Year-round planning and preparation are essential for risk managers with hurricane-exposed properties as forecasters predict an active hurricane season this year.

Two quiet seasons removed from the huge U.S. losses of 2005, businesses with coastal exposures are seeking not only to protect their properties but new ways to minimize interruption of their business, whether due to a direct hit or a break in the supply chain.

"After a hurricane, the physical damage is apparent," said Lou Gritzo, vp and manager of research of Johnston, R.I.-based Factory Mutual Insurance Co., which does business as FM Global. "But the other things businesses might not be thinking about- loss of competitiveness, loss of business share- can be longer-lasting."

While a soft market allows buyers to bulk up their coverage without wrecking their budgets, buyers with exposure to hurricanes agree that the biggest lesson of past disasters is that hurricane planning extends well beyond finding the right deal at annual renewals.

"The property program has become something I touch every day of my life," said Scott B. Clark, risk and benefits officer for Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Miami.

Mr. Clark was able to reduce his property premiums about 20% this year but still found little capacity for first-dollar coverage for a major buyer with large hurricane risks.

Instead, he, like many buyers with hurricane-exposed properties, relies on planning and preparation to self-insure anything short of a catastrophic storm and recover quickly from whatever the season may bring.

"Whether or not the market ever really softens to the point where I can make purchases of primary levels of insurance," Mr. Clark said, "I don't think I would do that. We have the ability to insure ourselves, so we're basically self-insuring for a Category 1, 2 or a small 3 storm," he said.

To retain that amount of risk, several property loss control experts recommend taking a broad view of hurricane preparation, looking to minimize risks outside one's own organization.

"There's only so much you can do to protect a building, but the key is to get the customers back in business ASAP," said Ralph Tiede, vp of property loss prevention for Liberty Mutual Property, a unit of Liberty Mutual Group Inc., in Weston, Mass.

"It's almost like adopting a 'keiretsu' mentality," said James Costner, senior vp and senior property resource consultant for Willis Risk Solutions in Nashville, Tenn. "Everybody involved in operating the business, regardless of their role, has to come together on a plan to deal with a disaster."

A "keiretsu mentality" means that risk managers have to consider how well their suppliers and contractors are prepared for a hurricane in addition to making sure that their own operations can withstand the blow (see story, page 19). Keiretsu is a Japanese word - meaning system or series - that refers to a network of businesses that hold stakes in one another and thus have an interest in one another's security.

"If you're running a resort, for example," Mr. Costner said, "and your laundry is done on a contract basis by someone down the road, even if you're high and dry, you can be shut down because your laundry is shut down."

Many businesses must manage similar threats to their "intellectual supply chain," or outsourced talent and operations, FM Global's Mr. Gritzo said.

"These might not all be insured losses," said James Breitkreitz, vp of property and boiler and machinery services for Zurich Services Corp. in Schaumburg, Ill., a unit of Zurich Financial Services Group. "Some businesses might have more of a loss from interruption of their supply chain than they have from damage to their own property."

There is little a client can do about supply-chain risks immediately before or after a hurricane, but Mr. Costner said this is exactly the sort of long-term planning that can get risk managers through a disaster.

"The best-managed businesses are taking a much more serious look at preparation for disaster," Mr. Costner said. "The best are formalizing their action plans. They have written formal pre- and post-disaster plans to keep their business running."

In a Miami school district with more than 350,000 students and 54,000 employees, Mr. Clark has learned the value of doing just that.

In his case, the plan needs to work not only within the organization, to get staff and students back in class, but also outside the organization, to maintain contracted functions such as school lunches.

"It's something we have to look at from a standpoint of depth of resources," Mr. Clark said.

"For example, we feed somewhere in the area of 200,000 students a day," he said. "We have to make sure we have contingency arrangements with our vendors to resupply." Those arrangements include written agreements to buy out other entities' supply contracts, he said.

"Sixty-eight percent of our kids get a free or reduced (price) lunch in this district, which means if they don't get their lunch at school, they may not get a lunch," Mr. Clark said.

In addition to securing the supply chain after a storm, risk managers with hurricane exposures have learned the importance of securing needed repair contracts well in advance of a storm.

"What they don't want (to do) is to wait until it happens, because at that point it's all about supply and demand and they'll be last on the list," Liberty Mutual's Mr. Tiede said.

When Hurricane Rita hit in 2005, Ron Hayes, risk manager for the Calcasieu Parish School Board in Lake Charles, La., had to deal with just such a shortage. In the scramble to rebuild after the storm, prices rose and the school district shopped for repair services in a seller's market.

"There were surprises after Rita," Mr. Hayes said. "We brought in people we weren't familiar with, and we weren't familiar with their rates and fees. That taught us a lesson, and that's that you go into it with your relationships already in place."