Due to its huge impact, the global pandemic has reinforced the need for exceptional facilities planning and a sound business continuity plan. With lockdown restrictions beginning to ease, post-pandemic business recovery is on the minds of many, and business continuity plans are being reviewed. As the post-pandemic recovery begins, now is an ideal time to develop a robust facilities plan and conduct any work that would result in site downtime while sites have not yet reached full occupancy.

Assess Your Existing Plan

The first step when considering a business continuity plan is to review the existing plan and conduct a business impact analysis, considering how the pandemic may have affected the plan. From a facilities management perspective, you should consider which functions of the site are the most critical, and how you can you best mitigate the impact of a disruptive and potentially damaging event. By conducting a review of your plan, you can identify critical activities and functions and ensure that your site’s heart keeps beating while prioritising key functions over less significant ones.

Minimal Site Downtime

Due to numerous lockdowns forcing workplaces to close, we understand that the last thing you need is additional site downtime, especially in live, occupied, and sensitive buildings. To help your post-pandemic business recovery, we’ll go above and beyond to ensure any site downtime is kept to a minimum. To control this, all intrusive works are scheduled well in advance, ideally during a time when the building is empty or least busy, such as out of hours. To minimise downtime, any preparatory works needed will be carried out while your site is still running to ensure it will only be down during the necessary fitting time.

Reduced Site Disruption

Maintenance works at a site can be highly distracting and at times, disruptive to the building’s occupants and operations, meaning robust facilities planning is required to minimise disruption. We work tirelessly to achieve a high level of customer satisfaction, doing everything we can to minimise disruption at occupied sites. Following best practices to minimise disruption, our engineers work closely with the site manager and tailor their approach to the individual requirements of the site.

In one project, we lifted a chiller and other facilities equipment to the roof of a high-rise building using a crane to avoid disruption within the building. We determined that the roof was a suitable area to conduct work with an element of drilling and other noise because the sound did not impact the occupants within the building. While we were feeding a cable down to the basement from the roof, an engineer followed this down to ensure that the cable didn’t hit any obstacles within the building. With careful planning, we were able to keep site disruption to a minimum during this project, ensuring the site’s operations were not hindered by our presence.

 

Less Noise

When conducting essential work, noise from necessary machines and tools will be kept to a minimum and only used when convenient for the site. We’ll do our best to ensure noisy work is completed out of hours and on weekends, but if we do have to conduct loud work during normal hours, we’ll try to complete this all within one day rather than spreading it over the working week. Loud machinery will not be left on when not in use, and sound and vibration-reducing methods such as rubber matting will always be used where possible.

Summary

As workplaces prepare to welcome their workforces back, the time has come to update your business continuity plan and develop robust facilities planning. We’ll work with you to complete any essential work before your building reaches full occupancy again as part of your business recovery. Following a pragmatic approach, we’ll reduce the impact of any disruptive works and cut site downtime significantly. Having completed projects within occupied live and sensitive buildings for many years, we are very familiar with the processes, systems, working arrangements and etiquette needed to keep your site running while ensuring that it’s safe and disruption-free during maintenance work.

If you’d like support in maintaining your site during disruptive situations, please contact us.