Applied Disaster Resilience: Private-Public Convergence

Last week was a whirlwind of activity from New York City to Washington, DC.

The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP), the Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII), the All Hazards Consortium (AHC), and Domestic Preparedness Journal/DomPrep 40 each held events exploring the issues of Private-Public Sector Disaster Resilience.

I could only attend 2 of the 3, but was delighted by the energy that these initiatives have generated. All three events were interrelated and demonstrate the way forward. If a true "Whole of Community" capability is to emerge, it will require sustained leadership by the private sector.

The New York Stock Exchange hosted the TISP-DRII event on Monday, March 21st that explored the status of the PS-Prep Program. DHS officials attended and many senior Business Continuity leaders from major companies shared their thoughts about the standards based program.

Wells Fargo, Disney, and Pfizer were well known names in the audience.

The design and construction industry was also well represented. Besides Al Romano, there was Bob Prieto from Fluor, Cathy Carr Clinch from URS, John Friedlander from Cushman and Wakefield, three representatives from Parsons Brinckerhoff,  Barbara Nadel; an architect who has written a book on Security Engineering, and Mike Chipley from PMC.

I saw this as the beginning of a long private-public conversation. TISP and DRII will collaborate on a white paper to DHS as the outcome of this discussion.

Al Berman (DRII), Al Romano (Michael Baker, Jr.), and William Anderson (TISP) deserve great credit for this symposium that emerged from the DomPrep 40 event at the National Press Club last November 2010.

The AHC meeting was held at the Newark Airport Renaissance Hotel to discuss Regional projects both in the public and private sector realm. I was very impressed by the quality of the projects and especially the work that New Jersey has done with the food industry.

Joe Picciano from New Jersey; current AHC President, has painted a clear vision of the AHC's focus on integrated planning by the private and public sectors. I had the privilege of moderating the second day's discussions on March 22nd.

The panelists from Morgan Stanley (Gregory Ferris) , Wakefern Foods (Michael Ambrosio), and Sprint/Nextel (Richard Zinno) were outstanding. They committed almost the entire day to the project panels and their involvement made a major contribution to the discussions.

The goal will be to hold several follow on workshops that are industry specific with owner/operators in the Region. The Private Sector panelists were Continuity leaders from their companies. Richard Zinno is a DRII certified Continuity Professional.

Ira Tannenbaum from NYC Office of Emergency Management (OEM) discussed a very interesting preview to his initiative to weave private interests into the Urban Area Preparedness in New York City. It was fascinating how highly evolved the projects are from NY/NJ and Philadelphia. Scott Di Giralomo (Morris County, NJ) and Noreen Cardinali (NJ DOT OEM), and Joe Liciardello (SE PA Task Force) and Captain Walter Smith (Philadelphia PD) presented excellent projects on their private sector initiatives.

I missed the DomPrep meeting in Washington, DC on March 21st. It was a recap of the survey led by DOMPrep 40 member; Bob Stephan (Dutko Worldwide), on the work being done to plan for and protect Special Events which are generally large scale gatherings. I would have loved to hear this and will look for the survey results.

Al Romano, Joe Picciano, and I are also members of the DomPrep 40 and believe the effort is a solid contribution to the private-public convergence process. I am optimistic that this type of continued dialogue will aid the convergence of language that will lead to true Private-Public convergence.

Thanks for checking in,

Dennis
http://www.drs-international.com/

Craig Fugate Paints a Compelling Vision at HSDECA

This was a busy week.

Let me start by referring you to my website to see the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) 2010 Annual Report.
http://www.drs-international.com/
MIPT is establishing itself as a solid niche training program for Line Officers in the Intelligence Collection process.
Police Chiefs love it because it provides training that can be used for All Crimes and is part of their routine annual training.

I also attended the 5th annual Homeland Defense and Security Education Summit at University of Maryland University College (UMUC) in College park, MD. I'm on the faculty at Towson University and was delighted to hear the progress that is being made in Education programs.

The program is sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School, Homeland Security and Defense Education Consortium Association (HSDECA) https://www.hsdeca.org/, UMUC, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Craig Fugate was a keynote speaker and he delivered a compelling vision for his Whole of Community and Maximum of Maximums Strategy for Preparedness. His key themes were that we must view the public as a resource rather than a liability, that we must build teams with the private sector, and that we have to plan for hard events not easy.

His vision demands a major culture shift in the private and public sectors and requires long term emphasis on educating future leaders and practitioners in the Disaster Preparedness Community.

I've heard Craig deliver these themes many times before and hope we are all successful in building the capabilities to make it a reality.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader
http://www.drs-international.com/

Planning, Design and Construction Professionals Focus on Resilience

The key to long term Resilience is the linkage of the Public Safety and Design and Construction communities.

I was delighted to attend an event this week organized by Engineering News Record in partnership with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and National Building Museum.
The meeting was held in Washington, DC. and sponsored by several design and contruction organizations. See the link for the other sponsors.

http://construction.com/events/2011/mitigatingdisaster/

The title of the meeting was of particular interest:

Mitigating Disaster through Design and Construction

The panels included very practical presentations by a multi-disciplinary group of private and public sector professionals including significant representation from the Insurance Industry.

I was particularly impressed with the presentations by Julie Rochman from the Institute for Business and Home Safety and Robert Fenza from Liberty Property Trust.

The Institute is a recently constructed and an innovative test facility that performs tests on built structures.

Robert Fenza spoke about reducing costs for insurance by achieving more effective facilities.

The meeting was an encouraging step forward by the Design and Construction industry to focus on Resilience. I hope this is just the beginning.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader

http://www.drs-international.com/

National Security Professional Development - The Power of People

Post Katrina, Executive Order 13434, National Security Professional Development of May 17, 2007 envisioned a major national effort to build the human resources required to meet the challenges of our new national security environment.

The Project on National Security Reform completed a study that was submitted by the President to Congress in December 2010. http://pnsr.org/web/page/682/sectionid/579/pagelevel/2/interior.asp

The Report called the "Power of People" examined the progress to date and made recommendations for moving forward.

Over a year ago; in October 2009, I wrote an article in DomesticPreparedness.com about creating a "Community of Professionals" for Homeland Security.

We are now approaching one decade after 9/11. Over the next 20 years we will develop the next cohort of professionals that will lead national security after 2030.

We have made good progress, but we need to grow a more integrated senior leadership team in the next 2 decades.

The PNSR report suggests we have to set a course and get moving.

The Power of People may be our single biggest leverage for the future.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader

http://www.drs-international.com/

The Road Ahead for Resilience - Personal and Private Initiative

I attended The Infrastructure Security Partnership's (TISP) workshop last Friday at the Army-Navy Club in Washington, DC. It featured short briefings by many of the Federal agencies on their Resilience initiatives.

It was a very encouraging session, in particular because of the language from several officials.

The most important message I heard was that practitioners should use the definition of Resilience in the National Security Strategy (NSS) and Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) and move past the definition to action.

I find that very liberating.

For what it is worth; the Resilience definition in the NSS - the ability to adapt to changing conditions and prepare for, withstand, and rapidly recover from disruption. The QHSR definition is very similar.

This should be music to the ears of everyone who has been wanting to see Resilience move ahead. It suggests that the Federal government will be supportive, but is looking to private and personal initiative to lead the Resilience effort.

Rather than spending wasted time and effort parsing a definition organizations and business should be laying out action plans that create resilience.

There were many interesting initiatives previewed by the federal agencies including health and Science and Technology (S&T) perspectives.

I was particularly impressed by the FEMA concepts of Maximum of Maximums and Whole of Community. These concepts have the potential to involve the private sector in a very productive way.

Rather than waiting for bureaucratic guidance we are challenged to move ahead.

The ball is in our court!

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader
http://www.drs-international.com/

Putting the Horse before the Cart; Building on Private Sector Resilience

Last week, I started discussing the notion of practical approaches to building on private sector capabilities.

An appropriate analogy for the culture change the government must embrace is to imagine the government as a cart and the private sector as a horse. The private sector is the power behind resilience and the government has to learn how to hook the cart to the horse.

One private sector element of Resilience is Supply Chain Operation Reference (SCOR). SCOR is a tool for measuring and improving supply chains.

I will be exploring and discussing this technique over the next few weeks.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis R. Schrader

www.drs-international.com

Private Sector Language - Owner/Operators

There is a growing recognition that government needs the active involvement of private sector owner/operators to create a resilient national infrastructure and disaster resilient communities.


Unfortunately, government struggles to effectively make these relationships happen in a way that brings the private sector to bear in a response and recovery framework.



The private sector is however, more capable and prepared than the public sector realizes. The key is to try to understand the private sector from their perspective and language.


The private sector manages its business everyday using Risk management, Continuity, and Supply Chain as the language of preparedness.


Rather than trying to pull the private sector into the public sector in a haphazard manner, maybe the public sector should be engaging the private sector in its environment and by adopting its language.

There are some emerging initiatives that are attempting to bridge this gap:

The mid-Atlantic All Hazards Consortium led by Tom Moran and Joe Picciano is a state-centric group that has private sector sponsorship. The Consortium will begin focusing its efforts on bringing in owner-operators to develop projects that build regional resilience through Intergrated Regional Planning.

The Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP) is collaborating with Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII) to explore the progress on the federal government's PS-Prep program. DRII is a natural partner since they have 8000 continuity professionals worldwide that have been certified by their continuity training and exams.

The TISP team is also developing an owner/operator resilience handbook.

These efforts are the beginning a renewed focus on creating a Homeland Security enterprise that builds on private sector capability that already exists.

Thanks for checking in.

Dennis
www.drs-international.com