With the world seeing the creep of COVID-19, many clients are concerned about the impact on the contracts they have worked hard and invested in to win, now needing to respond in a beneficial way keeping employees and sub-contractors as safe as possible, but still, maintaining the contract. Contingency Planning during the COVID-19 Pandemic is vital for survival.
A downturn in the ability to service a contract will have a massive effect on most businesses, the reality is that many, if not most trades rely on people actually servicing a contract, it cant be completed remotely. You don’t fix an AC Unit or an Electrical Transformer in the office! Apart from the practical aspects, its also the contingency and financial planning to be attended to, supply chain for parts and materials, keeping contracts and clients up and running is an imperative, communication needs to be timely and on target.
Those who support the medical and emergency services need focus to help keep essential health and security services going, how do we respond when everybody is pretty much in the same boat as us.
What you need to consider doing NOW:
- First things first, dust off your Contingency Plan. If you don’t have one then now is a good time to carry out some contingency planning work, do it NOW
- Risk assess the exposure of employees and sub-contractors to the risk, bring in further protective measures to safeguard your workforce, do it NOW
- If you have the capacity in your team set up a contingency team, don’t imagine you are the only person who can plan and manage this, do that NOW
- Review and set aside some financial resources, if you don’t have that facility now, or your current facility is maxed out, get prepared, review it NOW
- Communicate! Most contracts run without the need to have deep conversations with the client on a daily basis. Now is the time to speak to the client, find out what they are doing, keep the dialogue going, what difficulties do they have, what is your role in supporting them, understand the issues and problems and respond appropriately, they’ll appreciate your interventions, do that NOW
- Bring your service team together, or communicate with and to them, listen to them., suggestions on how to manage a contingency come in all shapes and forms, do that NOW
- Check availability of crucial spares, materials and service parts, do you have arrangements with suppliers to help you through with important contracts, do that NOW
- Can clients hold spares and crucial parts for you, ask NOW
- Provide extra advice to employees and sub-contractors on keeping safer, use UK Government and World Health Organisation information, do that NOW
- Ask for extra help to manage your contracts, you’ll have a supply chain involving many different people, consider that NOW
- Do you need to carry out some renegotiating of your contract, or parts of it? Think about this, how can you best help your clients by delivering a more focused service? Think about that NOW
So, the above are some practical aspects around managing the impact on your business and on the servicing of contracts, there will be further blogs here over the next few days, contingency planning during the COVID-19 pandemic is, as we have said vital.
At BIZphit we aim to keep you posted and supported as best how to deal with the unprecedented position we find ourselves in. Find further information here.
We are adding further COVID-19 resources which you can read here
The BIZphit Team…