Jakarta 2007 Flood - Business As Usual - Christina Ng

Thursday, 1 Feb 2007, Jakarta was hit by a flood. Citibank, our client who has branches all over Jakarta was of course much affected. The branch in Kelapa Gading is right in the middle of a flood prone area. Colliers FM dedicated team assigned for Citibank put their best efforts to handle the situation well. Under the direction of Christina Ng and Andradi Maliki, the team closely work together to provide all the support functions to allow business continuity of the branches.

Christine had been able to maintain the coordination, putting her best efforts to arrange for transport of sand bags, coordinating security guards, and certainly, managing the Facility Management team to ensure the business continuity to the maximum extent including backup power, emergency communication line, handling of inquiries coming in to our Helpdesk, and lots and lots of things, after all this is a force majeure.

The only thing was, Christine's home was also flooded. Since early morning 1 Feb 2007 her home in Karet area, in the center of the Jakarta CBD was flooded. She could just excuse herself and focus on her own needs, but she didn't. Although she can not get to the office, she was still willingly receiving calls for help from different branch managers and she maintained to keep all coordinations as needed going. There was no electricity at her home because of the flood and water was getting higher and higher. She was relying on her handphone which battery lasted only up to almost midday. Then, she borrowed her friend's handphone and use the available battery to continue coordinating the team.

By noon, water was about 1.5m high, Christine decided to leave her home to her friend's which was safer, yet, coordination kept going strong. None of the people on the other end of the phone knows the condition she was facing herself, just business as usual.

In the end, we got a big thank you note from Citibank's Corporate Real Estate Services in Jakarta and the Regional Office in Hongkong. Mr. Handoko Hartanto, Citibank CRS Asset Manager in Indonesia specifically wrote, "I would like to thank you for your support to the bank during the Jakarta flooding disaster period. Christine: although her house was flooded, still kept to manage the team".

This is a true story.