Development of an Assessment Tool to Measure the Preparedness of Construction Firms for Upcoming Disasters

Construction firms play an important role in the recovery of communities after a disaster. In order to participate in the recovery of a community, it is important for construction firms to be prepared for disasters well in advance. It is also necessary for the construction firms to have capacity to withstand the disaster first before helping the community. There are several frameworks to assess resilience of communities, but there is a lack of literature and tool to assess the performance of construction firms. This paper aims to fulfill the gap by focusing on the assessment of preparedness of construction firms. A set of previously identified readiness indicators is used to build an assessment tool. This tool consists of a series of questions to be answered by the personnel of construction firms to understand the level of preparedness. The results of this tool are given as a score ranging from 0 to 100 with 0 indicating that the construction firm is not prepared for the upcoming disasters and 100 indicating that the firm is well prepared. The results indicate the strength of the firms and the areas that has scope for improvement.