Coastal-Warehouse Resilience Board Adviser

The mandate

The group’s principal warehouses sit near ports and consumer demand, but recent compound events combined surface flooding, grid loss, generator-fuel delays, excessive internal heat and blocked staff access. Separate engineering, insurance and inventory papers produce incompatible return periods and do not show which customer orders or regulated goods fail first. The board needs a seasoned distribution voice to challenge whether to harden, re-slot, split, lease inland capacity or exit particular sites—and to distinguish credible operating continuity from a building that remains standing but cannot receive, work or dispatch.

Four days a month are committed in deliberately different settings: a facility-and-flow evidence day, an inventory and customer-consequence clinic, a capital-and-insurance challenge, and chair preparation. Seven formal committee sessions, three contrasting facility walks and two insurer or infrastructure workshops are included. In a declared material event the adviser supplies a short challenge note within one business day, but management operates the response. Engineers, public authorities, safety officers and insurers retain their respective assessment and decision powers.

The eleven-month appointment spans hazard and flow baselining, two budget cycles and one wet-season observation. It closes with site archetypes, compound-failure pathways, critical inventory and order exposures, tested response assumptions, comparative investment logic and a record of accepted and rejected resilience conditions. Any later work must be commissioned around a named acquisition or facility, not treated as automatic continuation. The adviser receives the same retainer whether the board hardens, leases, relocates or rejects capital and cannot earn a transaction or insurance outcome fee.

There is no line authority, executive responsibility, engineering sign-off, emergency command, insurance-broking remit, property-acquisition power or board vote in this role. The adviser may insist that options include labour access, generator autonomy, drainage interfaces, safe temperatures, communications and transport approach—not just asset damage—and may recommend a site be removed from the critical network. The adviser cannot certify flood levels, approve building works, direct incident response, set stock release, negotiate cover, select a landlord or declare business-interruption recovery.

Property, engineering, logistics, insurance, brokerage, landlord, utility, security, investment and government relationships must be disclosed before papers are shared. A current mandate for an evaluated site owner, bidder, insurer or engineering provider excludes the adviser from that option; the chair records whether remaining work can be separated. Confidential risk information cannot be used for another client. Cash compensation is independent of capex approval, lease choice, insurance recovery, reported avoided loss or any vendor appointment.

Why the board wants this voice

Facility specialists can estimate physical damage and operating teams know recurring disruption, but directors lack an integrated view of how compound failures propagate into inventory and customers. External challenge can compare unlike resilience options and expose false precision without becoming the group’s engineer, broker or crisis commander. The board needs decision discipline, not a predetermined recommendation to relocate or build.

What you will own

• Press management to map receipt, storage, picking and dispatch dependencies through drainage, power, cooling, fuel, labour access, security, roads, communications and customer cut-offs.
• Test site archetypes against compound flood, heat, grid loss, generator constraint, blocked access, telecom interruption and simultaneous supplier surge.
• Challenge inventory policies that concentrate regulated, temperature-sensitive, fast-moving or single-source stock where recovery time and substitute capacity are unproven.
• Compare hardening, vertical re-slotting, temporary buffer, inland split, alternative lease and exit using complete operating, transition, stranded and insurance economics.
• Examine trigger and authority boundaries for stock movement, order throttling, safe shutdown, staff release, customer communication and restart after an event.
• Keep a board record of data uncertainty, provider assumptions, conflicts, dissent, unpriced dependencies and conditions attached to each investment choice.
• Leave the committee a site-by-site resilience view connecting physical operability, service consequence and capital sequence across plausible compound failures.

Candidate qualifications

• Has governed climate-exposed warehouses or distribution networks where physical hazard, utilities and access failed in combination.
• Can evidence a property investment decision changed after inventory flow and customer consequence were assessed alongside structural exposure.
• Understands coastal flooding, heat, drainage, backup power, warehouse process, inventory segmentation, transport access, insurance and continuity economics.
• Has advised boards while preserving engineer, safety, public-authority, property, emergency and insurance decision rights.
• Can distinguish building survival, safe occupancy, operational receipt, inventory access, dispatch capability and sustained customer service.
• Is independent of the landlords, contractors, engineers, utilities, insurers, brokers and investors being evaluated.

Non-negotiables

• Can provide four days a month, seven committee sessions and five Nigerian facility, insurer or infrastructure evidence engagements.
• Will not certify hazards, approve works, command incidents, broker insurance, select property or promise recoveries.
• Brings direct climate-exposed distribution governance; generic ESG, real-estate or business-continuity advisory is insufficient.
• Will disclose all site, landlord, engineering, insurance, utility and investment interests before option papers are released.

1. 49 words maximum. Which warehouse survived a hazard physically but still failed as a distribution node, and why?
2. 49 words maximum. What landlord, engineer, insurer or investor relationship could require your recusal?
3. 49 words maximum. When did labour or road access change a board’s preferred resilience investment?