BOMA/NY study group launched to share lessons learned

In a move to both heighten and enhance the preparedness levels of New York's office buildings and the city itself, BOMA/NY's preparedness committee has created a Lessons Learned Subcommittee to study incidents which cause, or may cause, disruptions to commercial building operations, such as the recent Times Square incident, or the steam pipe explosion of several summers ago. The studies will be based on facilitated interviews and discussions with building teams that have been involved in incidents and have volunteered to share their experiences. The subcommittee will then prepare executive level summaries, which will be distributed to the commercial high-rise building community. The ultimate goal? To help building teams improve their incident-response capabilities through the sharing of these lessons learned. To gather the information, the 8-member BOMA/NY subcommittee (which includes members of the FDNY, major owners and managers and preparedness/emergency response professionals) will work with the volunteer building team at all levels, from manager to porter, to compile the most comprehensive information possible. Questions will focus on communications, information flow, and decision-making, and seek out both actual facts and professional assessments. They will range from basics, such as "when and how" did the individual being interviewed find out about the incident, to interface with tenants and first responders, actions taken and an evaluation of the most important decisions made. Final format will include an incident synopsis, a section on incident impacts and observations. All studies will be written anonymously with no attribution, and buildings companies and individuals will not be identified. To help the subcommittee identify buildings quickly after an incident, it will need to "pre-identify" properties, and so is asking for properties to be volunteered for the program in advance of any incidents. Building professionals wishing to do so can contact either of the Subcommittee co-chairs: Walter Ulmer at [email protected] or Jessica Handy at [email protected], or BOMA/NY's director of legislative affairs, Sylvester Giustino at [email protected] Once a study is complete, it will be issued within 30 days.