Creating Continuity

Disaster Preparation Checklist

By Joel Nelson on Oct 14, 2016 in News

Assessing risk and planning ahead can help property managers and owners safeguard their assets, employees and tenants in the event of a disaster. Yardi^® clients have an invaluable resource for creating and executing business continuity strategies—the procurement solution known as Yardi Marketplace™.

Yardi Marketplace is a source for more than 1 million discounted MRO products and building supplies, including items for disaster preparation and recovery.  Yardi Marketplace is part of Yardi Procure to Pay™, a centralized procurement, invoice processing and vendor management platform.

“Yardi recognizes the importance our clients place on having appropriate solutions in place.  Adequate disaster preparation includes having access to sufficient types and quantities of supplies before, during and after an event. We can help source those items quickly at competitive pricing,” said Tom Jennings, senior operations manager for Yardi Marketplace.

The Yardi Marketplace team helps tailor emergency supplies and services to a client’s disaster and emergency planning program. After identifying potential threats at the local, regional and portfolio levels and establishing response plans, clients can stock the appropriate equipment and supplies from an online catalog.  A pre-approved personal shopping list makes purchasing the items fast and easy.

Along with protecting assets and minimizing liability, adequate emergency planning is also critically important to attracting and retaining tenants.  Property managers can complement Yardi Marketplace’s resources with a handbook produced by BOMA International.  “Emergency Preparedness Guidebook: The Property Professional’s Resource for Developing Emergency Plans for Natural and Human-Based Threats” highlights the importance of emergency preparedness throughout the leasing process.  The guide, which covers emergency, evacuation and recovery plans, may be purchased at http://store.boma.org/products/emergency-preparedness-guidebook.  A list of “50 Items Every Emergency Tool Kit Should Have” is available here.

The guide includes a checklist for disaster management that includes:

• Procedures for reporting an emergency
• Instructions for tenants to follow when an alarm sounds
• Illustrations of floor layout, emphasizing the location of emergency exits, manual pull fire stations, fire extinguishers and emergency phone numbers
• Responsibility of tenants to select a fire marshal for their floor and the responsibilities of the designated fire marshal
• Conducting fire/evacuation drills
• Emergency prevention
• Handling bomb threats, biological attacks or other threats
• Dealing with natural disasters such as floods, power outages, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes
• Ways to communicate with tenants that take into account likely disruption of traditional means of communication

For more information about resources available from Yardi Marketplace, click here.