Many people talked about the power outage at the Super Bowl and how embarrassing it was that this happened to the biggest sporting event of the year. However, what many people are missing is that the power was only out for 34 minutes.
What would have been the consequences if they could not get the power back on for 4 hours, or even 24 hours? All of the fans would have gone home, and probably demanded refunds. They would have had to play the game again on another day, which would have created all kinds of logistical challenges. Instead, people were only inconvenienced for 34 minutes.
The company that manages the Superdome was not happy with having redundant power supplies (two lines) to the Superdome. They recently added a third supply for additional insurance. While the failure of the switchgear was a surprise, they were able to move over to the alternate line so the game could resume.
The lesson here is that you need to think about potential disruptions to your business and how you would deal with them. This is called business continuity planning. If a problem is likely to occur, or the impact would be severe, you need a plan for alternatives that would keep your business up and running. For example, if you have multiple office locations, could your other offices continue to function even if power is knocked out in your main office?
As the old adage goes: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” and it could not be more true than in developing a business continuity plan. A little work now could save you a lot of problems when disaster strikes.
