Communications Keeps Incidents from Becoming Crises

May 16, 2007

Barbra Murray

Oklahoma City—The events of Sept. 11, 2001, illustrated additional safeguards that developers can incorporate into their structures, but another recent event, the April 16th massacre at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., has highlighted another area that has room for improvement: communications systems.

"Regardless of whether it's a tenant or building owner, the first step is identical: You need to have good contact information," said Donald Hamilton, executive director for Oklahoma City-based Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism and a former U.S. diplomat who served in the Department of State's counterterrorism office and acted as senior advisor for the National Commission on Terrorism. "A best practice would be to get in touch with everyone at once. You want every conceivable means of communication available, and if it's a real emergency, you want to use every single one."

According to Derrick Chen, CEO of Workspeed Management L.L.C., a provider of Web-based and wireless applications for real estate enterprises, "Landlords have a particular problem when it comes to notification. Generally, they don't know who the tenants are; they don't really know who's using the space from day to day." Workspeed's Notifications system, unveiled in February, allows a landlord to communicate emergency situations to the tenant, which can use its more updated collection of employee contact information to notify thousands of employees at once via phone, e-mail or Web messages. Workers can respond immediately, giving emergency workers immediate and actionable data.

The system encompasses a secure repository for contact information for e-mail addresses, fax numbers, home and mobile phone numbers and TTY communications, as well as conference bridging, comprehensive tracking and real-time response reporting. The multi-pronged communication system serves as an alternative to the traditional phone tree, which is not rapid enough to accommodate certain circumstances and is sometimes unavailable. "If there is a citywide emergency, you have to assume that cell phones won't work," Hamilton noted. "In New York and Oklahoma City, in both cases, the Internet remained relatively robust."

Workspeed Notifications also addresses preparedness issues. "The system allows you to plan ahead with the collection of information, and by adopting the system, it forces you to recognize and prepare," Chen said. Users can plan for such responses as building evacuations, shelter-in-place, partial evacuations and in-building relocations. Hamilton stated, "If you haven't tested your plan, you don't have a plan. You have a theory."