By Patrick Hardy, LL.M. CEM, CBCP, CRM, President - Hytropy.com

Introduction

The global impact of COVID-19 has required cultural property professionals around the world to adapt quickly and recognize the importance of a robust disaster plan. These plans, when properly designed and implemented on a property, provide the tools necessary to empower staff, volunteers and management to navigate a multi-dimensional disaster response. Without a plan, incident responses are inconsistent, confused, and lacks continuity necessary to maintain the highest service standards. Now that we are at the likely end of the biggest pandemic in 100-years, now is the time to redesign and consider appropriate updates to the emergency response and business continuity program for your property.  

Designing a Complete Disaster Plan

A comprehensive property disaster plan at a minimum contains three major elements: The Risk Analysis, the Emergency Response Plan, and the Business Continuity Plan. Each plan represents a separate phase in the emergency preparedness cycle.

Risk Analysis - The Risk Analysis essentially asks one question: “What threats do we face?”. It should identify potential threats to your property’s operation in the categories of natural disasters (i.e.: hurricanes, COVID-19 etc.), technological disasters (i.e.: power outage, HAZMAT spill) and security emergencies (i.e.: terrorism, active shooters). While there is a temptation by experienced cultural property professionals to simply do this by “gut” instinct or from past experiences, the Risk Analysis should be conducted by a multi-prong analysis of data from local, state, and federal sources. Neglecting to do so can miss critical threats. For instance, prior to 2020, few people had a real grasp of the potential for a crippling pandemic, even though the federal government placed pandemics in their National Planning Scenarios as early as 2003. There are additional steps for artifacts, documents, and other culturally significant elements that need to be considered in any comprehensive disaster program.

Emergency Response Plan - The Emergency Response Plan is a comprehensive document covering every element of the initial response to an incident on property. This may be termed the “lights and sirens” phase of an emergency. It should cover evacuation, shelter-in-place, and lockdown of the property, and how to set up an emergency leadership structure. However, the plan must also address crisis communication, utilities, worker injuries, equipment, supplies and training. Most plans cover about 20% of what they really need to be effective and must be improved regularly. Many times, properties only consider how to handle the first 30-60 minutes of an emergency, and do not consider how to handle long-term lockdowns, shelters-in-place, or evacuations. For example, after the Washington Navy Yard shooting in September of 2013, the FBI and other law enforcement officials had most of the buildings sealed as part of a processed crime scene. Even IT professionals, who needed to get their laptops to ensure they could access critical documents, portals and thumb drives were denied the ability to even reenter their own offices. 

Business Continuity Plan - The final piece of a property disaster plan is the Business Continuity Plan (BCP), which is a purely recovery document. Any property will have multiple service processes (POS, in-room experience, dining, etc.) that will require a comprehensive recovery examination. However, there are pieces of the BCP that should be incorporated into your Emergency Response Plan, because there are elements of recovery that also fit into a property’s initial response phase, such as recovering utilities and ensuring that generators are set to automatically response during a blackout. BCPs are highly technical documents and should NOT be written by laypeople. They require technical expertise to develop operational recovery times and points that align with a metric of consequence of late recovery for both brick and mortar as well as Information Technology. Exhibits and artifacts that have to be contained within environmentally-controlled units need to develop backups and vendors with continuity capabilities.

Learning the Lessons from COVID-19

Once a comprehensive disaster plan has been designed, constructed, and implemented, it must be put to the test through regular disaster exercises or through the crucible of an actual disaster. COVID-19 has provided an opportunity for many disaster plans to be activated for the first time and put under the stress of an actual emergency. No disaster plan is perfect, nor can it ever be. However, what separates average disaster plans from exceptional plans are those that adapt and improve through a rigorous lessons-learned process after each event. COVID-19 is no different. To prepare adequately for a second wave, cultural property professionals and their management teams must do three things:

Conduct Debriefings with Management and Staff – These are a series of meetings that reveal the strengths and weaknesses of the pandemic response. It should be thorough and cover each part of the response plan no matter how large or small the property, including communication (this is key!), operations, human resources, volunteer management, finance, and initial recovery. For complex properties, this process is not short, and will likely involved multiple meetings over several days. For smaller properties, this can be as short as 20-30 minutes with two or three groups of staff. Regardless, this process should be conducted by someone totally unaffiliated with the property. No exceptions. Management should NEVER lead the meetings, as employees will be extremely reluctant to critique what would be perceived as their supervisor’s policies and procedures.

Complete an After-Action Report – Once the meetings are concluded, a complete report should be written by an Emergency Preparedness Specialist called an “After-Action Report”. This is a document that provides actionable improvement steps on what procedural, functional, and policy modifications need to be made to strengthen the property’s pandemic response. Steps on plan modifications, additional training, equipment, policy adjustments, and other elements of the response should be evaluated independently by an outside specialist to ensure nothing is omitted.

Redraft the Disaster Plan – Once these weaknesses have been corrected, the disaster plan should be fully redrafted with these changes that have been developed. Otherwise, the lessons-learned are useless! The disaster plan will then be improved and grow in operational sophistication as these lessons are implemented into the property.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 Pandemic is an unprecedented challenge to cultural properties worldwide. Property management teams from small properties to large complexes should develop and maintain a sophisticated disaster plan, which includes participation from an experienced Emergency Preparedness Specialist. This plan, if implemented properly, will provide cultural property professionals and their staff the tools to respond to any emergency they face.