When hit by a power outage or shutdown, there are 11 steps managers should take, according to an article from Facility Maintenance Decisions on the FacilitiesNet website.  Here are the first three:

Develop a wish list. This is always the first step. It’s like getting ready for Christmas when mom and dad ask you what gifts you want. Ask all of your team members, including in-house customers, what they want the engineering or maintenance department to do while the plant or building is down.

The list will be exhaustive, but it is a good place to gather the tasks that are on their minds. Then prioritize the list with management’s assistance. You can’t do all of it, so get the boss to shorten the list for you. Remember, items on the list must be realistic and doable.

Develop the rough scope of work. Once you have the revised list from the management team, put together the rough idea of the scope of work. This will help you decide whether you have enough time to complete the task and when you will do it in-house or contract out the work

Forecast and budget. The next task is to determine the amount of money you need for the outage, Complete a rough scope of work and an order of magnitude cost estimate. Get it approved before you waste time planning something that might not happen. Once you have approval for the order of magnitude cost estimate, you can begin to seek quotes and start the bidding process for the more complex and outsourced tasks.

Read the rest of the steps.