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Make A Plan | Knowing Your Office Space | To Do > Get It Done

Start with your objective

Safety comes first, so your plan needs to address any major safety hazards. But after that, how soon will you want, or need, to be back in business after an earthquake? Of course, everyone would like to say "immediately," but that's not always possible, or even reasonable. Hospitals, fire stations, and other emergency responders need to be up and running right away, so there are special standards for those facilities. For your business, will a three-day shutdown be acceptable? If you have to close your doors for a week or a month to make repairs, will your business recover? It's a lot to think about, but the objective you shoot for will probably affect how much mitigation makes sense for your plan.

Setting the scope

How do you know what mitigation actions you need to take? Is every unbraced pipe and file cabinet a risk, or are some acceptable? References like FEMA 74 can help you survey your workspace to assess your contents and furnishings, as well as the nonstructural components in your building. If you're in a building that predates the earthquake design codes in your area, you'll probably want a structural evaluation as well. The purpose of all these assessments is to make a systematic review of your existing conditions and use some standard rules (some simple, some not) to identify the ones that could compromise your objective by shutting you down for too long.

Working with your landlord

If you lease your workspace, your assessment might need access to information about other parts of the building or the structure as a whole. And when you do assess those areas, you might discover risky conditions over which you have little or no control. Setting the scope of your mitigation plan thus involves working with your landlord, and possibly with fellow tenants, to share information. The same is true for implementing the mitigation; bracing or anchoring into walls or floor slabs will often require coordination with others.

Working with consultants

FEMA 74 and other tools are available to assist non-experts with do-it-yourself assessment and mitigation of contents and furnishings. Assessment and retrofit design for most nonstructural building components and for all structural components, however, will require the involvement of a design professional. As with any design or construction work, choosing a properly qualified and credentialed consultant is important. If earthquake mitigation is not common in your area, it will also be valuable to discuss your objectives with potential consultants during the selection process. Consultant fees will vary with locale, with experience, and with the complexity or unusualness of your facility. Fees can sometimes be kept low by organizing the work in phases -- assessment, design, cost estimating, construction, etc. This gives you more control by allowing approval at each step, but it requires more involvement on your part, and if all the phases are ultimately performed, it can result in higher total fees.

Prioritizing

Many assessments result in long lists of risky conditions, but they won't all have the same impact on you. Some common-sense benefit-cost analysis can help prioritize what goes into the mitigation plan or how quickly you want to get the work done.

• Think about which damage will take longest or cost most to repair. For example, consider that the earthquake has the same effect on an antique hutch as it does on one made from particleboard. And if two pieces of equipment are likely to tip and break, the one with hard-to-find parts might deserve more attention in your plan.
• You might also find that the cost or inconvenience of mitigating some damage far exceeds the cost of repairing it; as long as safety is not as issue, this can also help control the scope of your plan.
• Finally, it's worth thinking about the relative risk posed by your contents and by your building's structure. If you're in an especially risky building, major efforts to brace only the contents and equipment might not be cost effective; obviously, this determination will require some careful analysis of the structure and its likely damage.

Scheduling

Not everything has to be done at once. Your plan should consider ways to schedule the mitigation work to ensure the most effective use of your time and resources.

• Consider coordinating the mitigation work with regular maintenance and modernization projects, or even with major renovations or tenant improvements. Savings are often realized by adding nominal mitigation work to other projects already planned.
• Some times of the year might be better than others. You might want to avoid extra distractions during your busy season, or you might want to take advantage of seasonal conditions in the construction market.
• Many mitigation techniques, especially for contents and furnishings, involve only minimal noise or dust. Others should be scheduled to minimize inconvenience (or possible hazard) to your staff, customers, fellow tenants.

Other options

Mitigation is often the most effective way to reduce earthquake risk, but it is not the only way. Relocation of certain assets or business functions -- to other sites, other buildings, or sometimes even other areas in the same building -- might be an effective way to reduce risk. Insurance can also be effective. And general business continuity planning can facilitate recovery in ways that do not necessarily involve mitigation.