Bill Marotz has one of those jobs where he hopes he never has to apply his trade.

While working in New England, he's endured blackouts on the East Coast, closures from hurricanes and system failures, rolling blackouts and 9/11. He knows the value of planning.

Marotz, Schneider National's disaster recovery/business continuity coordinator, said the company has worked with Ashwaubenon Public Safety and Brown County Emergency Management in a partnership aimed at preparing the agencies and company for any eventuality that could impact the business and community.

The formal relationship between Schneider National and Ashwaubenon Public Safety created an emergency response plan called the Incident Command System that details the specific actions individuals from both organizations will be responsible for in an emergency situation.

"One of the things I was interested in was looking to tie in Schneider National's business and continuity plans with those plans written by the city, by the county and in some cases statewide, and to make sure we were in sync with each other," Marotz said.

The partnership was fostered through a grant from Michigan State University aimed at creating public/private partnerships in emergency situations. Schneider signed on as a co-sponsor to bring experts in the concept from the University of Michigan and that lead to the company working with Ashwaubenon Public Safety to formulate plans where each agency can assist the other in a disaster situation.

"The public/private partnership, we want to see it grow in the community and we want to see more businesses get involved in this type of planning," Marotz said.

Possible events facing a company like Schneider (and others) range from tornadoes, a plane crash into a company's physical plant, snow storms, fires or an emergency - like a school-related incident- that could see a large number of employees leaving the business to tend to those matters while keeping the business running.

"It's not just large businesses like Schneider," Marotz said. "This could be very important to a small business in an event where part of downtown is cordoned off. I want to get to my business. Have you had an opportunity ahead of time to identify yourself to the police? Do you have the right credentials to get though a police line? This is all part of what this group is trying to look at."

Lt. Rick Buntrock of Ashwaubenon Public Safety said working together resulted in a plan tailored to the company.

"Schneider has helped us identify key factors to a successful recovery effort at their site, such as ways emergency responders can access the building during disasters, critical areas of the business to protect and processes for coordinating paths into and out of dangerous zones," he said, in a press release from Schneider. "By working directly with Schneider, we now understand their business needs and know how to execute the plan more effectively."

Public/private partnerships also help planners identify resource pools in the community that can be utilized to help the recovery effort.

Cullen Peltier, director, Brown County Emergency Management, said businesses with hazardous materials work closely with planners, but they are trying to pull additional businesses into community emergency planning.

"Almost all of the businesses that I come in contact with have a pretty decent emergency response plan and have a good business continuity plan," he said. "This partnership is trying to meld those two plans (public and private) so we're working together in a disaster.

"We're going to rely on businesses to help us meet our needs, the trucking firms, the water distributors (and) fuel distributors. We're going to need them to support a community response," Peltier said. "But we also need to help them get back up and running because if we're losing our businesses, we're losing our collective income."

While these kinds of relationships have been present in the past, a more formalized approach to the partnership is more recent, driven in part by 9/11 and hurricane recovery efforts of recent years.