The 2010 and 2011 Canterbury Earthquakes and organisational learning at the University of Canterbury: does practice make perfect?

Professor Nigel Healey, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Nottingham Trent University / Adjunct Professor, University of Canterbury

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Health warning (1)

• The limitations of critical self-reflection as a research methodology

• The illusion of objectivity in ethnographic studies:– ‘candid ethnographer’– ‘chaste ethnographer’– ‘fair ethnographer’ – ‘literary ethnographer’

• Nonetheless……this approach provides rich insights into understanding the management of a natural disaster which could not be achieved by an alternative, more remote methodology

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Health warning (2)

• Aim is not to assess whether management could have done ‘better’ with 20:20 hindsight– the management team worked tirelessly and professionally, using

their best judgement in a difficult situation– it is always be possible to choose better strategies ex-post, based

on full information, than ex-ante, based on partial information

• Aim is to examine, using the 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes as a case study, whether the successful management of a prior, lesser crisis better prepares managers to deal with a subsequent, greater crisis

• Interesting question: because the answer seems so intuitively obvious

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Overview

• University of Canterbury

• The 2010 and 2011 earthquakes

• Managing after the major earthquakes– September 4, 2010– February 22, 2011

• The changed environment post February 22

• The impact of the changed environment

• Unintended consequences

• Conclusions

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The University of Canterbury pre-September 4, 2010

• Medium-sized, public comprehensive university

• 15,362 enrolments (EFTS) in 2010, of which:– 13,960 domestic students– 1,402 international students (9.2% of the total)

• Based in western suburbs of Christchurch

• Christchurch is a city of 325,000 people– Major international tourist gateway– Major international student destination: two universities, one

polytechnic and number of prestigious high schools which attract international students

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The 2010 and 2011 earthquakes

• Pacific Plate moves 37-47mm pa against the Australian Plate

• 37-47mm per year = 3.7-4.7m per century

• Many of the fault systems from Alpine Fault are not fully mapped

• “Most probable date of next big shock is tomorrow”

• Strict building codes since 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake (M7.8)

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The September 4, 2010 earthquake

• M7.1 at 4:35am on Saturday, September 4, 2010

• Epicentre 40km west of Christchurch, near the town of Darfield

• 2 injuries, no directly-attributable deaths

• Earthquake occurred during mid-semester break

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The September 4, 2010 earthquake

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The February 22, 2011 earthquake

• M6.3 at 12:51pm on Tuesday, 22 February 2011

• Epicentre 10km south-east of Christchurch

• 181 fatalities, from 20 countries; approximately 2,000 injured

• Fatalities included many Japanese, Chinese and other international students studying English in a collapsed building in the city

• Second day of academic year

• Height of tourist season

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The February 22, 2011 earthquake

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The February 22, 2011 earthquake

Liquefaction

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The 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes in context (nb, Richter scale is logarithmic: M6 is 10x M5)

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Managing after the earthquakes

• UC had a very sophisticated emergency management system pre-September 4 with:– Incident Management Team– Emergency Management Centre (generator, secure server, CCTV,

two-way radio, remote campus control)– Strategic Emergency Management Team

• Management teams had practised for emergencies using simulations – earthquake, plane hitting the campus, bomb at graduation, shooter on campus

• Emergency response mobilised instantly after both major earthquakes

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Key question: does successfully managing a prior, lesser crisis better prepare organisations to manage a subsequent, greater crisis?

• Considerable management literature:– ‘Failing to learn and learning to fail (intelligently): How great

organizations put failure to work to improve and innovate’ (Mark Cannon and Amy Edmondson)

– ‘Lessons we don’t learn: A study of the lessons of disasters, why we repeat them, and how we can learn them’ (Amy Donahue and Robert Tuohy)

• Most of the literature focuses on obstacles to learning: organisational amnesia

• Canterbury earthquakes provide a valuable case study of an organisation recovering from two similar disasters within five months

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Managing after September 4

• University closed for one week

• Building checklist:– checked by engineers for structural integrity– inspected by volunteer managers for hazards– cleaned up by volunteer staff

• Most buildings reopened within one week

• General sense of relief that such a major earthquake caused no loss of life and little structural damage

• Second semester timetable slightly adjusted to allow for missed week, no discernable impact on student academic performance in end-of-semester examinations

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Managing after February 22 (1)

• View established early in the SEMT that we had a successful ‘roadmap’ for managing recovery

• Recovery management almost immediately jumped to the end-point reached post-September 4:– twice daily meetings of IMT and SEMT discontinued– communications to staff restricted to ‘customised’ corporate

messages– messages limited to what was known to be true

• …and SEMT immediately back on sushi diet

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Managing after February 22 (2)

• Managers acted professionally and in good faith

• But in applying lessons of September 4:– recovery management arguably set in a more inflexible framework

post-February 22…– …despite operating in a very different environment

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The changed environment post-February 22

• Many deaths and injuries – almost everyone at UC knew someone who had died

• Staff fatigued after September 4

• Many staff (and students) living in damaged homes without power, water or sewage – degraded resiliency

• Two major buildings declared ‘safe’ after September 4 collapsed on February 22 – loss of public trust in engineering assessments

• Widespread sense of despair – many people left Christchurch to avoid aftershocks

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The changed environment: Canterbury Memorial Day, March 18, one week after Japanese tsunami

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Impact of the changed environment

• Building checklist on campus:– amended to include modelling for integrity in event of another

major earthquake (positive response)– but lengthy process– many buildings required repairs with uncertain timelines

• Corporate messages to staff inevitably provided limited information

• Very limited opportunities to bring staff together to provide mutual support – important with so many foreign staff

• Decision-making controlled by senior management for much longer than post-September 4

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Some unintended consequences

• Less staff engagement in the recovery process than post-September 4

• Frustration by academic staff over both communications and decision-making

• Academic Board went through a period of difficult relations with senior management

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But senior management did act decisively to address severity of crisis UC faced

• University faced crippling loss of student enrolments

• Senior management moved quickly to:– order large number of marquees so that teaching could resume on

campus within three weeks– begin construction of approximately 100 portacoms (12m x 12m

units) to provide replacement open plan offices, teaching rooms and computer labs

– arrange for UC students to study at other NZ and Australian university as ‘no fee’ exchange students in semester I

• Facebook was used effectively, as post-September 4, for two-way communications with students

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The impact on domestic Equivalent Full-Time Students

-1,500 EFTS = -11%

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The impact on international Equivalent Full-Time Students

-400 EFTS = -30%

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And a huge positive outcome…

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Conclusions (1)

• UC had strong disaster management systems in place pre-September 4

• Widely recognised that UC dealt well with the September 4 earthquake

• February 22 earthquake was profoundly more devastating

• Senior management acted to deal with the greater crisis, drawing on the experience of September 4

• Key question:– did the learning from September 4 make the organisation better able

to manage post-February 22?– or did the learning from September make the organisation less flexible

in adapting to a very different operating environment?

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Conclusions (2)

• Managing through a disaster may be like managing through a divorce

• Managing one divorce better prepares you for the operational details of the next (lawyers, financial settlements, etc)

• But every divorce has a different context and dynamic

• Successfully managing an amicable divorce may:– help you with the operational details next time– but make you less able to deal with the unexpected acrimony of

your next divorce