No playbook for COVID-19, says IMF facilities manager

Jamaican Jennifer Lester, who wields management power at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said the pandemic sweeping the world is unprecedented and there is no playbook to predict or determine the devastating tentacles of the disease, which continues to kill thousands daily.

The current head of the Corporate Services and Facilities Management Division of the IMF, Lester supervises a United States-based staff complement of 180 employees and 600 vendors worldwide via outsourcing.

The daughter of Jamaican teachers, who also chairs the Crisis Management Team of the division, said, thanks to COVID-19, a new way of life is unveiling before the eyes of the world.

“There is no playbook for this. There is no precedent because of the global reach of it. In 2018, we had an explosion in our Paris office which injured some of our staff. We had that recent explosion in Beirut and we had staff there. These were localised events that you can deal with, but something that’s globalised, never. And something that has last as long and with no predictability, we don’t know when it’s going to end,” Lester shared with The Sunday Gleaner.

“Thank God we now have some vaccines, but even with that, it’s going to take a while. So even with that, I would say you are feeling your way. You just have to make judgements and figure out. So the answer is no, there has been no precedent.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the global economy, which the IMF will give an update on later this month.

According to Lester, the Fund’s Crisis Management Team comes together when needed with a mandate to ensure that it can continue to operate globally.

She said the team “ensures resilience and business continuity, manages crises or events in a centralised way and is made up of people from across the Fund in different areas.”

CRISIS THAT AFFECTS IMF

COVID-19 was first brought to the IMF by its security apparatus and viewed as an unseen security threat but has developed into health management. The facilities manager also made it clear that “what we manage is the crisis as it affects the Fund”. The team works closely with other organisations and key professionals.

Despite scenario planning, including for pandemics, Lester said when COVID-19 struck, the reality was very stark, and concerns zoomed in on the safety and security of staff in Asia, where the disease was first reported in November 2019.

All crises are assessed on merit to make a determination of impact on staff and the Fund’s ability to assist countries, she said.

The IMF has two main facilities in the US and leased buildings in more than 100 countries in the world, and Lester is responsible for the smooth running of all the its facilities and business worldwide, including Jamaica.

“My department is a conglomerate of different types of service that any organisation needs in order to function. And we provide it from this centralised department. It covers five main areas – facilities management, creative solutions and language, security and general services management. Wherever we have a resident representative, we lease spaces (residential and offices) in many countries,” she explained.

Every issue related to those international arrangements, from a broken pipe to the air-conditioning system, is managed by her department.

TIGHT ON SECURITY

IMF’s language service division must provide translation and interpretation in all countries it operates, although English is the operations’ main language of the IMF. They are also often called to provide services in “exotic language”. The departments work hand in hand with communication to provide media services and designs for all the Fund’s audiovisual products worldwide.

With one of IMF’s offices located at 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC close to the White House, Lester said the offices receive frequent security briefing but would go no further.

“We did batten down the week of the elections. In fact, the DC government had encouraged businesses and so on to batten down. This week, we didn’t because we felt that the focus of the event would not be near where we are,” she said of last week’s mob attack on the country’s capital where lawmakers were meeting to ratify the votes of the Biden/Harris victory in last November’s general elections.

Security is one of the services under Lester’s portfolio and she said it was critical to the operations of the IMF.

“The security service is very important. We not only have to maintain the security of our headquarters buildings, but in typical non-COVID time, we have missions going out a dime a dozen. We train, and we have a worldwide group that can respond very quickly if there is an event in a country where we have staff. We have a 24-7 emergency operation,” she stated.

The general services division procures “all goods and services for the Fund” and all major procurement is also handled by Lester’s office.

erica.virtue@gleanerjm.com