When the power goes out in 100's or 10's of thousands of units across multiple states your business continuity plan only works if the onsite team can execute and the corporate team can support. This final part of the series focuses on that execution at the property level—where residents live, systems run, and disruptions get very real very quickly.

In Part 1, we defined business continuity planning and why it matters for multifamily and commercial real estate. In Part 2, we looked at how corporate teams enable continuity with clear priorities, tools, and support structures. In this final part, we drop to the ground level and focus on how onsite teams keep real buildings, residents, and teammates safe and operational when things go sideways.

Like the corporate planning, we'll break this down into a few parts:

• Types of events to consider: What sort of things should you be considering in your plan?
• The physical sites and utilities - What are the things that impact and should be considered about the physical site and locations and what are the building systems, things that make up and are needed to run your site
• Authorities and Powers - Who can make what decisions and under what conditions
• Communications - How communication is handled in the field, to support, owners and media
• Residents - Considerations for the people that call your property home
• Teammates - Thinking about your on-site and regional teams. Help me help you help me as it were. 

Events to consider

Part of planning is thinking through the full range of events that might impact your sites. If you are unsure where to start, you can identify site‑specific threats using local emergency management resources such as county/city emergency operations plans, FEMA hazard maps, or your state disaster agency. Common examples include hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires, blizzards, prolonged heat/cold waves, cyber attacks, active shooters, or supply‑chain disruptions.

Group these into broad categories so they're easier to work with:

• Natural hazards: storms, floods, wildfires, heatwaves, blizzards, earthquakes.
• Infrastructure failures: power loss, water or sewer outage, telecom/internet failures, equipment breakdowns.
• Human‑caused events: cyber incidents, workplace violence/active shooter, civil unrest, major crime, or contractor failures.

For each type of event, run "what if?" chains to stress‑test your sites. For example: What if a severe winter storm hits and power is out for three days, causing pipes to freeze? What if the main transformer fails and the replacement is a week away? How do these scenarios cascade across utilities, building systems, residents, and your team's ability to respond?

The Physical Site and Utilities

Once you know what can happen, you need to understand how it impacts each site's physical reality. When creating your plan there are typical concerns to address and then there will be unique concerns for your specific sites. Is the site a high rise? Are parts of the site in a flood plain? What sort of fire suppression systems do you have? Having the information pertaining to your individual site characteristics and features available to you helps greatly in preparing your plan.

Let's talk utilities.

Loss of power, water, or sewer service directly affects resident safety, habitability, legal obligations (e.g., providing essential services under leases). Focus on risk assessment, interdependencies, mitigation/backups, response procedures, recovery, and testing. Start with a business impact analysis (BIA) for each utility: How long can your site operate without it before resident welfare or operations are critically impacted? Map dependencies (e.g., water pumps, lift stations, and elevators require electricity).

Water Supply (Potable, Fire Protection, and Sanitation): Inventory needs: Drinking, cooking, bathing, fire suppression, irrigation (if applicable), and cooling towers. Consider mitigation and /backups: Trucked in water, on-site storage tanks or cisterns (gravity-fed where possible for pressure during outages); emergency bottled water or distribution plan (minimum 1 gallon per person per day for at least 3 days); ensure booster pumps are on generator backup; install backflow prevention devices.

Post-disruption: Understand protocols for water quality testing before resuming use for potable or even bathing water. 

Electricity: Identify all dependent systems: elevators, water/fire pumps, HVAC (heating or cooling), emergency lighting, security/access control, sump pumps, common-area systems, trash compactors and life-safety equipment. Mitigation/backups: Will you have on-site generators sized for critical loads (life safety + essential systems); automatic transfer switches (ATS); fuel storage with rotation schedule and supplier priority contracts (diesel, natural gas, or propane). Or will you need to bring in temporary power. In either case, aim for at least 72 hours of runtime.

When considering backup power you are best to plan this in advance. Being able to tie in a generator and switch it on requires setup and transfer switches. Things you can wait for during an event.

Good design such as the installation of surge protection and elevating or protecting equipment from local hazards (flooding, snow, wildfire, etc.) can get you back in action quicker.

Natural Gas or Propane (Used for space heating, hot water, cooking appliances, and backup generators): Map every use: space heating, domestic hot water, cooking appliances, and gas-fired generators. Mitigation: Locate and clearly label main shut-off valves; install gas-leak detectors; consider hybrid electric or portable alternatives for key functions. Response: Clear authorization and safe shut-off procedures; priority restoration contracts with your gas utility.

Sewer and lift stations (Critical for habitability: Backups can render units uninhabitable quickly.): Critical for habitability—prolonged outages quickly make units uninhabitable. Mitigation: Backwater valves, check valves, and transfer, ejector, sump pumps on emergency power; contracts for portable toilets, waste pumping trucks, or "honey-wagon" services.

Regional note: Coastal or heavy-rain areas need enhanced flood barriers and stormwater management; freeze-prone regions must protect lines from bursting.

Telecommunications and Internet: Essential for communication to systems (especially with centralized operations) property management (rent collection, work orders, cameras) and resident alerts.

Backups: Cellular hotspots, satellite internet (e.g., Starlink), two-way radios, or redundant phone lines. Ensure emergency notification systems (mass texts, emails, posted flyers, or app alerts) function without primary internet.

Maps, shutoffs, and critical contacts

You should have a clear map listing all major utility features and shut‑off locations for each site. This is useful for onboarding new teammates but becomes absolutely critical in emergencies.

Include:

• Locations of main electrical, water, gas, and sewer shutoffs.
• Locations of lift stations, sump pumps, and key telecom equipment.
• Simple, step‑by‑step shut‑down and restart procedures.

Maintain an up‑to‑date 24/7 emergency call list covering utility providers (electric, water, gas, telecom), fuel suppliers, plumbers, electricians, elevator contractors, pump services, and key corporate and regional contacts. Where possible, back this with on‑call contracts and priority‑service agreements.

If you do nothing else, create a simple "minimum BCP package" for each site:

• A one‑page site snapshot: top three hazards, critical utilities and shutoffs, Tier 1 systems, and key decision‑makers.
• A 24/7 contact list for utilities, critical vendors, and leadership.
• A printed BCP binder with maps, procedures, and communication templates stored in clearly marked locations on‑site.

Tools like elucidin can centralize this information so you have a single, searchable source of truth across your portfolio instead of chasing scattered spreadsheets and binders.

Now let's consider Building Systems

Elevators, chillers, boilers, ventilation, fire suppression, controlled access - there's a lot of systems that make up a site. On some sites each unit contains self contained systems for heating, cooling, hot water. On other sites those systems are shared. Additionally there are conveyance systems, environmental controls and life safety systems that can be centralized, distributed or a combination.

You must evaluate how critical each of these systems are and what their dependencies and interrelations are. How will a triggered or faulty fire alarm impact controlled access or ventilation systems. What happens when they go out?

The first step is to inventory every system and create a Critical Building Systems Matrix for each property. For each system, capture:

• Location and description.
• Manufacturer, serial number, age, and condition.
• Dependencies (power, water, network, fuel).
• Current backups (generator tie‑in, UPS, manual overrides).
• Vendor / 24/7 contact and last test date.

Software like elucidin has this built in, giving you a centralized place to keep this information for all of your sites.

Prioritize systems into tiers:

• Tier 1 (Life Safety) — Return To Operations (RTO) < 1–2 hours (fire suppression, emergency lighting, smoke control).
• Tier 2 (Habitability) — RTO 2–8 hours (elevators, domestic water pumps, basic HVAC).
• Tier 3 (Comfort/Operations) — RTO 1–3 days (full cooling/heating, controlled access).

Map interdependencies and single points of failure. Integrate with your utility plan — Backup generators must be sized for the critical loads identified here.

Elevators

Critical for accessibility, emergency evacuation, and daily resident mobility (especially seniors or disabled residents).

• BCP elements: At least one elevator (preferably fire-service) must run on emergency generator power in most buildings of 4+ stories (per local IBC/NFPA 70). Include trapped-passenger response protocol and stairwell assistance plan.
• Suggestions:

Chillers (Central Cooling) & Boilers (Heating/Hot Water)

Directly affect habitability and can lead to habitability claims or relocation costs in extreme weather.

• BCP elements: Prioritize partial operation on generator(s) for common areas or medically vulnerable residents. Maintain fuel/water treatment to prevent legionella or freezing.
• Suggestions:

Ventilation & HVAC Systems (including ductwork and smoke control)

Essential for indoor air quality, temperature, and life-safety smoke evacuation (stairwell pressurization in high-rises).

• BCP elements: Smoke-control and stairwell-pressurization fans are usually required on emergency power.
• Suggestions:

Fire Suppression Systems (sprinklers, standpipes, fire pumps)

Non-negotiable life-safety systems. Impairment can trigger code violations and mandatory fire-watch staffing.

• BCP elements: Fire pumps almost always require reliable emergency power (NFPA 20).
• Suggestions:

Controlled Access Systems (electronic locks, gates, intercoms, CCTV, key fobs)

Affects security, resident management, and emergency response.

BCP elements: Short-term UPS/battery backup plus generator tie-in for longer outages. Make sure you have batteries available for remote devices

• Suggestions:
• Use two-way radios or cellular backups for staff communication if the system goes down.

Authorities and Powers - In field command that's in sync with objectives for the site and your business.

We talked about how important it is for your corporate team to have a clear understanding of the organization objectives and ops level priorities. This is equally important for your regional and on-site teammates. When communications drop, your in-the-field leadership must still know what their key objectives are and what shifts when emergencies occur.

Your goal here should be to empower your team to act. Your on site BCP should define:

• Ops critical priorities. This is the must have layer below your standard objectives or commander's intent. Sometimes the objective is as simple as "If power goes out we need to have backup power for lift stations, compactors, circulation pumps, etc."

If your teammates know and understand these things they can focus their actions to those even when immediate or top level supervision is available.

• Decision tiers: What decisions can be made at site, regional, and corporate level without further approval. What decisions can't be made at those levels and why? In the example of power being out do your teammates know how much they can spend to get temporary power going?
• Succession paths: If a key leader is unavailable, who steps in next—and how do people know it?
• Emergency spending authority: Like other decisions, what are the clear limits and thresholds for what on-site or regional leaders can commit to without waiting for other approvals.
• Pre-approved vendors and contracts: Again, don't make legal and procurement a bottleneck when time-sensitive action is needed. At the same time, don't create a field of landmines for you and your team in post event payables. Back to the power example, have you negotiated preferred rates for generators? Do you have electricians that can make the connections set up and pricing pre negotiated for emergency rates? Have you negotiated priority service agreements?

Communications

This is very much in line with what we discussed in the corporate planning side. You have to expect the normal communication channels may become restricted or unavailable especially if it's diverted to priority needs and responses at a governmental level.

If your main email or messaging system goes down, what's Plan B? What's Plan C? If your phone system is impacted, what's the backup tree?

Fortunately there are some options. Systems like Starlink have portable units that provide satellite internet. They are inexpensive to buy and maintain on standby. Having those in office and in the field is great. They also run on DC power, meaning you can run off a car battery and simple solar setup. There are also phone options with satellite texting available.

Having runners, or teammates who will act as carriers can also be useful assuming you can still transit in an area. With phones down you can relay information person to person this way.

Create a central place (such as an intranet page, shared drive, or crisis portal) where the latest instructions, updates, and status reports live. This should be your internal hub for teammate notices and communication. As with other systems, plan for redundancy and make it clear: if "X" isn't available, go to "Y," then "Z." Tools like elucidin are well‑suited for this but do require connectivity; plan printed binders as a backup.

For critical systems, keep printed startup and shutdown procedures, wiring diagrams, and contact info in mechanical rooms and offices. With a flashlight and a paper manual, you can still make progress when screens are dark.

How will you communicate to residents and tenants? 

You must also plan outward communication to residents and customers. Public‑facing channels like your website, Facebook, X, or integrated features in your PMS can work well if they are managed deliberately.

• Identify who is responsible for updating each channel and who has backup access.
• Ensure that "keys to the kingdom" are not held by a single person who might be off, unavailable, or personally affected by the event.

In addition, be prepared to meet with residents in person. Residents will see maintenance teams working and want to know what is happening and how long it will last. Train your team to provide calm, consistent, and accurate updates, and give them clear talking points in advance.

Residents

Multifamily and SFR properties must plan for the human element, not just the hardware. A strong continuity plan includes efforts to educate and encourage residents to prepare personally as well. The more residents can self‑serve safely during an event, the less strain on your response.

Key resident considerations:

• Understand who may be more severely impacted or require assistance—for example, elderly, disabled, or medically vulnerable residents. They may be less likely to reach out, even as they are more affected.
• Plan for welfare checks, temporary relocation, cooling or heating centers, water and sanitation distribution, and clear outage updates.
• Ensure you comply with ADA, fair housing requirements, and local habitability laws in your planning and response.

You should also think about what you might need to provide in certain events. For example, I once oversaw a property consisting of 520 units that was in the middle of a multi-million dollar repositioning. It had a major failure on the main water line that was scheduled to be replaced but not for several months. Because we had experienced similar issues in some of the trunk lines we knew the repair might take days not hours. Such an event could negatively impact our new reputation we were working so hard on.

But we had a plan.

Bottled water and a potable water truck was brought in and set up so that residents could get water to cook and bathe with if they wanted. We purchased 100's of 5 gallon buckets to give to each of the residents to take water (or we would deliver) to them so that they could flush their toilets.

On the second day we had a couple of food trucks show up in the morning and evening to give out free meals as a gesture of good faith on our part. And when water came back on at the end of day 2 we went door to door to offer check their pressure, clean their aerators out and express our thanks for their patience. Our response was proactive and we saved a lot of good will with that.

Teammates

Large‑scale events take a toll on teammates as well as on properties. Teammates whose homes are damaged, who lose child care, or who struggle with transportation will find it hard to meet business needs unless you plan for that reality. Workforce continuity is a critical part of business continuity.

First and foremost, encourage and support teammates in creating emergency plans for their families. Resources like Ready.gov and the American Red Cross provide templates, checklists, and guidance for home emergency plans and go‑kits. You may choose to provide templates, paid preparation time, supply discounts, or matching contributions.

Here are ways your business can support teammates during events:

• Vendor programs that extend your negotiated response and pricing to teammates (with clear expectations that they cover their own costs) so they can get priority service for their homes.
• Coordinated temporary child care options, especially when schools are closed.
• Transportation and housing help such as fuel vouchers, internal carpools, ride‑share partnerships, hotel vouchers, or priority access to vacant units if staff homes are impacted.
• Immediate essentials for anyone required to stay on‑site: cots and sleeping areas, meals (pre‑contracted catering or even MREs), bottled water (at least 1 gallon per person per day for 3 days), portable toilets/showers, hygiene kits, and generator‑backed charging for phones and laptops.
• Pre‑loaded corporate purchasing cards (P‑cards) for key staff so authorized teammates can purchase fuel, food, supplies, or contractor services without personal expense or delay, backed by clear guidelines and receipt tracking.

Your team is your ability to execute your plan. Most importantly, you must train and drill regularly: initial role training, quarterly tabletop exercises, and annual full‑scale drills that simulate utility outages and building system failures.

Wrapping it up

Okay - so that was a lot.   But take is step by step. 

When you step back, business continuity at the site level is really about making sure real people, in real buildings, can withstand very real disruption. Plans, matrices, and contracts all matter, but they only come to life when your onsite teams understand the priorities, your residents know what to expect, and your corporate support shows up in tangible ways.

If you treat continuity as a living practice—reviewed, drilled, and refined instead of filed away—you'll find that each event, whether a minor outage or a major regional disaster, becomes an opportunity to strengthen trust, protect your assets, and prove that your organization is built to withstand more than just a sunny day. If you're ready to turn site‑level continuity into a living program rather than a binder on a shelf, tools like elucidin can centralize your utilities, systems, contacts, and drills across the portfolio.

And a free bonus - some additional resources

Here are some more detailed resources to consult as you prepare:

Foundational BCP resources

• Ready.gov – Business Continuity Planning resources and checklists: https://www.ready.gov/business
• American Red Cross – Ready Rating and preparedness resources for organizations: https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies.html
• FEMA – Continuity Resource Toolkit: https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/national-preparedness/continuity

Multifamily and building‑specific tools

• Enterprise Community Partners – "Strategies for Multifamily Building Resilience" and the "Ready to Respond" Business Continuity Toolkit.
• LeadingAge – Multifamily Disaster Preparedness Plan Template, including equipment inventory worksheets and shutdown/reopen checklists.
• FEMA – "Protecting Building Utilities from Flood Damage" (P‑348) and "Flood Mitigation Measures for Multi‑Family Buildings" (P‑2037).

Codes and standards

• NFPA 20 – Standard for the Installation of Stationary Pumps for Fire Protection.
• NFPA 110 – Standard for Emergency and Standby Power Systems.
• Your local fire marshal and building department for jurisdiction‑specific requirements and interpretations.