After local tragedy strikes, TERIS teamwork kicks in to ensure client project work continues

At approximately 7:50am PST on Wednesday, February 17^th, a small airplane hit a high tension transmission tower and crashed into an East Palo Alto home. Tragically, the crash killed three employees of Tesla Motors.

Nearly the entire city of Palo Alto lost power for almost 12 hours – including the TERIS Silicon Valley office. Within a few hours of losing power, the TERIS team accomplished the following to ensure that client project work continued despite the major disruption:

• TERIS Corporate Director of IT Mark Prewitt contacted various Palo Alto area rental companies and secured generators that would be used to power the server room

• Systems Administrator Bryce Philips (seen below) worked nonstop from the time the power was lost until it returned. He personally took ownership of the entire server room and ensured that TERIS remained online and all data moving. Without Bryce’s hard work and dedication a challenging day would have been a complete disaster for TERIS and many clients. 

• Director of ESI Scott Andraschko quickly assembled a game plan to keep the servers up and running – he worked hand-in-hand with Bryce in the server room and ensure the generators remained running throughout the day.

• ESI Manager Chinh Khuc took the unprecedented step of transporting the drives he was working on – as well as the entire ESI team – to a separate, secure location to continue processing work.

• Jake Render (Electronics Project Manager) continued receiving client requests and producing quality work (in the dark). 

• The Silicon Valley Sales Team shuttled jobs between TERIS’ Silicon Valley and San Francisco offices (while also setting realistic goals and expectations for our clients). The sales team also receives the credit for rapidly securing and transporting the generators to the Silicon Valley facility. 

• Chris Tan (Project Manager) worked remotely from our San Francisco office to keep our largest client happy.

• Production Manager Manny Saavedra coordinated all work between the Silicon Valley and San Francisco offices and made sure the facility had plenty of supplemental lighting (including flashlights) while operations continued running smoothly.

• The TERIS San Francisco Production/Imaging Team jumped in to support the Silicon Valley office with all services from setting up rush ftp accounts to finishing a 14 box scanning job. The San Francisco team really stepped up to help the Silicon Valley office across the board and they were absolutely vital in helping the company meet certain client demands.

Kevin Brooks, TERIS Executive Vice President, Northern California said, “The frantic and chaotic day featured many TERIS employees who worked behind the scenes to help the team make it through the day. “I want to personally thank our exceptional Bay Area team for the hard work and dedication that allowed the company to continue serving its clients and maintaining its well-deserved reputation for exceptional service.”