If Chris Savage needed a reason to be superstitious about Friday the 13th, he got one on March 13. That night, a fire broke out at the Robinson Brothers Ford Lincoln dealership, of which he is the general manager.
Because the fire was confined to an electrical panel that contained outdated wiring, the flames caused only limited damage, but the smoke and soot that it produced delivered a big blow.
“The damage shut down our Ford building, which is the hub of our operations because all our data and phone systems are there,” Savage tells Business Report in a feature from the current issue. “That building basically controls our other six buildings.”
With no electrical power, the company also had no Internet service and no ability to access its extensive customer and vendor data.
“Our data management system, our computers, our communications with Ford—all of it is Web-based, so without the Internet, we’re dead,” he says.
Plenty of managers have been in Savage’s shoes. The shock that slaps a company in the face in such situations often is followed by a sense of helplessness about what to do next.
In the case of the auto dealership, Savage’s next steps were to make several key phone calls. Within an hour of learning of the fire, he had contacted the dealership’s information technology vendor, Transformyx, and a general contractor, TBT Industries, that had previously done an exterior overhaul for Robinson Brothers. A TBT representative arrived at the site quickly and brought in electrical contractor Armco Electric Inc. as well.
“They saw that our first priority clearly was to get our data and server back up and running because it powered our other buildings,” Savage says.
Amazingly, he says, the emergency support group that had come together for Robinson Brothers built a temporary electrical panel and got both the Internet and phone system working again within 12 hours after the fire.
Savage also immediately contacted his employer’s insurance adviser, HUB International Gulf South, and got the insurance claims process under way.
Savage credits the quick response by the company’s vendors and contractors with keeping Robinson Brothers’ down time to a minimum. While it took more than two months to complete permanent repairs to the damaged building, which had to be gutted, the company was able to continue doing business almost without interruption during the repair process.
In fact, says Savage, auto sales during the month of May topped the company’s previous record for that month, even though the staff could not move back into the main building until early June.
“Everybody understood what had to be done, and we did it,” he says.
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