The purpose of this entry is to explore the issues affecting housing operations in higher education in the area of emergency response and planning. A continuation of operations plan or COOP effort became very popular after Katrina and other major crisis events took place at Universities where the loss of life became eminent (Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois, Iowa State, etc).
The purpose of the COOP plan (or plans) is to set up a road map for how critical departments will respond/recover from various “emergency” events. The COOP outlines information with some precision (employee phone numbers, resources, expertise, essential information systems) but it doesn’t identify precise methodology for specific emergency events. The vagueness like (who is responsible for X in the event of Y under Z conditions) needs to be addressed through communication, information dissemination, accessibility and practice.
The goal for some higher ed campuses has been (and continues to be) planning for the following:
- Whose: responsibility assignments for recover life sustaining services (ie: heating, electricity, security, food, water, etc)
- What is the event, the damage, the risk, the options, the new normal, etc.
- When: under what conditions will resources and personnel be activated, how fast can things go back to normal, length of time for recovery.
- How: what are the procedures to address the various elements of the plan.
The variety of events depend on environmental issues affecting your location, the event itself, the magnitude and amplitude of the event, the availability of human resources, the impact on human life, organization plasticity, the scarcity of resources for recovery, the length of time necessary for recovery or return to normalcy. etc.
Wisdom
- The COOP process requires intense planning, collaboration and testing. Creating a COOP plan requires a bold and prolonged commitment by upper administrators. Sometimes COOP plans have been created to address issues of federal and state compliance, nevertheless the plan needs to be pragmatic and executable. Creating COOP plans can require as long as a year to two years of planning, rewriting and testing. Conditions and personnel change, so constant nurturing is required.
- Moving Part Testing (table tops): Make sure the various parts of the plan are tested together. The process of gathering information for COOP often creates silos and assumptions. Do not assume that completed templates fit together like gears in a watch. Table top exercises allow for the testing of COOP while identifying assumptions about preparedness and responsibility.
- Identification of Chain of Command: It is understood, that the highest ranking institution (or individual) are in charge of executive decisions. The role of the COOP developer is to provide information to those with the highest credentials and domain. Depending on the crisis, the federal government through FEMA may coordinate the response. For smaller events, the local authorities in collaboration with school administrators (ie: Chancellors, Vice Chancellors, Deans, Directors) will determine roles and resource allocations. Upper administrators have an executive role, so they need to be ready with options to execute plans.
- Keep it simple stupid: COOPs, business continuation plans tend to be lengthy, wordy and hard to follow, so it is important that the content be precise, concise and easily digestible for various levels of employees. You cannot make the assumption that the experts and process keepers will be available to recover your operation. COOP should kept in paper form and in multiple locations.
- Identification of essential services. It is important that COOP planners determine the priority for essential services. Essential services are those that in their absence would make recovery impossible. Think of heat in the middle of the winter or water in the middle of the summer.
- Identification of risk levels for high probability events that have happened around your campus and measure your ability to respond to the situation under current or diminished resource levels Housing departments have many moving parts and limited resources, so it is important that housing officers create a risk assessment based on prior experiences. Applying lessons learned from regional sister institutions is also a viable strategy.
- Measure your levels and threshold of preparedness: the development of a risk/scenario matrix for events and situations will determine what your highest priorities should be and where your resources should go. (here is an example to get you an idea of what the model could look like)
Methodology:
Determine a probability score (high, medium, low), create a tolerance level for specific situation (ie: fires, hurricanes, accidents, pandemic, active shooter, power outages, flooding), a tolerance level determines your ability to sustain/recover your services given a tolerance level priority. Losing power for a day in the summer is not the same (in tolerance) as losing power for a day in the middle of the winter.
Your tolerance diminishes as conditions change. Think of the tragic events at the superdome event during Katrina. The longer it takes to recover, the more dramatic things will become.
- Determine human impact, property impact, business impact. Give it a score using a simple ranking ie: critical, vital and sensitive.
Determine the role (weak, medium, strong) of your department on addressing the event. Your role in a major regional catastrophe will be different than a building level event. Once you set up various scenarios, you can use the composite score to identify your highest risk and your highest probability situations.
- The basics factors will always get you: As COOPs are written, there is a great deal of planning that goes on at complex levels of emergency planning. Nevertheless, focus on the basic elements of life/business/safety preservation that will have the most impact on your plan. As an example: you cannot create technology heavy communication or student tracking solution when the event impacting your campuses wipes your data center, cellular communication, electricity, water, communication gateways, etc. So create a plan from the ground up and move to more detail as your COOP plan (scenarios) grow. Stick to basic solutions for complex problems. A database driven housing management system is no match for a paper based list (or lists) during a power impairing catastrophe. Your plan should address the absence or scarcity of major elements of civilization like: food, water, electricity, sewer services, cellular, road infrastructure, law enforcement, etc.
- Plan for Redundancy of Roles: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs should be considered when making assumptions about employees and their role on COOP. Personnel will rise and fall based on their ability to handle their own hierarchy of needs. COOP planning addresses roles and functions with primary and secondary respondents. Your top performers under normal conditions may be your least reliable under stress.
Information technology should be a priority: engage IT administrators (within and outside) when dealing with scenarios and assumptions. Do not assume that enterprise technology services are interchangeable, or easily recoverable/replaceable. As technical people are not interchangeable in skills, you have to maintain awareness of the assumptions non-technical people make about technology capabilities. As technology is consumerized, enterprise level services are often assumed as easily replaceable or interchangeable with “walmart” versions of such service or hardware. The use of cloud computing is becoming more prevalent for back up and off site communication mechanisms.
- Identify assumptions: It is impossible to plan for every scenario, so assumptions have to be spelled out for those involved on the recovery and reconstitution planning. The delivery of a strategy or tactic needs to include the assumption of resources prior to the execution of such plan.
- Stockpile essentials: do not assume that “other” entities will provide resources free of charge. Scarcity and speculation become part of the conversation during regional events. Work closely with food services for making sure “dry goods” or “foods that can be consumed without the need of heat or cold” are available for those that choose to remain on campus. flashlights, radios, kits, granola bars (dry food), glow sticks, generators, etc should be part of your inventory.
Pandemics events create very specific challenges for the organization that require long term budgetary and personnel training. Pandemics are a game of percentages and thresholds. Your operation depends on your ability to provide housing services. As pandemic crisis limits your ability to house students, your fiscal viability will be a serious factor to consideration. It may be wise to do a budget analysis identifying your threshold of pain. Pandemic scenarios can create situations where 40 or 50% of your service capacity is completely wiped out.
The template that we used at our school came from FEMA:
http://www.ready.gov/
and
http://www.fema.gov/planning-templates
Other resources:
http://www.acuho-i.org/Portals/0/pdf/Campus_Housing_Guidelines_for_Pandemic_Planning.pdf
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