Your Plan Matters –and So Does Your Facility Services Provider
According to a 2024 study by Allstate, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, “every $1 spent on climate resilience and preparedness saves communities $13 in damages, cleanup costs, and economic impact.”
In a year marked by devastating floods in Texas, wildfires across the West, and severe weather in nearly every region, now is the time to strengthen your emergency plan. Comprehensive planning goes beyond natural disasters to include cyberattacks, public health outbreaks, power outages, and more.
As leaders in the field who prioritize preparedness with every customer and continuously refine our strategies and approach, we are taking advantage of National Preparedness Month (September) to share strategies for building resilient teams and facilities that are ready for whatever unpredictable threat is thrown their way.
Key Pillars of Emergency Preparedness
When every second counts, an airtight emergency plan is essential. An outline of exact roles and responsibilities integrated and practiced as part of standard operating procedures is key to a coordinated response, but it’s just the start.
Now is the time to check your plan for these six foundational elements.
1. Risk Assessment
There is no one-size-fits-all in safety planning. Your facility has its own risk profile, and a facility services partner’s job is to know it inside and out.
Effective emergency response plans are put together with experts like us, who evaluate your facility, geography, culture, staffing, and operational demands to pinpoint potential disruptions. Playing out various scenarios, we can identify vulnerabilities and build your emergency response plan based on your specific needs and varying scenarios.
2. Systems Integration
Technology can’t replace human readiness, but it amplifies your team’s ability to respond quickly and effectively.
Integrating building systems—fire alarms, HVAC, emergency lighting, communication platforms—speeds response times. For example, detecting a fire in one zone could automatically trigger building-wide evacuation alerts and notify emergency teams in seconds. Faster decisions and quicker containment lead to better outcomes.
Of course, connected systems make cybersecurity a higher priority. A partner who prioritizes secure systems, data protection, and redundancy can help you reap the benefits of connection without creating vulnerabilities that slow your response or compromise safety.
3. Real-time Visibility
Knowing exactly what is happening when, or even before, it’s happening, can help dampen the impact of disasters. Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) ensure you have real-time visibility into your assets, equipment status, and emergency protocols and can distribute critical information to the right parties.
With the right tech in place, facilities teams can receive immediate alerts and regular status updates and locate and dispatch mobile technicians when needed.
4. Training and Drills
Preparedness is only as strong as the people carrying it out. Your goal isn’t just compliance but building confidence in your teams. Look for a facility services provider who can help you not only build your plan but adjust those best-laid plans to real-life simulations. That way when you do need your plan, it’s effective.
Testing should recur regularly to account for the changing needs of your facility and its occupants.
5. Practice with Partners
Practice makes perfect—when you involve all the right team members. We encourage our engineers to hold monthly tabletop discussions on rotating, targeted topics such as earthquake, fire, or active shooter preparedness. The conversation is an opportunity to review each team member’s role as well as discuss potential, issue-specific complications and how to handle them.
These tabletop discussions should not only include engineers, but also representation from security, janitorial, and management.
6. Post-disaster Cleanup and Recovery
Preventing and containing a disaster are crucial, but, though you will hopefully not need it, you do need to prepare for what comes after a disaster. The right partner can help you minimize disruptions to maintain mission-critical operations. Our goal? Help you recover quickly and come back stronger.
Prepare Your Facility for Emergencies with the Right Partner
Not all vendors are equal in a crisis.
Your partner should never be playing catch up during an emergency. They should be working with you to execute must-dos before you even have to say “go.” That means they need to:
- Know your facilities inside and out
- Provide 24/7 mobile response teams that are fully equipped and cross-trained
- Test and refine your emergency plan before you need it
- Monitor systems to catch small issues before they turn into big ones
Preparedness is not just a checklist—it’s a mindset. Our teams train year-round to be ready for any scenario, and we work closely with our clients to customize emergency protocols that align with their unique risks and infrastructure.
UG2 in Action: Hurricane Response
When hurricanes are in the forecast, there’s no room for guesswork. See how we adapt a tiered response to your unique needs, and continuously refine it based on incident reviews and emerging best practices.
The Time to Prepare is Now
National Preparedness Month is a timely reminder, but real readiness is a year-round responsibility.
Whether you’re responsible for maintaining a mission critical environment or keeping production lines at 100% uptime, our teams work with you to avoid disaster and immediately act to recover when emergencies strike.
Use this month to assess your current emergency protocols or build a more resilient response plan from the ground up. Our team of experts is here to help.