All power companies are good at restoring power; it is part of their daily routine. The problem arises when the major outage occurs. The first step is realizing that major outages require a different response than do the routine outages. The next step is to determine how you will approach the restoration philosophically. That may sound strange to an organization which almost daily deals with emergencies of one sort or another. In a very real sense, the degree of success that you achieve in your response effort will depend on the extent to which you understand and act upon these basic facts:

	Every response organization has a response philosophy, whether they know it or not. Be sure to distinguish between a general, broad-based approach to all types of crises, and a response philosophy to deal with major outage events. There is a significant difference
	It is important that this philosophy is not adopted through default, without careful consideration of the factors involved.
	There are a number of stakeholders in the performance of the response organization - e.g., customers, regulators, investors, employees, business/industry, etc., etc.
	Some have an aggressive philosophy; some choose to be more measured in their response, giving highest priority to the cost of the restoration.
	There is a "healthy tension" that should be established between cost containment and effective response. In seeking to hold costs down during the restoration effort, there is a danger of incurring an even greater negative economic impact for the long term.
	Lack of aggressiveness has other "costs" that are not so easily measured.
	Aggressive restoration can increase incremental costs, but these can be outweighed by the avoided costs of a shorter restoration period for the local economy.

PSOR has developed the expertise to help your organization implement a restoration organization and process that can find this "healthy tension", and offers the scalability to set your response standard at the level you choose.