 where we discuss solutions to issues that impact sports. I'm your host, Angela Hazelett. Today's guest is Chief Executive Officer, Nora O'Brien with Connect Consulting Services, a women-owned emergency management and business continuity planning firm. We're here to discuss planning for the worst in sports, survival in a crisis. Welcome, Nora. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being here. You do some really important work. I know Connect Consulting helps organizations who need guidance and emergency planning and business continuity. Emergency planning is when a company makes a plan to follow in the time of a crisis and business continuity is planning how a business will continue to operate when its business operations have been disrupted. So, Nora, please give us an example of why it's important to have a written plan for emergencies and business continuity. For sure. I think what emergency operations plan think about it's your response. What are you going to do to respond to disaster? And it could be your response within your internal organization and how you're going to respond of, do you need additional staff? Do you need to reduce staff? Do you need to, you know, and then externally for your organization in terms of, you know, dealing with sports organizations, they often have some kind of, you know, they're going to be coordinating most likely with emergency operations centers in your communities, et cetera. And so understanding internally what your process is, who's going to, who's going to, what are you going to do? Who's in charge? What steps you're going to take? What are your action steps? So your emergency operations plan will tell you and guide your process for about two weeks after disaster. What your continuity plan does and what you want to do is what we call do it in sunny skies when you're not in the midst of a disaster and, you know, COVID, that's a whole nother. We'll talk about it in a bit. But when you have a business continuity plan, you're identifying your business process, you're identifying alternate business process, alternate supply chain, alternate staffing, alternate work location, alternate, you know, other things that you can need to do in order to keep your business running. You've identified when things have to come back up after disaster, is that a recovery time objective or an RTO that we call, refer to as an RTO? Is it within two hours of disaster or within 24 hours or 48 hours, depending on what it is? And is there an impact for that specific thing? Is there a life safety impact? Is there a, you know, a legal impact or is there a regulatory compliance impact if those things don't come back after disaster and when you have a business continuity plan in place, you ideally want to, once you activate your emergency operations plan and who's in charge and what steps that you're gonna take, you ideally wanna activate your continuity plan almost as immediately after disaster happens because you're gonna have both short-term and long-term recovery options. You're gonna have to identify, let's say your building's damaged and you can't get back in the building for 60, 90 days. Are you gonna move some of your business operations to another location or you're gonna have people work remotely or you're gonna do a hybrid or something like that? You've gotta make some decisions and that's when that continuity process will kick in and why that's important. And what determines when the business continuity plan kicks in, how does someone know when they to kind of move from the emergency management plan and process into the business continuity plan? Great question. So ideally you really wanna have kind of two sets within your organization of folks, one set of incident management team or IMT that we're often referred to or incident command that will be focused just on the response. And then ideally if when a large organization likes sports organizations, whether you know, the Sacramento Kings where we are located here in Sacramento or the Yankees or whatever kind of sports organization you are, you definitely wanna have another set of folks that are focused on another incident management team focused on the business continuity plan. So they can, you're gonna coordinate those folks and that's why you have an incident commander or incident command structure that is gonna coordinate both the response and the recovery, but more importantly, you ideally wanna have two sets because there are different activities but they're both important in order to get you to minimize business interruptions as much as possible and more importantly, not just minimize those business interruptions, but get you to recovery and disaster resilience as quickly as possible. But you have other players that impact your ability to move into that next phase, right? You have other emergency responders, other government officials and so, how do you guide and advise sports organizations, groups that are trying to move forward that maybe aren't emergency professionals themselves but have had to activate a plan? How do you advise them to work with those first responders and government officials to move forward into the business continuity plan? Right, I think the answer is actually long, advanced planning. So that's, we talk about emergency preparedness. You wanna be on the preparedness side. So ideally what most important we'd like you to do is to plan in advance with those partners so you know them well in advance when disaster strikes. So rather than you standing on your business card when you're standing in an emergency operation center for your county or city and high, this is who we are and this is what we can do. Here's our capabilities. Here's what our needs are. We need a generator. We need whatever those things are. You want to, and we do drills and exercises all the time, you wanna do that well in advance of disaster and you have that relationship and maybe a memorandum of understanding of what the sports organization will do in a disaster. We've often seen sports organizations stand up and be there as the site, I know in San Diego during the fires in 2007 when I was working this really big fire, I know the Charter Stadium, Charter Stadium was stood up as emergency, basically shelter and we've seen that over and over again. So doing that in a well in advance of disaster. So you know what that role is and the more you kind of exercise and discuss that well in advance of disaster, again, that minimizes those business interruptions that minimizes the chaos that happens with any kind of disaster. So know your partners in advance, that's a short and sweet answer. Right, so the sports facilities are often partners in an emergency response, especially if they have not been affected by an emergency or disaster. You mentioned about the incident command system. Can you tell me a little bit more about the FEMA's training and the national incident management system and how important that is for sports groups to reflect on that process? That's a great question. So incident command system has actually been around since the 70s and really what the focus is, it's not so much who the positions are, it's having a system to identify roles and responsibilities about things that you need to do to manage a disaster as effectively as possible. So you can take the FEMA courses, but more importantly for your organization, you should have some kind of incident management team or incident command system that you have pre-identified the roles that people are gonna play to manage a disaster. So there's FEMA training you can take, retrain staff, but more importantly, you develop an incident command system that's gonna work that's organic to your organization. Who has those roles and responsibilities? But ideally, so as you have an incident commander you have kind of the core positions are incident commander, you have a public information officer that's gonna share information internally, what's the needs are, and also communicate those needs to, let's say county or city emergency operation center. And then you have a liaison officer to say, we need a generator or we need resources or we have these resources, we wanna coordinate resources, you have a liaison officer to liaison outside your organization. And then you have four key positions. So you have an operations section and their job is those are the folks or the doers and whatever those doers are, it's gonna be different by every disaster. And then you have a planning team and your planning division is gonna be planning what you're gonna do the next six hours, the next six days, the next six weeks and in terms of COVID the next 60 years, it's kinda how it's been, how it's felt. Like just because this event has gone on so long, which is not the norm for most disasters. And then you have a logistics team, those are the getters, the logistics folks are the folks that get the supplies and equipment and feed the crew and all of those logistics folks. And then the other most important people that we don't wanna forget are the finance and administration folks because they're gonna track the cost of disaster, dealing with your insurance company and knowing how you pay for overtime and not just with your insurance company but FEMA reimbursement, potential FEMA reimbursement down the road. So those key pieces all come together to manage your disaster. And it could be internally and what a lot of people don't realize is it's a disaster that can be within your organization. Maybe you're building, maybe you have a water main break and you can't in a major part of your building that only affects your organization. It's not even a community-wide event or it's not even something that's a global pandemic or it affects like you've been impacted by a flood or whatever it may be. So understanding those systems and process and having that identified with the plan well in advance and knowing your partners outside your organization, your partners can be emergency operation centers but it also could be other private sector partners or it can be healthcare or whoever it may be. It could be childcare providers but you plan for that well in advance. So it's interesting because there's lots of notable incidents we could point to where sports have been affected. For example, the Metro Dome in Minneapolis, Minnesota that collapsed due to snow in 2010. This affected the ability to use the facility while those repairs were being done. So what kind of advice and strategy would you recommend when a facility becomes damaged and is not usable and there may be games scheduled and tickets sold and sponsors to keep happy. So what kind of advice do you have in those circumstances? So that's part of your continuity planning. So when you're looking at well in advance of disaster you're looking at what are alternate facilities or alternate locations? Can you, not that you can borrow your, there's not always a stadium next door, that's not always convenient but can you figure out, again, that's your workaround. So that's part of continuity planning is minimizing those business interruptions. And the more you can identify those things in a disaster like can you do it through your community colleges or who else has that kind of stadium capacity or can you have to break it up into smaller, you know, smaller locations but thinking of that in a disaster. And what's invaluable about the business continuity planning is the more you think of, you know, essentially as we call in sunny skies the more you think of well in advance you've already done some of that pre-thinking you've already figured out, oh, well we can do X. Oh yeah, we hadn't even thought about that. And I think COVID's really pushed us over the last few years, supply chain, you know whatever those kinds of challenges had due to COVID and it's a different for every organization but you do things much differently than you ever would have thought before because of COVID but you can now, you know, think of other ways like supply chain is one that really comes to mind because there's been so many disruptions but you might have had staff you had to lay off and then had to bring back a furlough or you might have had, you know, you know downturns and not be able to hold the games or you had to increase your infectious control procedures or whatever those things are, whatever those workarounds or like, you know, the bubble that had to happen for, you know, for NBA games, those kinds of things NBA playoffs. So those workarounds are key. Absolutely, the COVID has just surprised a lot of people with the extent of the disruptions I think most of us expected to get back out there sooner and a lot of plans were not successful and a lot of sports groups had to pivot like you mentioned the NBA, playing their games in a bubble in a state that was more amenable to allowing teams to play and test and practice and perform and then other states had more strict standards in place and that's really complicated with teams that compete nationally in different locations, different venues. So COVID, tell me what lessons have been learned through this pandemic? Yeah, I'd say the huge lessons and I've, you know briefly touched on the disruptions of supply chain. The ripple effect of COVID has been that we for the most part have not like people have to understand we have to give ourselves some grace in that not everyone had things figured out not a lot of organizations, even small businesses, didn't have business continuity plans or they had plans and they were not followed and they were not or they weren't robust enough and they're or they had procedures that were like nine inches thick they had these beautifully color-coded binders but they didn't train their staff to them so they weren't really helpful because they weren't you really want a plan that is actionable and bullet pointed and check marks and those kinds of things that's and what keeps your organization more resilient. So I think the other lessons learned is that we didn't quite understand the kind of breadth and depth of the pandemic and not just specific to infectious control but understanding how what that ripple effect would have against their organizations. The other big lessons learned is that there was also challenges but that could be turned into opportunities. What we've seen oftentimes is we've done a number of projects for clients over the last few years of organizations that said I need a business continuity plan. I've never in organizations have been around 100 years one that was been around for 65 years. They've never had a business continuity plan before and they had every reason to one of them was a utility that you could see the ocean from their front door you could see the ocean from their front door they you could they're on a huge earthquake fault they are in a high wildfire threat and never had a business continuity plan after 65 years until we gave them one. So that's the other thing too. So there's some opportunities. The other thing I think that's I have to say good in some ways is that preparedness is not something that people always see return on investment. Like yeah, yeah it's something I have to do or it's an OSHA compliance or those kinds of things but they often organizations and leadership finally go oh okay I see that if we don't have if we have supply chain disruptions and how that really whether it's getting many bats to sell when you go when the games come back or whatever that thing is that supply chain disruption they finally understand oh there's value in doing this. So I think that could be a good thing. Not we want not that we wanna go through another global pandemic the way we have but the issue is is that there are some upsides and people finding the importance and seeing the importance of return on investment. Well I know one of the challenges that a lot of facilities experienced during COVID with that supply chain disruption was getting access to cleaning supplies and protective equipment, masks, gloves, things like that. So supply chain disruption certainly and supply shortages certainly had an impact in that regard. And I'm curious to thinking about the Olympics that's coming to Los Angeles in 2028 it's pretty standard when the Olympics happened that there's multiple venues spread in several locations. So how do you advise a client that has operations major event operations spread out they're not in a centralized location maybe that's ideal. What do you do? How do you advise them to plan for emergency management purposes? Well I would say I think Los Angeles is I mean that's my hometown so I always speak to that no problem but I think the issue is you have to do a lot of advanced planning because it's not just what if something happens in one area it's also evacuation routes is it's additional healthcare that's needed do you need additional ambulances on stand? Do you need volunteers to make sure people evacuate safely out of the building? There was just a lot of moving parts to that large planning and the more of that you do in advance does it mean that you get it all done? But again I wanna go back to and stress the importance of drills and exercises are crucial. Those drills and exercises are important because you're putting together a scenario you're not saying let's just wait and see if something happens it's the advanced planning of okay what if this is a likely scenario of something that can happen? And when we take scenarios we take something that's most recently happened and maybe another part of the community and how can we apply those lessons learned from what happened there and how can we learn and do better than we did in that previous incident? That's the other thing that I love about the field of emergency management and business continuity is that we're passionate about process improvement because we have to do things that better even if things would necessarily flawlessly and nothing that things don't always do that but how can we do things better? But so that advanced planning is key and there's a lot again a lot of moving parts that the public's not gonna see but a sports organization for sure is gonna not leave things up to chance so they're gonna train their volunteers they're gonna be training their staff and also again those relationships with their local and state officials and federal officials and also international officials so that advanced planning is key so that people are understanding what their roles are and how to respond effectively and efficiently. And it can be tough in places like Arlington, Texas when you have several professional stadiums that may be operating simultaneously in the same area. So that can be problematic as well in planning for some kind of major incident. Let's talk a little bit about the aspect of the Super Bowl that you're helping do some planning for a client the Arizona Hospital Healthcare Association so they're involved in coordinating all the medical response for the Phoenix Super Bowl that's gonna take place in February 2023. So what kind of support are you offering them to be in the position to be best prepared for that event? So I mean, they're doing a lot of their own we are about to do an exercise with them actually a few weeks after the Super Bowl but what the kind of planning that undertakes just on the healthcare side this is not specific to healthcare I can speak to but there's a lot of... When you're planning for a Super Bowl you're planning for anything you're really honest to God it could be because in oftentimes with people things it's not usually just one event there's usually a cascade of events like okay something happened we have to get someone out safely okay people get trampled or whatever those kind of secondary events or evacuation routes are blocked and people have heart attacks while they're waiting. So again, there's a cascade of events kind of thing. So in planning and working with Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association what we'll be doing is ensuring that they have support and they have thought of things that they hadn't considered to be important in planning for that large scale event ensuring do they have good communication with the hospitals but it's not just hospitals you certainly you want hospitals to be the highest acuity patients to go to that hospital setting but it's also coordinating with primary care and skilled nursing or anyone else that any other kind of healthcare provider that can assist and you want let's say something would happen you really don't want everyone running to the hospital you want to coordinate patients where can they take a walking wounded in a primary care clinic and coordinating in advance with those organizations to say hey by the way can you stand up on a Sunday normally you're not open but can you be open just in case something happens and so again you're relieving that pressure on that hospital. So or even treat them on scene right? Or treat them on scene and that's why we're having a good example so I don't know if people know this but when the Boston bomber situation the Boston marathon event which was horrific event and you know what one thing that people don't know is that one of the reasons we didn't have as many you know that casualties or is that the Boston medical community uses the Boston marathon as an exercise as what we call a functional exercise or full-scale exercise every year and it's something that we they do every single year and that they use it to test their communications and test their coordination and response time and so and it happened to be that they put the bomb near the finish line but they put it through the finish line and so they had literally EMS was there within like less than a minute because it was near the end but they already had in addition not just not we're just be able to respond but they already had that great communication they were already working that event and they used it and we highly recommend again I talked about drills and exercises so I am a brokered record on that but those full-scale exercises where you're doing lights and sirens and medical providers and whatever those triage tents or whatever those things that are needed or any kind of operational exercises that you could do really do help to give your muscle memory to their staff so they understand what they need to do what are the roles, what steps we're gonna take what action steps do we have how we can make decisions to save life and property and so those things are really key but Boston Barathon is a good example is like they use that as an exercise so that healthcare community comes together well in advance of that event every year and plans how are we gonna do it what's our scenario this year and just plans and just has that coordinated and I think that made it saved lives for sure and saved lives and those that were injured from that event so again in short the advanced planning is key yeah they were able to actually implement their emergency management plan and test the effectiveness of it interesting they were using an actual event to practice and you're referencing these full scale exercises and training rather taking this binder of information on a page and breathing life into it and testing the pain points but there's also a kind of a less intensive less resource intensive version a tabletop exercise can you speak to can you speak to the tabletop exercises and how they can be a practical exercise as well well the discussion-based exercise the tabletop exercises are really valuable when ideally when you're conducting any kind of full before you even do a full scale exercise you'll do a tabletop exercise or even a series of them and you can focus and you're gonna give your audience a set of questions and we call them injects and we use several master exercise practitioners we have on staff that do these tabletop exercises and we just say okay here's the situation here's the problems what are you gonna do what action steps what are your decisions you're gonna make and what are the ripple effects of those decisions and how they make how they're made so that's something that's really helpful and what ideally we'd like to do a tabletop exercise on a small scale or even like I said a series of them and then do a functional exercise that's a kind of continuation that's much more kind of like that's on the same theme in the same scenario and when you do that again you're giving muscle memory to the staff about what decisions are made and what I like the other thing I like about a tabletop exercise is and you can do it to assess your business continuity plan or emergency operations planner or you can test just communications or dressed evacuation or whatever those things are that you wanna test but it needs to be based on whatever your plan says and the whole point is to not have any findings and say, hey, we did it all perfectly. No, actually you've failed spectacularly as I'd like to say when you feel spectacularly when you have no findings you want to find that you miss things because the whole point is finding plan gaps and it gives you an opportunity to say you're writing after action report and go, okay, we did this great we've got ABC XYZ that was great but on the same time, we miss some things hey, we forgot to do ABC XYZ and let's add it to our plan and you can write that for an actual event as well but that after action report kind of serves as a guides us of how we can improve our plans overall but yeah, so the tabletop, thank you for bringing that up that's just key people like to do the great shakeout earthquake drill or lights and sirens as I call them boys with their toys exercises but so they call them but essentially it's the lights and sirens and it's exciting and all of that but again, it needs to be based on what your plan says and if there's plan gaps you get an opportunity to update those plans based on those findings, so that's key. Absolutely, I can imagine they're regionally you might be practicing different things depending on your geographic location or your business operations will influence maybe what you need to test and practice more frequently so Nora what kind of final advice do you have for sports organizations in regards to emergency management and business continuity? Yeah, the one thing that we really didn't touch on is I wanna say know your risks and what I mean by that is do a hazard vulnerability analysis and it could be internal to your organization or it could be external in that it could be has your HVAC system or your sewer system gone out a number of times and that can disrupt your business and mean that you can't get into the building or whatever those things or they're more likely to go in time of disaster so that's on internal or workplace do you have a workplace violence prevention plan one would seriously hope you do if not we can help you with that too but knowing your risk scar and knowing your risk once you know those risks and then you can write a plan to address those risks so we're based in California we have clients all over the country but I used to say we didn't need a tornado plan in California well sure enough we had four tornadoes in 2021 so can't say that anymore but climate change has been that friend to us but we don't need a hurricane plan I would say we didn't need that and then we had a Pacific hurricane so in California but the point is know what your risks are and have a plan we don't need a volcano plan that I know Hawaii where Think Tech is they absolutely need a they certainly do need a volcano plan so and severe in the middle of the country you definitely need a tornado plan on the coastal you need a hurricane plan so just know having a risk for those and then train your staff I just have to say I can't straight and train your staff in advance so they know what their roles are and even if you know they maybe not have to serve in that role you know on a daily basis but they might have to if no one's available or someone's evacuated can't get into the building to figure out what the next steps are so that's important as well you don't want that plan locked away in the building if something happens to the building right no put it on a flash drive on your that's another tip put on a flash drive on your key chain have it in the cloud put it on your phone you know make it as simple as possible and then you can always add to it later but you know don't make it I always tell people you know you might have a beautiful color-color-coded seven-page you know seven inch binder but it will not help you in a disaster because it's too big it'll serve as a doorstop to get your ass out of the building if you have to evacuate but won't help you in a disaster so make it actionable well thank you Nora for your insight into the planning for the worst in sports survival in a crisis yeah thank you to our viewers for joining us today on the sports playbook our next episode will host Rob Taylor who will discuss the US men's national team and collegiate wheelchair basketball we will see you then alright thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechawaii.com Mahalo