ES government officials can take it upon themselves to meet with a utility’s incident commander and staff. The utility IC can bring these officials in to observe and participate in a utility’s annual exercises. Establishing community partnerships between government and incident commanders before a storm is a critical opportunity to set priorities for re-energizing assets. In these meetings, government officials can add or even elevate the importance of what might be a low-visibility location like a water or sewage treatment plant. Once government officials and utilities establish stronger relationships, the parties should be mindful of promotions and elections because these events may require introducing oneself to new members of the “government-utility team.” By keeping an eye on people who are changing roles,there is an opportunity to cultivate and educate a new contact who will benefit from understanding the government-utility team’s overall storm plan. Building and maintaining these connections before a major outage ultimately means faster restoration of services for constituents. counterparts to make sure the plans hold up. From there, government leaders and their utilities can share their plans with private sector counterparts and run simulations. PUT IN PLACE AN INCIDENT COMMAND SYSTEM Rehearsing for the worst-case scenarios is critical, but so is having a structure for directing resources. Utilities began adopting ICS in the early 2010s after major storms like Hurricanes Irene and Sandy battered the Northeast United States, and they needed to improve their response. With ICS, there is one incident commander for the utility, and the support teams are trained in specific functional areas. Objectives and deadlines are established from the outset to facilitate consistent communications internally, with the public, regulators, and local, state and federal officials, so everyone knows the extent of the issue and when they can expect power to be restored. Even long before a storm strikes, local and county 10 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 11, ISSUE 08
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