Practice drills, supported by an emergency handbook, prepared IT staff to respond when two campuses halted normal operations, says Pepperdine's Gerard Flynn.
“Data accessibility was key to everything during the response to the fire,” Flynn says. “We needed to know who was located at the Calabasas and Malibu campuses and make sure that they got the appropriate messages. Secondly, we needed to know which faculty needed access to teach remotely and provide them with licensing and training on web conferencing.”
With two campuses closed, he says, “we needed to direct IT staff to report to one of our three other campuses and help in any number of ways: troubleshooting network connectivity, staffing 24-hour telephone lines and developing and educating faculty about an academic continuity plan,” Flynn says.
Another challenge: Many instructors were unfamiliar with online teaching platforms. They had to learn quickly and help students participate, all without access to equipment and materials that had been left behind on campus. Meanwhile, some staff members and students had been evacuated from their homes or lost them in the fire.
Drills and Dry Runs Prepare IT Teams to Handle Crises Calmly
To get solutions in place, the IT team was under pressure to access systems and fix the damage remotely. It also had to license and configure a web conferencing tool that had only been pilot tested.
In a remarkable 48 hours, staff developed a website and provided training that allowed courses to continue. Pepperdine’s emergency preparedness planning proved effective under duress.
One big reason was that the university had developed an emergency handbook with procedures and contact information for staff, vendors and other stakeholders. It had also conducted drills to ensure staffers knew how to react in a crisis. “
Maintaining the emergency handbook and conducting drills were key to our response, because every staff member knew what to do and how to fill in for those severely impacted by the fire,” Flynn says.
On the infrastructure side, network rerouting was set up, and Pepperdine maintained data redundancy at a recovery site outside of Southern California.