28th of January, 2011

It’s one thing to promise your clients how good you will be in a crisis. It’s quite another to have to deliver on that promise.

Archive Security has always promised its clients that we will provide them with secure and reliable recovery services in the event of a disaster. Unfortunately, disaster came to Brisbane, and it required us to put all of our experience, processes and Disaster Recovery plans to the ultimate test.

Most daunting was the reality that we had to deliver on our promise not just to one or two clients, but to a significant number of our clients simultaneously. Once the gravity of the situation became apparent, we realised that a variety of major immediate challenges lay ahead. These included maintaining our strict security protocols while delivering to alternate addresses, such as making urgent delivery of assets to Sydney and Melbourne.

Given our commitment to our role in the event of disaster, we provided our clients with the peace of mind that we were ready, willing and able to continue performing our core tasks of delivering and collecting clients’ documents from their premises. Throughout the crisis, we monitored our performances and sought improvements in our policies and procedures. Meanwhile, Archive Security’s systems and staff proved to be highly flexible in finding solutions in response to what for our clients was a unique event. We believe our performance during the flood crisis is a testament both to our ‘can do’ attitude and to our capacity to service our clients’ needs quickly, efficiently and professionally.

We learned a great deal during this period. The flood reinforced for us the primacy of location in Disaster Recovery planning. That our facility was entirely unaffected by this massive flood reassured us that we had chosen its location well. Secondly, the disaster reinforced for us the imperative of maintaining regular services in times of our clients’ greatest need, while responding to the many unique requirements they experienced. During this time, logistics became the key service management issue, as we were required to collect documents from various sites around the Brisbane area and return them to our facility.

In effect, the Queensland floods forced us to conduct multiple simultaneous Urgent Collections. Archive Security's standard response time for an “urgent” service request is 2 hours. We always meet this standard under normal conditions: we also met this standard on every occasion during the time when it was most critical.

Archive Security as a business—particularly Archive Security Queensland—has gained valuable experience from the recent weather events in Brisbane. We are proud of the efforts of our staff throughout the terrible disaster that befell Queenslanders. Most of all, we are proud that when our clients needed us most, we came through for them.

Just as we promised we would.