An interview excerpt with Jeff Chester, Vice President

Interviewer: How do I put together a disaster plan in advance?

Jeff Chester: Well that’s a great question. One of the things that I’ve done is realize that I’ve got my areas of expertise. And I don’t have all the answers, but I have put together relationships with people that can help from fire and life safety, to security issues. Obviously our area of expertise is repairing and restoring the physical damage to any property. We’ll put together what’s called a readiness plan for each of our customer’s properties, whether they have one property or they have a thousand properties. And one of the neat things about that is it doesn’t cost our client anything. We feel it’s worth that extra effort for them and for us to know about where the utility shutoffs for that particular property are. If they needed power, they had an extended power outrage, what type of generator? Some people think, “I’ll just run a generator.” Well each generator has to be paired up specifically for that community for: how many amps they have; how many phases they have; how many volts; and what type of switchgear. Sometimes not having that knowledge in advance would delay getting them power for days. So what we’ll do in advance is we’ll find out all of that information and put it in a database, so that when they call ACT we’re sending the right response to them. Whether it be equipment, manpower, electricity, whatever it may be.