What are the best practices for FM and Property Management to work together on emergency preparedness?

Assessing your potential risks and liabilities, from top to bottom, both internally and externally. Think “worst case scenarios” and reverse engineer from there. Break it down into what’s needed, who to contact, as well as resources such as specific vendors, phone numbers, etc. The emergency is much easier to handle if you are proactive versus reactive.

Here are some key steps to consider: Identify potential hazards of your property & its surroundings to identify potential hazards ( natural disasters as well as human-made threats) Evaluate the impact and likelihood of each identified hazard Review your current emergency plan, equipment, personnel, communication channels, and backup systems Based on the identified hazards and vulnerabilities, develop or update your emergency response plans Identify any physical vulnerabilities in your property's infrastructure that could exacerbate the impact of an emergency Establish effective communication channels to ensure timely and accurate information sharing during an emergency

In my experience, walking through these scenarios ones a quarter or bi-annually, will keep everything fresh in mind. Walking the paths, locating emergency kits, tools, doing an inventory of resources, ensuring phone numbers and contact information for your vendors is still active and accurate. Keep everyone informed of updates and document changes.

As we know that overlearning leads to automatic act. So with frequent training, education and practice, we can expect the emergency plan to be done automatically

This… train, train again, and when you think everyone has it, train once more. Training isn’t a one and done thing. Make it a part of your employee programming, and in the event of a true emergency, everyone will know what to do, and will be far more calm. Mitigate your damages… most damages occur because staff doesn’t know what to do and take too long to react. Make sure they have the resources and training they need to save you and your asset from major damage.

I feel that it's always a good idea to have an onsite maintenance manager or team members that actually live in the complex that they are working with. One man or woman who is actually available to expedite the situation and not wait until a maintenance person to show up onsite to evaluate the situation. Why not utilize the fact that things happen onsite all the time. Late night Walk around is always a good idea to find out what is going on around the complex and grounds.