Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Business Continuity after an Earthquake
I was in a small meeting room much of yesterday discussing how to proceed with a client's case. Shortly before noon, we noticed the building swayed slightly. It was the telltale sign that an earthquake had struck in Sumatra (the only place in the Pacific Ring of Fire close enough to Singapore for us to notice when a strong quake hits). Shortly after lunch, the building swayed again.
It wasn't long before news reports surfaced on the internet that a 6.3 Richter Scale quake had struck near Padang in Sumatra levelling hundreds of buildings and killing scores of people.
It also wasn't long before news that other buildings in downtown Singapore were being evacuated because staff didn't feel safe staying put for the rest of the day. And shortly thereafter, an email was sent to all our staff saying that the office will be closed for the day and they should leave if they don't have any urgent work to complete. Whilst they no doubt sympathised with the tragedy in Padang, many of the staff were of course pleased to have the afternoon off.
But I didn't have that luxury. I had to think of the worst case scenario and come up with a contingency plan. The worst case scenario is of course the situation where a quake strong enough to topple the building hits. In that event, we would lose the hundreds of documents and CD-ROMs concerning a very large case due for an arbitral hearing later this year. That's critical and I had to take action immediately to safeguard the documents.
The obvious choice was to move the documents out of the building but given the volume involved that would take too much time and I couldn't risk having some of the documents destroyed if the building collapsed during the moving process. I had no choice but to use the Pupils.
Pupils are recent graduates from law school who are during an internship with the firm before they can get called to the Bar and become qualified lawyers. They are enthusiastic and always willing to work insane hours because they're new and want to be retained by the firm as lawyers after they finish pupillage.
I therefore sent an email to the 2 pupils assigned to our team to inform them that unlike everyone else, they couldn't have the afternoon off. Instead, they were to cover the case documents with a plastic sheet and in the event that the building collapsed, they were to shield the documents with their bodies. Also, they are to make a flag and pole with the words "The [Client] Case Documents Are Here!" and keep it handy. To make sure the documents are easy to locate in the rubble, just before the walls and cealing cave in on them, the pupils are to spike the flag pole into their necks and throw themselves over the documents to protect them.
It was a bold and dangerous plan but for the sake of business continuity it had to be done. The pupils rotate to a different department next week so we'd get another 2 pupils next week anyway.
I was in a small meeting room much of yesterday discussing how to proceed with a client's case. Shortly before noon, we noticed the building swayed slightly. It was the telltale sign that an earthquake had struck in Sumatra (the only place in the Pacific Ring of Fire close enough to Singapore for us to notice when a strong quake hits). Shortly after lunch, the building swayed again.
It wasn't long before news reports surfaced on the internet that a 6.3 Richter Scale quake had struck near Padang in Sumatra levelling hundreds of buildings and killing scores of people.
It also wasn't long before news that other buildings in downtown Singapore were being evacuated because staff didn't feel safe staying put for the rest of the day. And shortly thereafter, an email was sent to all our staff saying that the office will be closed for the day and they should leave if they don't have any urgent work to complete. Whilst they no doubt sympathised with the tragedy in Padang, many of the staff were of course pleased to have the afternoon off.
But I didn't have that luxury. I had to think of the worst case scenario and come up with a contingency plan. The worst case scenario is of course the situation where a quake strong enough to topple the building hits. In that event, we would lose the hundreds of documents and CD-ROMs concerning a very large case due for an arbitral hearing later this year. That's critical and I had to take action immediately to safeguard the documents.
The obvious choice was to move the documents out of the building but given the volume involved that would take too much time and I couldn't risk having some of the documents destroyed if the building collapsed during the moving process. I had no choice but to use the Pupils.
Pupils are recent graduates from law school who are during an internship with the firm before they can get called to the Bar and become qualified lawyers. They are enthusiastic and always willing to work insane hours because they're new and want to be retained by the firm as lawyers after they finish pupillage.
I therefore sent an email to the 2 pupils assigned to our team to inform them that unlike everyone else, they couldn't have the afternoon off. Instead, they were to cover the case documents with a plastic sheet and in the event that the building collapsed, they were to shield the documents with their bodies. Also, they are to make a flag and pole with the words "The [Client] Case Documents Are Here!" and keep it handy. To make sure the documents are easy to locate in the rubble, just before the walls and cealing cave in on them, the pupils are to spike the flag pole into their necks and throw themselves over the documents to protect them.
It was a bold and dangerous plan but for the sake of business continuity it had to be done. The pupils rotate to a different department next week so we'd get another 2 pupils next week anyway.
# posted by Fore! @ 10:42 AM 
Comments:
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That is an extremely efficient use of office resources. I suspect this 'task' you bestowed on those pupils could possibly be one of the most important lesson in their pupilage. Work over your dreary existence; that is what I've been taught in law school too.
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