resicom’s home office. 
2. Resicom was contacted the day before we needed to be onsite.
3. All flights into this region had been cancelled or postponed due to the approaching hurricane and weather advisory.
4. Resicom could only arrange a small crew of 5 men available to travel immediately. 
5. Hotel rooms were extremely limited in the area.
6. Materials in the area were difficult to obtain as commercial properties and private residents increased demand significantly for lumber and other hurricane protection supplies.

Solution

The success of this particular project would rely on our ability to react swiftly and create a solid plan of action.  In this case, the deadline was completely inflexible with no margin for delay as we were not racing against a client specified deadline, but against nature itself.  

Our solution to this project included: 

1. Our most effective manager/supervisor was pulled from his current role in order to manage the crews and project execution.
2. We contacted local technicians to increase the necessary man power estimated to complete the job.
3. All airlines and airports were investigated to determine which closest city was still allowing arriving flights.  We reserved car rental to drive the remaining distance to schedule job sites. 
4. A separate project manager with purchasing capability is also dispatched to oversee budget and expenses for the job.
5. Local supply houses are immediately contacted that day in order to secure the material needed to complete the project.
6. Documentation and photos are compiled by the office support staff to illustrate to our client what exactly we did to protect their property.

Summary

When Resicom was contacted to orchestrate a major emergency preparation project, we never debated if the task was possible.  By starting from a position of not “can we complete the job” but “what steps do we take to complete the job” we are able to make the impossible possible by executing a thorough plan.