Critical Facilities Summit Q&A with
David Boston

In an emergency, could you find all the documentation you need to protect your critical facility? Do you know where to find all your schematics, as-built drawings, or operations manuals? Or are you wasting critical minutes trying to locate information necessary to respond to an incident?

David Boston, Director of the US Global Critical Environments Team at BGIS, will be speaking at the Summit on the topic of Improving Critical Facility Incident Response: Document Control Rooms. In this session, he will discuss in detail why a document control room is a best practice for critical facilities and how to create one to make sure you're ready for the next incident.

We sat down with David to get a preview of what attendees can expect to hear in his session.

Q: What is the function of a document control room?
A: The primary purpose is as a single library or repository for all documentation critical to daily operation, incident trouble shooting, and project planning. This ensures timely access. With appropriate processes in place, it guarantees accurate and current information is provided.

A secondary benefit is that a document control room often serves as the command center for incident resolution and root cause determination.

Q: What are challenges for organizations that don't have document control rooms?
A: The greatest challenge is the extended time it will take them to find documents that are critical to incident resolution, including restoring power or cooling when it has been significantly interrupted. Those with well managed document control rooms and processes will save minutes to hours in these scenarios, as compared to those who do not.

Q: How do document control rooms contribute to uptime?
A: By having accurate and current documentation, those planning upgrades, system configuration changes, and equipment replacement activities will not easily miss important considerations when they develop their detailed project implementation plan. Those conducting day to day operations that involve isolating a system or restoring a system to normal operation can be sure they are following up to date drawings and procedures.

David Boston's presentation Improving Critical Facility Incident Response: Document Control Rooms will be held Tuesday, September 24th at the Critical Facilities Summit in Dallas. More details here.