How we keep our people safe and our customers supported in storm season

Storm response: what we do in bad weather to maintain data, network and communications services

Poor weather is a fact of life. However, the 2023/24 storm season (which runs from September to August) was particularly bad; it had the most named storms since the Met Office started the practice in 2015.¹

Storms are named when they have the potential to cause medium or high impact, or what we might consider an amber or red weather warning.

That impact can mean disruption and damage, with the cost to businesses often significant. Just three storms (Babet, Ciaran and Debi) are estimated to have caused damage worth £155 million to businesses.²

This sort of extreme weather presents a unique challenge for how we manage and operate critical and often exposed infrastructure.

Storms can cause everything from power outages and building damage to issues with feeder cables and structures and make travel challenging. Trees and other road obstacles, including snow, can slow our response times.

Yet despite the unpredictable nature of the British weather, we are still responsible for delivering critical data, network and communications services.

These include our commitments to regulators to deliver certain service levels and restoration times in the event of disruption, our key performance indicators, and our contractual agreements with customers.

How, then, do we deliver our customers’ services, whatever the weather?

Preparation, preparation, preparation

It starts with preparation.

“We can’t control what the weather will do to our assets,” says Eileen Roddis, our director of resilience and risk. “We focus on ensuring that we have the shortest possible restoration times in the event of any disruption.”

That includes everything from ensuring diesel and gas fuel stocks are in place for on-site generators in the event of mains power failure to checking that sites are clear of potential hazards, such as overhanging trees.

Having enough people available is also critical, with more colleagues on call and available out of hours if forecasts suggest a storm is coming.

Those colleagues receive bespoke winter awareness courses. “The training gives them the skills to operate within extreme weather situations,” explains Eileen. “This isn’t generic ‘readiness’ training, either; we make sure it is tailored to the individual sites, the potential types of storms they could be working in and the impact of that weather.”

Andrew Melling is one of our field engineers. “Distributing resources across the patch is something we do all year round, but during the winter months, and through storms is when doing so is particularly useful. It avoids the scenario where all resources are compromised in one location and ensures that critical equipment, such as portable generators, can be accessed quickly by anyone. This ultimately reduces risk and travel time, allowing us to restore services much sooner.”

When a storm is forecast, we proactively liaise with customers so that they are aware if sites supporting their service could be affected. If a storm does hit, we keep them updated with regular status updates and any restoration plans if their service is affected.

Keeping our customers updated is critical so that they can make plans in the event of disruption, including communicating with consumers if required. We all know how frustrating it is when a service doesn’t work, and that feeling only gets worse if the provider doesn’t communicate with us. We might not deal directly with the general public, but we know we’re an important part of our customers’ operations.

Everyone goes home

But more important than that is keeping our colleagues safe.

“Safety is at the core of how we operate at Arqiva,” says Eileen. “Our priority is that everyone goes home safely every day. As part of that, we continually remind our teams that their safety is the most important factor and to stop and report in if it is unsafe to carry on.”

Andrew says, “It doesn’t matter what the problem is, we always perform a risk assessment before we begin work. We also conduct dynamic assessments when we’re on our way to a job. Everyone that goes out understands how important what we do is, and getting sites back online. But we also know that if we don’t think it’s safe, we can make that call.”

Our focus on the safety of our teams might seem like it would conflict with our commitment to maintaining customers’ service. But safety is not just about getting everyone home at the end of each day, as Eileen says. If our teams were under pressure to work no matter the conditions, they would be more likely to end up in an accident, further compromising our ability to combat storm damage.

“Making sure our teams are safe is the right thing to do, both from a people perspective and an operational effectiveness one,” says Eileen. “Incidents mean disruption, so if we have as few accidents as possible, we’re going to have higher levels of productivity and be better placed to support our customers.”

Tackling widespread disruption

It’s an approach that works. Storm Isha affected 31 of our sites across Scotland, Northern Ireland and Northern England over the course of one weekend in January 2024. In most instances, the problems were down to mains power outages, meaning our teams were required to drive to sites and start portable generators to keep services on air.

Our response and restoration times were within the timelines we agreed with our customers at 29 of the sites, with our teams responding more quickly in many instances than emergency responders and power companies. The two sites where that wasn’t possible were due to police roadblocks in place against high winds and flooding.

The feedback from both regulators and customers was extremely positive, but what was particularly pleasing for us as a company was that only one minor injury was reported.