Case study: Getting back to business after the Mumbai oods

On 26 July 2005 records were created as just under one metre of rain fell in the space of 24 hours in the state of Maharashtra, including on the nancial capital of India, Mumbai.
The city quite literally ground to a halt, and the rain simply continued. Hundreds of thousands of people were stuck in ofce buildings, homes and train stations around the city. The ood disrupted businesses, trafc and transportation. More than 1000 people in and around Mumbai lost their lives while thousands were left homeless and stranded with no food and supplies. The Mumbai authorities issued several ood alerts, appealing with residents to stay home and ofce workers to remain in their ofces if their homes were affected by the ood.

Pictures above: Mumbai Floods

The commercial affect of the ood was unprecedented. It is unusual that a commercial capital is affected so extensively by a natural disaster but in this case many parts of Mumbai were inoperable for days. For those responsible for facility management in commercial buildings the challenges were legion. Corporates with any signicant facilities in Mumbai realised that now was the time to put their facility management teams to the test. Jones Lang LaSalles Corporate Property Services (CPS) - Facilities Management staff had numerous clients such as DHL, Accenture, CSPL, P&G, Cisco and many others whose facilities were adversely affected by the oods. For the efforts of all the individuals involved they received accolades from these clients for the commitment showcased during the crisis caused by the heavy, non-stop rainfalls. For example, senior management congratulated staff on the efcient transport arrangements for the Microsoft Campus. Swift action by CPS staff resulted in prompt restoration of facility support services and minimal downtime for their clients Indian head ofce activities. Following are some examples of the work which the facility managers and other support staff were involved with.

43

Case study 1 Mumbai is the head ofce for many companies within India meaning it is the centre of activities and a communication hub for the rest of the country. When communications and access to data are interrupted in Mumbai it effectively disables the whole countrys operations. In this case, efforts put in by both client and CPS staff kept the clients Mumbai head ofce operational despite being isolated from electricity, telephones and transport services. According to a JLL spokesperson The dedication and commitment of the team comprising of Yogesh Rane, Kishor Patil and Pallavi Rajagopalan and their supporting site vendors are indeed commendable. Some of them worked for more than 65 hours without rest from 3:00pm on 26 July until 9:00am on 29 July. They were drenched and pressured by the atrocious conditions and sustained initially on tea and biscuits. Some of the survival activities undertaken by the team included relocating pumps to key pump areas, pumping water from a totally submerged basement, spreading tarpaulins across overowing terraces, removing accumulated water, emptying storage rooms, diverting diesel generated power to support energy demand, protecting the main switchboard and utility areas and fetching additional diesel fuel from a distant supplier. Case Study 2: DHL Some facilities were hit harder than others. Because the extent of the oods was completely unforseen, decisions such as the location of key data storage in the basement provided real problems for FM staff during the crisis. The DHL country ofce is situated at Bandra on the outskirts of Mumbai. This ofce monitors movement of shipments in and out of the country and has the main server for all DHL India operations. The shutdown of this ofce severely affects their entire India operation. In this instance, DHLs 180 staff, as well as 25 facility support staff from CPS, were stranded in the DHL ofce building overnight. Both basements, which housed the Transformer, Power Panels and over 40 cars, were submerged under water for 72 hours.

The challenge for the CPS team was to efciently manage the monsoon ood crisis and initially restore Temporary Power through diesel generator (DG) sets. They then had to advise the client on a permanent solution for their Power Distribution System. Heavy rains and water logging resulted in a power cut from Reliance to the entire Bandra area. Fortunately, DHL was able to remain 100 percent operational on DG sets that were closely monitored by an onsite M&E team under the guidance of CPS ofcer, Uday, who was supervised by Surender. It was not just power and data loss that were concerns. People in the building were without essential services and had no where to go. Surender saw to immediate needs by having the forsight to stock food items and drinking water from local stores for over 200 employees to sufce for two days. The FM team also arranged for screening of movies in the open cafeteria to prevent panic among employees. By midnight the water level was rising in the basement, which forced the shutdown of the DG Power Panel in the basement. The UPS back-up was only set to last for two hours, but efcient energy management under the guidance of Uday meant the they were able to stretch this for 12 hours, thereby giving ample time for DHL to transfer all the data from their main server to servers in Delhi and Bangalore. All call center voice calls were transferred to Chennai. The following morning everyone was still marooned in the ofce. The team managed to get hold of a stove and kerosene to warm milk and they provided biscuits to all employees for breakfast. DHL Mumbai operations were totally shutdown. For senior management of DHL this was a large problem and they asked for 100 percent restored operations by Saturday. In order to demonstrate their commitment to this goal they had booked an advertisement in national newspapers with the slogan DHL back in Business for that same Saturday

44

The major roadblock to this becoming a reality was the ooded basement and extremely damaged power panel. The only source of power was the DG set. Led by Uday and Surender, the M&E team undertook the uphill task of disconnecting the DG set from the existing system and procuring 490 mtrs of 300 sq.mm power cable. They were able to hire casual labour to hoist cable (4 lengths of 110 mtrs each) directly on to the seventh and eighth oor with the help of scaffolding and connected them to the oor panels. The team met the DHL deadline well ahead of time and DHL was fully operational by 23:00 hrs on Friday. As a back up the team had also hired a tempo vechical on 24x7 basis to stock 1400 liters of diesel. This feat was acknowledged by senior management of DHL through a congratulatory letter. Following these events, the entire DHL FM team has been working 12-15 hours a day to date. The team management and disaster management skills were vital. One lesson learnt was that you need not be an engineer or expert in handling technical operations to be instrumental in the supervision and execution of facility disaster recovery plans.

Logistical challenge after fatality Uday Nanduri played a signicant role when two of the clients FTE employee (full time equivalent) met with a major accident. One of the employees died in the accident. Uday reached the accident site at 11:15 PM organising and coordinating the entire crisis management for the next 36 hours including hospital requirements, autopsy report, police, legal and statutory formalities for the dead body to be own to Chennai next day. He also implemented a transport vendor chargeback system for the General Transport Buses. The HR-Head and client senior management has commended Udays role during the crisis.

The commercial affect of the ood was unprecedented. It is unusual that a commercial capital is affected so extensively by a natural disaster but in this case many parts of Mumbai were inoperable for days.

Senior management asked for 100 percent restored operations by Saturday. In order to demonstrate their commitment to this goal they had booked an advertisement in national newspapers with the slogan DHL back in Business for that same Saturday.

45