Getting over the corona ditch together

We back-up everything. It must be packed in 'the cloud' in the meantime. I see a rental company for storage boxes, every loft filled with beautiful stuff (data), but also with a lot of unnecessary junk. If something goes wrong with the software, we'll find it again, if you've arranged it properly. But what if something goes wrong here 'on earth'? Have you properly prepared for that in this day and age? 

If something physically went wrong 'in the past': a fire, power failure or flooding (see the problems between Venice and the Alps); then you helped each other as a company. I know plenty of stories from competitors who, in the event of a calamity, jumped in and temporarily took over production, including personnel, and just ran 24/7 to cover the first few weeks. Now, with the one and a half meter society and the second, intelligent, lockdown, I can see how the ''we'll solve it together'' is becoming very tricky.

Helping a company where a major corona outbreak has taken place and is therefore partly or completely? No. We avoid it.  We avoid physical contact as if they had the plague. A totally new situation.

In the meantime it continues to be the case that customers don't whine when you can't deliver; they look for an alternative. Your - not being able to deliver - is only their problem for a short time; they quickly go to someone else. An study into the consequences of fire has shown that 20% of the companies that have withstood the calamity well are still bankrupt 5 years later. Cause: the loss of their customer base, something they have invested years in to obtain. How will this work out in post-corona time?

Cartel formation is not allowed, and rightly so. But surely there should be enough room in this other society to be able to continue to look after each other, despite everything! For colleagues and for competitors. Otherwise, we are all going to die.

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Herman Bessels is architect BNA at Bessels architekten & ingenieurs B.V.