Christchurch Earthquake - Updated Notice for Christchurch Staff

Good morning
 
I thought it would be useful to provide you with an update on the current situation in Christchurch office.
 
Our building, up until very recently, has been within the exclusion zone.  We were yesterday able to get access to the building for business owners.  While we have a green sticker from Civil Defence, which means the building is able to be used, we do not have sign off from our engineers that the building is fully operational yet.
 
Our landlord is currently working through this process and he has advised that tenants will not be fully operational until this has been completed.  As you can imagine, engineers are in somewhat short supply at present.  Ideally the engineer who built our building will be the person to review the situation.  This may take a couple of days to occur.  We have made the decision that we will not be opening the office until we have this clearance.
 
The Christchurch team have been working to pull together some hubs of operation.  We will be working from various locations around Christchurch to service clients and get back to work where possible. Staff have started picking up files etc from the office in a coordinated way to assist this process.
 
I would like to record my specific thanks for the work of Tim Moriarty and the rest of the IT team in making this possible.  There is a significant amount of work involved in such a transformation but so far this has gone very smoothly.
 
The damage to the office, considering the shake, has been minimal.  We do have some broken crockery etc.  One of the panels in the toilet area has also been smashed.  There are a couple of superficial cracks and we have only lost one computer monitor.
 
Other than that, there have been papers thrown around but as I have indicated earlier we have been very lucky.  One of the advantages of a new building I guess.
 
We have been making contact with clients and are already being requested to assist them with issues that they have.  We are looking to put as much resource as possible to assist this to occur.
 
We are hopeful that we will get access to our building in the near future and we can start to bring the business back to normal operation.
 
Further to my update yesterday we have also received supportive emails from the firm in Bendigo, Australia where we complete audit transfers and from the Trakstar supplier in the US. 
 
We recognise that with continued aftershocks this remains a very unsettling period for people and I reiterate that individuals safety is our first concern.
 
If you have any questions about any of the matters arising out of the weekends events, please feel free to call me directly on 0274 363 882.
 
Kind wish

Graham
CEO

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Last updated: 7th September 2010 | 9:48 am