Operations and maintenance, similarly to facility management in general, is often overlooked and underinvested,save for highly critical and sensitive operations. The importance of O&M during the pandemic has been highlighted with hibernating systems in unoccupied buildings. Key workers such as electricians, plumbers, HVAC technicians and others responded to building emergencies while many employees stayed safe in their homes. Maintenance and repairs are being carried out to make occupied spaces compliant with new government guidance.

As parts of the world begin reentry and count the cost to business and commerce, let this be a catalyst for change and a force for good. A huge lesson learned for those responsible for operating and managing buildings is the criticality of investing in their assets and the people responsible for their maintenance. This must be done as part of a broader emergency preparedness campaign and business continuity plan.

However, amid an economic crisis, it is understandable why the idea of spending more money now is difficult to accept, not least in mitigation of an event that has not, and may not, ever materialize. However, it is this short-sighted view that exacerbated the chaotic response to the pandemic. The “kicking an issue under the carpet and worrying” type approach is frankly the easiest direction to take. This pandemic has demonstrated the ramifications that a lackadaisical approach can have, not only on the global economy, which contracted by 4.3 percent in 20201, but on redundancies and livelihoods, health, business closures, commerce and customer service.

The premise that doing nothing in terms of emergency preparedness is simply not an option. To do nothing would be an even greater tragedy than the pandemic itself. FMs can start with small things that can make a big difference in managing an emergency. For those responsible for operating and managing buildings, start by taking a hard and honest look at the organization’s plans to respond to a fire, bomb threat, flood, gas leak and power failure. These are just a few examples of problems that can be easily mitigated with the right investment in planning, maintenance, drills and testing. Complex emergency scenarios, such as a terrorist act and pandemic response, may warrant the investment in special advisors who can develop plans and forecast associated expenditure.

Identifying emergencies and assessing their impact against a baseline do-nothing approach versus a best practice risk-based approach can help make wise investment decisions. The approach can also convince those holding the purse strings that investing in long-term emergency preparedness rather than throw money into a last-minute reactionary response is a sensible approach to take.

So, what can be done? There seems to be a plethora of O&M strategies openly debated in asset management and this debate must now consider O&M tasks, including drills, tests and risk assessments in direct response to different emergencies. Emergency preparedness and O&M planning cannot be siloed, and it is wrong to assume that an escalation procedure alone is a satisfactory mitigation measure in emergency planning.

Global supply chains are commonplace. But the pandemic has shown how fragile this approach can be. According to Baker McKenzie, intellectual property issues and complex production processes, or in a bid to reduce unit costs, firms can sometimes become overly reliant on a single company or geography to source particular goods. This has left many companies with limited contingency plans to deal with supply disruptions.

A recent Deloitte poll found that 32 percent of clients believe there will be less outsourcing when the crisis ends.

According to Deloitte, this may be due to the inflexibility (perceived or real) of hard contract terms and conditions, that may have hampered the immediate actions needed in response to the sudden changes that the crisis presented.

According to PWC, firms will need to show better risk management and resilience capabilities. Clients will demand less emphasis on economies of scale, and more emphasis on service providers building in some redundancies, greater resilience, and more focus on business continuity. Deloitte suggests considerations for service providers in relation to business continuity planning. These include scenarios such as global shutdowns and other prolonged business disruption, standardizing global processes, shift away from local testing to global crisis management, integrated planning with client organizations and diversity vendor strategy to deploy planning scenarios across regions.

This is about robust supply chain risk management and Baker McKenzie suggests this would involve elements of human intelligence as well as data collection and organization. Such information helps paint a clear picture of the fundamental structure of the supply chain as well as the key contacts, suppliers and stakeholders along the supply chain specific to each company. Having clear and updated accounts of such information will enable companies to identify areas of potential vulnerability and opens the conversation on how to minimize, manage or eliminate these risks.

This is particularly important in terms of global recovery in the wake of the pandemic as wealthier regions of the world bounce back quicker than poor and emerging regions and what this may mean in terms of global supply chain resilience in the coming years.

Tech-enablement is not just about the continuity of service; it’s about cost efficiency and transforming at scale as services are unshackled from geographical constraints. In a world where cashflow and appetite for expenditure for businesses is challenging, Deloitte proposes refocusing investment where clients and service providers (O&M being one) can work together to fi nd common goals that focus on transformational spend and look to drive innovative ways to expand capabilities and re-design internal operations.

The shift from manual to digital service provision in O&M is happening, albeit reluctantly. The pandemic has shown how enabling technology can improve an organization's resilience and secure business continuity. According to PWC, firms able to embrace digital tools and services have largely prospered during the crisis, capable of providing continuity of service to their clients while remaining in operation. Those with lower-tech capabilities, whether yet to digitize paper-based processes or because their service relies on physical location and resources, have suffered by comparison. So perhaps the pandemic will teach organizations and those responsible for O&M to invest further to speed up the transition from manual to digital processing instead of delaying the inevitable and remaining exposed to further risk.

Many predict a transformation in the way organizations manage real estate and space. In the U.K., PWC modeling revealed that during the pandemic, 58 percent of people can work from home. This increases to 72 percent for those working in the business services sector.5 Organizations will respond to this and ramifications for O&M need consideration. Perhaps as demand for real estate reduces, so too will the scale and capacity for traditional O&M service provision and a greater focus on technology and digitization to serve a smaller intelligent real estate market while supporting an increased remote workforce.

The potential catastrophic impact of emergencies on people, business, property and assets is the same the world over and this must call for a standardized approach to emergency planning. There are many aspects of O&M that call for localized approaches befitting of the culture and environment where the organization operates.

This has implications for customer service, communication and maintenance. However, emergency planning is one aspect of O&M that should bring the community of responsible building owners and FMs together. A unified approach rightly places the importance of safety and value of people in the same category of risk deserving of equal investment and planning regardless of geographical positioning.

With the benefit of hindsight, one can only begin to think of the benefit organizations may have reaped from this standardized approach, not least in terms of their preparedness to deal with a pandemic.

Emergency scenario management and preparedness remains one aspect of health and safety where O&M planning can make a real contribution to mitigating risk. The International Standard Organization (ISO) 22320 provides helpful guidance for incident management: ISO 22301 on business continuity planning and ISO 31000 on risk management. How many organizations can truly say they undertake O&M planning in cognizance of these international standards? Perhaps their separation from O&M industry standards and guidance means due consideration is missed in the O&M planning process? Perhaps it is time for a more harmonized approach in the development of industry standards.

The British Standard (BS) 8210 Facilities Maintenance Management Code of Practice provides excellent guidance to those responsible for operating and managing buildings with specific guidance on health, safety and the well-being of people in the context of O&M. The Standard stipulates the management of occupational health and safety should be viewed as an integral component of facilities maintenance management and not a separate function or as an add-on. The same must be true for emergency management and preparedness. Unfortunately, the standard does not allow for a designated section for emergency management and preparedness.

Instead, the standard leaves the user to consider emergency scenarios as individual risks to people and the organization that should be mitigated accordingly. Coupled with potential progression to ISO status, the standard has the potential to reach FMs with a consistent and global approach to emergency management and preparedness while developing O&M strategies and plans for facilities.

In the interim, for FMs, the tools are there, albeit in separate form. They need to be recognized and then applied, which requires a concerted effort by those holding the purse strings to invest, and for those involved in O&M planning to think more laterally in their planning processes.

It is easy to preach best practice — acting on it is much more difficult. But planning for operations and maintenance with due consideration for emergency preparedness and managing risk is a sensible and sustainable approach. Emergency preparedness is manageable and affordable when one invests and plans incrementally and should be a key consideration in the formulation of budgets by all organizations operating in all sectors of industry.