A proactive approach to power advocated

Here he explains why hospital estates teams need to be prepared for the worst, and prescribes a solution for facilities managers to cope effectively with power outages and temperature control failures.

When most of us think about business continuity problems we tend to imagine the headliners – floods, fires, earthquakes. More often than not, however, it is the mundane occurrences that have the greatest potential to catch the unwary organisation off-guard – half of your staff come down with ‘flu, your IT system ‘crashes’ with a computer virus, or you experience a power cut. While natural disasters on the scale of the recent earthquake in Japan may be rare, power blackouts pose a very real and increasing threat to business continuity in the UK. Severe weather conditions all too often bring down power cables, causing interruptions to supply, and it is not unheard of for road workers to sever underground cables, cutting off power to surrounding buildings. Speaking at the Powering The Energy Debate in February this year, Alistair Buchanan, chief executive of Ofgem, predicted that Britain faces power cuts over the next decade unless the Government takes action ‘to deliver the total £200 billion of investment needed in pipes and wires’ by 2020, to strengthen our ageing power network in the face of growing demand. Indeed, some industrial users were cut off last winter, as the grid conserved supplies for homes during heavy snow. Every organisation is vulnerable to a serious incident that can prevent it from continuing normal operations. Power blackouts typically disrupt lighting, computer networks, and communications equipment. For hospitals, the impact of such an occurrence is arguably more critical than in any other sector, with the potential to affect patient care, staff comfort, health and safety, and even to put lives at risk. Other aspects of healthcare services that could be compromised include specialist medical equipment and vital temperaturecontrolled facilities, including refrigerated blood and organ supplies, food storage, and mortuaries.

Far-reaching implications