Jehan Ara, President of P@SHA gives a first hand account…
Photographs can never truly reflect the horror of what happened on September 20 in Islamabad. The explosive device that went off in front of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, with such immense force, impacted severely on the neighboring office block which was washed through by a huge shock wave. This building, the Evacuee Trust Complex, was one of the Software Technology Parks in Islamabad that had always been alive with energy and activity, and beautifully designed offices.
As I negotiated my way carefully through the rubble and destruction, images of many past visits flashed through my mind. It broke my heart to see the place in shambles.
The depression did not last long however. People in hard hats, protective eye gear and gloves were going through the rubble in the offices, sorting material and documents and putting them away in clearly marked boxes. They were all smiling and looking ahead with determination and confidence, rather than letting depression engulf them. It was an amazing and inspiring sight.
Most of the companies within the Evacuee Trust Complex had entered the building on Sunday (as soon as they were allowed to) and removed their computers, servers and all essential equipment. Many of them already had Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans in place, and were up and running from alternate locations by Sunday night – showing a kind of resilience that surprised many and won the admiration of customers and partners alike. No international customers business was impacted. Sadly, some valuable lives were lost and several people were injured.
Whether companies are in the business of IT or not, they almost certainly use IT in their core processes, and conserving those assets are crucial to the well-being of the modern organization. Having said that, it is important to note that organizations are made of people, and the success of any planning, including planning for unforeseeable kinds of interruptions to business, depends on the way people work together.
So it was at ETC, too. Not only were people within organizations helping each other, but people from different organizations came together to help out. Dr. Arshad Ali of the National University of Science & Technology (NUST) is one such example. It took him no time at all to offer space to affected companies at the NUST/SEECS campuses, in order that they could continue their operations with minimal disruption. When I went to personally thank him on behalf of P@SHA, he said that it was our collective responsibility to do what each of us possibly could to ensure that business was not affected.
P@SHA member companies in other locations who had at their disposal additional space, also made it available to the affected companies. The Federal Secretary of IT Mr. Hifzur Rahman took the lead in contacting the Evacuee Trust Chairman so that the tenants could be given access to the building as soon as it was considered safe to do so. The Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) began identifying buildings within Islamabad that could be converted into Software Technology Parks in record time. The Ministry, the PSEB and the Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT & ITES (P@SHA) joined hands to provide support and to make sure that irresponsible rumors were curbed.
While showering accolades on the many who have emerged as heroes and survivors in the ETC disaster, one must not forget those who seem to live in a world all their own, and continue to be stumbling blocks even at times such as this. Bureaucratic attitudes have no place in such difficult times. Humanity needs to come to the fore. Decisions and decision-making, in the immediate aftermath of disruption, are the critical need. Disaster relief and immediate moves toward renovation and reconstruction is essential so that the overall impact is reduced.
Tenders for the renovation work have been published and hopefully work will be commissioned soon so that the exterior of the building and the general public areas are restored to their former glory.
In the meantime, just two weeks after their walls and ceilings came tumbling down, 11 of the 23 IT companies have returned from their temporary locations back into the ETC Technology Park. The good news was that the foundations of the building were solidly built, and were not affected. One of the tenants independently confirmed this through consultation with a professional engineering firm.
Once the building foundation was declared safe and the main electrical cabling was found to be unaffected, several individual companies checked their internal wiring, cleared out the broken material, replaced the shattered windows with thick plastic or wooden sheets, removed the broken false ceilings, either painted the air-conditioning and cable ducts or covered them with foil, brought back their computer equipment and renewed their operations from their old premises.
I met some of the company representatives, and was proud of their resilience, their determination and their commitment to making sure that customers were not affected by what had happened.
One US customer was said to have remarked that on the 9th day after the hurricane in the US, his company was still not fully operational. He wondered how Islamabad companies had lost no time at all in coming online and ensuring that mission critical work was not affected. Another CEO said that because services had not been affected, his customers didn’t even know that his office was totally destroyed.
These companies have been asked to share their disaster recovery and business continuity plans with others in the industry. In the kind of uncertain climate that the world is functioning in at the present time, all of us need to learn how to be ready and able to deal with whatever the future has in store.
