Role of facilities manager in pre-disaster risk reduction phase: a literature synthesis

Abstract

The built environment in general plays a key role in supporting business activities and delivering economic prosperity for the corporation and society. The continued operations of an organisation depend on management awareness and preparation of potential disasters, their ability to develop a plan to minimise disruptions of critical functions and the capability to recover operations expediently and successfully. However, disaster recovery has often been overlooked and sometimes even ignored. Building owners could have been excused for thinking 'it won't happen here'. However, the series of recent tragic events such as terrorists‟ attacks, tsunami, floods, earthquakes etc have placed a greater emphasis on long-term disaster recovery planning, focusing on creating more resilient communities and structures through capacity building, better disaster preparedness and improvements in coordination to protect their staff, customers and properties, and business. As a key person in an organisation and in-charge of all property management functions, Facilities Managers are often charged with the responsibility of recovering the supporting services that will enable the business to start functioning again. This paper therefore aims to investigate the role of Facilities Manager in disaster recovery planning – pre disaster risk reduction phase. This paper presents literature synthesis on what role Facilities Manager can play in the mitigation/prevention and preparedness stages of pre-disaster risk reduction phase. The research findings highlighted that Facilities Managers can play a vital role in providing the overall coordination of facility issues for stages including mitigation and preparedness in pre-disaster risk reduction phase to prepare for the adverse effects of disasters on their buildings and end product should be that those unpredictable disasters do not escalate to become the worst disasters.