Team United has always been ready to help. Through more than 20 years of natural disasters, the 9/11 attacks and now COVID-19, we’ve taken great care of our customers, communities and each other. Three years ago, we began to channel that outpouring of help through a new emergency management structure that can adapt to any circumstances.

The first step was to establish an Emergency Response Team of employee volunteers, who now number more than a thousand. The ERT became the springboard for a far-reaching emergency management structure that combines national capacity, mobility and expertise into a coordinated response.

United Rentals has become even more agile in disaster response by bringing consistency to every stage of the process.

Our structure addresses all four stages of the emergency lifecycle: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Mitigation and preparedness are a constant focus for our emergency management leaders. We can shave critical hours off hurricane response times by working through mock scenarios in advance. For instance, we ask ourselves:

If a Category 5 hurricane made landfall on the Virginia coast, how many branches would be impacted? What would be the best sequence of response? What functional experts would be needed? Where should the command post be located?

Our goal is to think through the solutions before the challenges arise.

The response for every major event starts at the highest level with our executive steering committee. The committee moves quickly to assess the situation and define the logistics of the response. From there, the plan flows to the Emergency Operations Center, or EOC.

Each disaster has its own EOC — a command post that sets up as close as safely possible to the disaster site. This is where the response and communications are coordinated. United Rentals can stand up an EOC in a matter of hours, bringing together region and district leaders and a cross-functional team of experts from human resources, legal, real estate, fleet management, technology and finance. The EOC sets the objectives and executes them.

Once the dust settles from a disaster, we use the experience to make our next response that much better. We might apply learnings from a hurricane in Florida to a wildfire in Canada — or to a coronavirus no one saw coming. The structure we designed is adaptable to every type of crisis.

When COVID-19 arrived, it was unlike any emergency we had dealt with before. And true to our culture, Team United was eager to help. Our emergency management structure was literally a lifesaver — in very short order, the safety communications began flowing from the steering committee, to the EOC, to our employees on the front lines. As the world learned more about the virus and health experts weighed in, we continued to adapt our protocols in near-real-time, rolling them out to our branches.

The pandemic has been truly unprecedented for everyone, but at United Rentals, one aspect seems very familiar. We’re navigating it successfully with the same disciplined, “people-first” approach we deploy in every disaster. It was gratifying to see how our emergency management structure clicked into place to protect our employees and their families — and from there, our customers and communities.