Data & Telco - Considerations at times like this.

We are seeing significant upheaval in many of our markets and across our broader society as part of the COVID-19 pandemic and reaction to it. Our clients are responding well, and there are some themes. We find that critical infrastructure providers are typically prepared for emergencies (albeit typically not pandemics) but that the development of new infrastructure does not typically require emergency reaction plans in place, due to its dynamic nature.

What are the things we are seeing our clients consider now?

• With our critical infrastructure clients, we are seeing a doubling down of efforts to keep everything online. Limiting access to buildings, enacting emergency plans, using A and B teams, reducing staff in facilities, having most staff work from home, and minimising in-facility construction/changes where possible, etc.
• With our telco clients, we are seeing an urgency to accelerate 5G rollouts and capacity upgrades.
• With clients who are developing data centres, we are seeing increased urgency to close deals where that is possible, and to push harder in the development cycle to accelerate where possible.

What are the considerations that may help at a time like this?

First of all, as always, make sure your team is ok, has a plan, and a way forward.

Lockdowns in some countries, closure of borders and social distancing rules are impacting on development, construction sites and supply chains. Here’s what can help you navigate these challenges:

• Breaking down your highest supply chain risk and programme risk, and assessing the time and cash impacts of this risk.
• Where the supply chain is affected, understanding possible outcomes, commercial implications and finding alternative suppliers, or indeed, redesigning elements out of the project if needed.
• Assessing your workforce, their location, working constraints and what impact that this will have on critical activities (e.g. commissioning of new sites) and mitigating strategies.
• Re-forecasting capital timing and sources, and staying very close to your finance colleagues to keep them abreast of changes – they are continually re-forecasting (moving from an annual cycle to a short term cycle).
• Assuring stakeholders that your development can come to market by managing the risks above using ranges, rather than absolute numbers. Giving your customers the ranges, so they can manage their risk – this produces confidence and avoids the risk of a lost sale.
• Using the broad support that data and telco network providers now have from government to roll out needed capacity more rapidly.
• Working through ways to perform critical maintenance by redesigning the activity to reduce the need for outages and close proximity working.
• Staying close to your customers to make sure that they are confident that your facility will be ready, or advising them of changes over time.
• Using the existing 3D models which you or your suppliers have to create virtual reality fly-throughs for your potential customers so sales can continue – or creating 3D VR specific models. Remember at a cost sensitive time like this that you already have much of this information to hand.

Of course, the rest of your business must continue, and we are finding that it is helpful to consider:

• Assessing your capital programme for essential / non-essential projects.
• Resetting your high priority project list to take account of the changing demands on networks.

If activity in your business does indeed slow and you still have secure revenues, then taking the opportunity to kick off mini-projects to document assets, close out any unsigned contracts with customers, ensure that asset records and billing match all can assist with getting ready for the growth surge after the COVID19 pandemic, and may even help with short to medium term cash.

Most importantly, stay safe and protect the health and safety of your family and colleagues.

This article is part of a series of communications from Aurecon as it explores leading through and beyond the COVID-19 disruption.

You may also be interested in this article by Matt Gurr – Data centres are the invisible glue holding our societies together or this article on supply chain risk in heavy industry by Rob Beckman and Elisha Bellchambers - Mitigating Heavy Industry Supply Chain Risk