Critical Facility Management Archives - Ascent

Check Your Blind Spots: Unleashing Your Building Management Systems Potential

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 21:49:18 +0000

Most data centers rely on Building Management Systems (BMS) to monitor and control critical infrastructure, but few fully utilize the operational efficiencies these systems can deliver. The common challenge? Your blind spots. While BMS tools are essential to any operation, focusing solely on failure prevention is like never checking the rearview mirror, which can lead to missed opportunities.

Typically, these challenges fall into two categories: validity and reliability. Validity issues stem from inaccurate or unverified data, leading to poor decision-making — especially as AI becomes more integrated with BMS systems. Calibration errors in sensors, actuator discrepancies, and improper tuning of chilled water systems are just a few examples of how unreliable data can result in inefficiencies.

Conversely, reliability issues arise when the BMS itself is not dependable. Weak failover capabilities, faulty sensors, and outdated network infrastructure can compromise a data center’s ability to respond to critical events, putting operations at risk.

Data center operators can implement routine system audits, improve collaboration, and invest in team training to bridge these gaps. By addressing validity and reliability challenges, a BMS can be transformed from an essential monitoring tool into a strategic asset — driving efficiency, reducing costs, and maximizing uptime.

Learn how to optimize your Building Management Systems. Read the full article here.

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Strategies for Long-Term Operational Excellence in Your Mission Critical Facility

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 19:35:28 +0000

Operational excellence is the foundation of any successful mission critical facility. Downtime can’t become a reality as a data center or critical facility. To maintain uptime, mission critical facilities must implement strategic best practices that optimize, protect, and adapt to evolving pressures and needs.

Here are four key strategies to achieve long-term operation excellence:

Assess Before You Stress

You don’t know what you don’t know, which is precisely why it’s key to have a comprehensive evaluation of your facility’s infrastructure, processes, and systems that include risk identification, energy efficiency opportunities, and gaps in operations. These assessments help identify vulnerabilities and inefficiencies that might have previously flown under the radar. By regularly reviewing electrical and mechanical power systems, overall infrastructure and monitoring system connectivity, facility managers can proactively ensure optimal performance with strategic foresight. Additionally, assessments help optimize and improve power usage and align operations to sustain expected performance and reliability in a mission critical environment.

Embrace Preventative Maintenance

Do you enjoy putting out fires as they happen? Or would you prefer to extinguish any possibility of one before it has the chance to take place? Maintenance, in and of itself, is one of the most critical aspects of ensuring uptime, but only if it can be predictive and preventative. Adopting preventative maintenance strategies reduces the likelihood of any significant failures or repairs. By physically servicing equipment, you can more easily maintain asset longevity, which produces better performance and can help detect potential issues before a disruption even happens.

Put People First

Invest in people who are there for your operations 24×7, 365 days per year. The human component is often the most critical yet forgotten component of long-term operational excellence. Mission critical facility staff need to be well-trained, continuously updated on best practices, and available to support your facility when it needs it most. Find an experienced operational team that administers, monitors, and coordinates maintenance and service operations and who are up all night, so you don’t have to be.

Navigate More Easily

The thought of monitoring maintenance activities, equipment performance, and their related costs 24×7 might send your compass into a tailspin. Thankfully, there is an easier way. Ascent’s Navigator Platform delivers operational transparency into maintenance activities by combining people, processes, and innovative tools, providing a single-source solution for operational uptime and performance excellence.

Achieving long-term operational excellence in a mission critical facility in today’s advancing technological era requires a combination of strategies. By implementing assessments, preventative maintenance, investing in people, and continuously training staff, you can create a robust and resilient operation. As technology and business demands evolve, staying proactive and future-proofing your facility will ensure its ongoing success and reliability.

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Optimizing Periodicity in Preventative Maintenance Scheduling

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 18:20:56 +0000

Periodicity and its Challenges

Welcome to our last blog in our three-part blog series, where we have been discussing key points of Preventative Maintenace (PM) programs. In this blog, we’ll be discussing how preventative maintenance is cyclical by nature, meaning that the work being performed is completed at specific intervals. These intervals are referred to as the periodicity of the PM activities.

In the world of mission-critical equipment however, there are several considerations for the standardization of PM routines:

By adhering to the cadence of regularly timed maintenance, facility managers can be lulled into complacency because for many systems, PM scheduling may require more customization to achieve effective periodicity.

Since operational budgets only include the year ahead, PM programs typically focus on quarterly and yearly maintenance, and often miss maintenance activities that should be scheduled even further out.

Mission-critical facilities often contain multiple paths of distribution, some including “reserve lineups” for use in emergency situations or for maintenance activities. Often, these resources do not include the equipment downstream of the components specifically undergoing designated maintenance.
Maintenance activities for various pieces of equipment in the same room or area are often misaligned from a timing perspective, which causes additional mobilizations of the required tools and parts.

The net impact is that infrequent, yet key, PM procedures can be overlooked, remain unbudgeted or get deferred well past their recommended due dates.

Tackling Optimization

A strong PM schedule will organize and prioritize maintenance tasks to bring about the best working conditions for the lifespan of the equipment. Determining the accurate scope and periodicity of PM tasks is essential, considering that the timing of maintenance tasks will vary depending on the equipment and the operations being performed.

In addition to adherence to manufacturer guidelines, best practices, and industry standards, achieving this should include:

Engaging field engineers and technicians should be part of crafting a PM plan that is tailored to the needs, location, and operating conditions of the facility and equipment.
In reference to the reserve lineups mentioned previously, during breaker testing situations (for example), the entire line-up downstream could undergo intrusive maintenance within the same time frame as the equipment upstream, consolidating change management of the critical load and maintaining all components involved with a single planned outage or isolation.
In the case of equipment that occupies the same or adjacent areas, harmonizing PM into reduced mobilizations can make preparation time and planning more effective and efficient.
Timing repairs to coincide with related maintenance can free up maintenance personnel for other tasks, while combining the cost of both the repair and the PM being performed (e.g., predictively increasing the inspection scope to maximize labor time).

Heightened efficiencies such as these allow personnel to perform routine checks and planned maintenance at more opportune times and reduce duplicate tasks. This helps the organization avoid expensive repairs and ensures that labor costs are kept to a minimum.

In addition to reducing downtime and expenses, a PM program with optimized periodicities will increase the equipment’s life, further lowering future capital layout over the facility lifecycle.

For more information about preventative maintenance scheduling, download our new white paper or sign up for our newsletter to stay in the know.

Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the blog series.

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International Data Center Day: Empowering Tomorrow’s Data Center Leaders

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 14:57:02 +0000

Ascent is excited to be sponsoring the 2024 International Data Center Day on March 20. This day, powered by 7×24 Exchange International, is intended “to create awareness of the data center industry and to inspire the next generation of talent” and provides the industry an opportunity to demonstrate what data centers are, why they are so important to our connected world, and the wide array of career opportunities that are part of the data center industry.

7×24 Exchange International is a not-for-profit organization that provides an educational forum focusing on challenges faced by mission critical industry professionals. As an end-to-end mission critical solutions provider, Ascent understands the importance of providing critical infrastructure services, including data center design and build, operations and maintenance support, that maximize uninterrupted performance for customers across North America. At Ascent, we particularly resonate with International Data Center Day’s mission — “inspire the next generation of talent” — in the following ways:

Ascent hires and retains professionals to support critical operating environments and mission critical projects across the country, such as:
1. Critical Facility and Site Operations Personnel
2. Mechanical, Electrical, and Professional Engineers
3. IT Technicians, Infrastructure Design Engineers, Capacity Planners, and Technical Program Managers
Ascent also hires and trains for a wide variety of internal roles that provide support to data center projects, onsite personnel, and operational activities. Great opportunities for those new to the industry include:
1. Operations Center Reps
2. Service Operations
3. Software Development
4. Finance
Ascent elevates mission critical by actively promoting the industry, and by working with both universities and technical training institutions to identify, recruit, and train the next generation of data center leaders.

Data centers are designed to be highly reliable, provide systems and data availability at all times, and be energy efficient, secure facilities that safely house the equipment needed to support nearly every type of business. Despite employing many automated systems and programs, data center facilities and infrastructure is also designed, built, maintained and operated by people. There are more and more jobs opening in the data center industry, and numerous opportunities to get into a field that is mission critical to the operations of a wide range of companies.

Interested in a career in the mission critical data center industry? View our open positions here or contact our team directly to learn more at 1.877.427.2368. We would love to talk to you about what the data center industry has to offer.

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Preventative Maintenance: Uniting Engineering Teams

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 21:59:26 +0000

Welcome to our second blog of preventative maintenance (PM) three-part blog series, where we will dive into how to unite engineering teams for optimal performance.

Preventative maintenance is often based chiefly on manufacturer recommendations. Thus, PM programs within a facility often represent an amalgam of various manufacturer recommendations. Here, the limitations lie in the fact that manufacturers’ engineers cannot be on every site where the company’s equipment is installed. Normally, OEM engineering teams are focused on designing new equipment versus operating and maintaining equipment already in the field. Therefore, input from local engineers, in conjunction with manufacturer recommendations, benefits the overall maintenance program. The local technical staff help ensure that the equipment is operating correctly; and when it is not, the local engineers are often the best resource for proposing solutions.

On-Site Engineers: An Untapped Resource

Maintenance engineers and managers work with the equipment they oversee on a regular basis, so they know those assets better than anyone in the organization. Engaging these personnel to aid in creating the PM plan can help companies customize those plans to their unique maintenance needs.

Doing so has several benefits, including the ability to gain high-level insight going into regular tasks, less equipment being needed for PM tasks, low-redundancy plans that more efficiently allocate resources, greater customizability, and a more cost-effective PM program.

In a recent example, a client was experiencing a greatly reduced service life of only two years for evaporative media pads, instead of the manufacturer’s anticipated ten-year service life. Even though all manufacturer recommendations were in place; the media simply was not performing as designed.

An on-site engineer identified the problem: The media was overloaded, thus causing premature failure. An alternate structure to better support the media was proposed, and the OEM accepted the recommendation. Without this valuable on-site expertise, the facility owner would have needlessly replaced the media every two years at significant cost.

Superior Engagement and Superior Insights

Operational Equipment Data brings field engineers and technicians together with OEM and specifying engineers. Each group of engineers engages with a facility in their own unique way, with OEM engineers designing equipment, specifying engineers applying it, and field engineers operating and supporting it.

Within this engineering ecosystem, the common ground is the performance of the equipment and the resulting data, and each of these groups influences performance in diverse ways. Consequently, how actual performance is understood influences future design work.

When united through data, these distinct groups can create better operations and maintenance specifications at every stage.

Mitigating Future Risk

A pair of air-cooled condensers designed in a 2N configuration were set to operate in a lead/lag to cool a UPS room. During an early winter storm that included freezing rain, the lead condenser sent an evaporative fan alarm to the system and began to shut down. The lag unit came online and took over, bringing the room back to its set point, but after some time had passed, the lag unit sent a high-head-pressure alarm and it, too, shut down.

Upon inspection, the site engineer discovered that both units were locked up with ice caused by the freezing rain due to the lag unit not operating during the storm, even though the OEM engineer had designed the unit to operate properly in extreme temperatures.

To return to normal operation, the field engineer and on-call engineering team utilized on-site spare parts to replace the failed components and restore redundancy. Post incident, the team and field engineer proposed a solution to engage the fans at regular intervals while the units were in their lag cycle to mitigate future risk. The proposal was reviewed by the OEM’s engineering team and approved.

This situation led to numerous changes within the maintenance program—not only at this facility, but at others within the portfolio that were susceptible to ice and winter conditions.

Bringing engineering and operational teams together with good Operational Equipment Data allows for the sharing of data between discrete engineering teams and facilitates the integration of operational enhancements into broader maintenance programs everywhere they are needed.

For more information about preventative maintenance scheduling, download our new white paper or sign up for our newsletter to stay in the know.

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Preventative Maintenance: Synthesizing Critical Data

Tue, 23 Jan 2024 15:20:46 +0000

Welcome to our latest three-part blog series, where we delve into the depths of mission critical preventative maintenance (PM). Throughout this series, we will provide simple, actionable ways to improve current-state maintenance programs.

First up — data. When crafting preventative maintenance (PM) plans, the more data that is available, the better. However, a lack of industry-wide data in the mission-critical space can lead to inefficiencies in the execution of PM plans.

The Challenge: Limited Access to Critical Data

One of the key challenges around data aggregation for PM programs lies in the fact that each equipment manufacturer tracks performance and repair data for their own products. When it comes to the range of equipment types in a critical facility, there is no common repository of equipment performance and repair data available to other manufacturers or end users.

In cases where manufacturers do make troubleshooting information for component and equipment failure available, it may not provide enough specifics to effectively make use of it at the site level without additional guidance from engineers. Even companies with large data center portfolios may not have knowledge of how similar sites outside of their domain are performing. Individual and multisite operators typically only have visibility into issues with their own equipment.

This translates into a curious lack of consolidated data specific to PM standards being available to the data-center service industry. Without such a resource, local engineers and manufacturers solve problems as best they can using the limited information available to them.

Customization Is a Start

In the absence of industry-wide performance data, mission critical operators must rely on capturing as much internally generated information as possible. Considering the above challenges, designing and implementing data-centric mission critical PM program calls for a different mindset — one that goes beyond a traditional maintenance program. A more efficient strategy begins with:

Understanding the facility and its goals
Setting performance standards
Documenting procedures and schedules
Properly engaging the CMMS

The latter is the first step in effectively capturing operational equipment data — the centerpiece of any efficient program.

There are two broad areas of data collection to consider: machine-led and personnel-led. The advantage of the former is that it is continuous and does not require labor. BAS and DCIM systems are at-the-ready, capturing and monitoring steady-state conditions.

On the other hand, personnel-led data collection captures observations only a human can see or hear, due to proximity, ongoing exposure and during maintenance activities. Operations personnel continuously monitor their spaces and equipment; thus, they can often detect the slightest change in a particular piece of equipment. While these may not trigger a full evaluation of the PM program, subtle variances can be noted and followed over time.

The Best of Both Worlds in Data Aggregation

Optimally, data collection should be a synthesis of both machine- and personnel-gathered information. Therefore, it is important to store all data captured for operational equipment through automated monitoring and human observation into a single system.

Ascent’s Navigator platform assembles information for equipment asset groups while providing key insights into maintenance activities, equipment performance, asset health, and service costs. Additionally, the platform captures failure causes, operational observations, and trend results into a comprehensive data aggregator that allows for more effective management and maintenance of the critical environment.

Rather than relying solely on machine- or personnel-driven insights, this synthesis of critical data inputs allows for a more comprehensive and intuitive PM paradigm. This holistic approach provides managers and onsite personnel with a far deeper look into the state of mission critical equipment and more precise tools for implementing PM programs.

For more information about preventative maintenance scheduling, download our new whitepaper, or sign up for our newsletter to stay in the know.

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2023 – An Eventful Year for Ascent

Meghan Reuther — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 00:56:52 +0000

It may not be easy to tell from the outside looking in, but there’s a buzz of excitement in the hallways of Ascent’s corporate office these days, as 2023 promises to be a big year for our company.

First off, there’s the upcoming Pacific Telecommunications Council’s annual conference in Hawaii, PTC’23, which takes place from Jan. 15 –18. PTC is the leading global non-profit membership organization for the telecom industry. The annual conference is the Pacific Rim’s premier telecommunications event and is the most widely-attended international telecom conference, with attendees from dozens of countries and industries. And, Ascent will be a part of it all.

“We are extremely delighted to see the outstanding numbers and support for PTC’23 across the board,” said Brian Moon, PTC’s CEO. “PTC’23 is shaping up to be a surmountable event and networking opportunity with more than 5,000 participants, including a global representation of C-suite executives and venture capitalists representing over 60 nations.”

The conference promises to be a strategic springboard for the global communications industry, providing all attendees with a four-day platform to focus on planning, networking, and discovering what lies ahead for the ICT industry.

Then, there is International Data Center Day in March. This year, Ascent is participating as a supporting sponsor of the event, whose mission is near and dear to our company: “to bring awareness to the data center industry, and to inspire the next generation of talent.” As a technical third-party operator, our future success is dependent on this talent, and we are committed to helping cultivate it today.

Finally, there’s the Association for Computer Operations Management (AFCOM) conference, Data Center World, where Ascent has been tapped to participate in a panel discussion on Edge computing. Intended to provide “the most up-to-the-minute industry education and networking for technology professionals dealing with a rapidly changing landscape,” the conference is being held May 8 – 11 in Austin, Texas. This is the #1 conference for data center facilities and IT professionals, and will featuring over 100 speakers, more than 70 sessions, and over 150 solution providers. Ascent is honored to take part in this annual event.

As you can see, 2023 is off to an eventful and exciting start. This excitement would not exist without our customers, all whom we look forward to seeing again in person this year. Stay tuned as we continue to provide updates on events and other activities planned over the course of 2023! For more information, sign up for the Ascent newsletter from the home page of our website, or follow us on LinkedIn.

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Preparing Data Centers and Mission Critical Facilities for Emergency Events

Meghan Reuther — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 19:06:50 +0000

In a world that’s always on, data center operational readiness is vital. According to meteorological records, there’s been a consistent rise in weather-related disasters since 1980. Extreme weather can take place just about anywhere, with hurricanes, heat waves, ice and snowstorms increasing in frequency. If a natural disaster strikes your region, how prepared is your operations team? Below we discuss how you can ensure the preparedness of your data center emergency response.

Risk Assessment

Performing a risk assessment for your data center is a great way to identify a baseline of the current state of the mission-critical facility, and a cost estimate for improving overall performance and mitigating infrastructure risk. At Ascent, our team works with customers to develop project plans that address infrastructure risks, procure required equipment and manage your data center project.

From assessing mechanical system components that control moisture detection, to fire protection systems such as detection, suppression, and compliance requirements, a risk assessment creates a baseline to understand better your facility’s existing conditions, single points of failure and other areas of potential risk to your data center and its equipment, especially in a weather-related event.

24×7 Support & Emergency Response Plans

Advanced weather tracking and notification systems can provide warning of what’s to come, but they cannot predict the impact to your sites. By understanding your site risks, you can develop an advanced plan with the help of a data center operating partner. Part of that plan may include having a 24x7x365 critical systems monitoring and critical event support team for emergency coordination and on-call technical support during an event.

The Ascent Operations Center (AOC) responds to emergency requests and alerts that come through phone, email, DCIM, and BMS alarm queues, and facilitates communication and coordination during emergency events. Ascent also provides a platform that can do the hard work for you — one that’s customized to your specific requirements. Navigator is a facility-based approach to managing critical systems equipment inventory, maintenance activities and performance metrics.

Finally, it’s critical to follow an Incident Response Plan. In a previous blog, Ascent recommends 10 Emergency Response Procedures that need to be included to ensure data center site operations teams stay one step ahead of the critical response curve.

Before the assessments, response plans, and 24x7x365 support, choosing the right data center partner is imperative. Ascent understands the potential risks in a wide range of critical facility design topologies and equipment conditions. As your partner, we are dedicated to keeping your operations running effectively and efficiently from initial preparation through recovery. You can contact our team directly to learn more about preparing for emergency events at 1.877.427.2368, or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

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DCIM for Infrastructure, DCOM for Data Center Portfolios

Meghan Reuther — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 19:03:41 +0000

In our recent blog about workflows and improving operational reliability in data centers, we made the statement: “While DCIM and other monitoring packages have taken great strides in providing real-time, current-state information, they aren’t designed to help manage your equipment portfolio.” We’d like to use this blog to provide a little more support for our statement. Today’s DCIM systems do an amazing job with facility monitoring and have far surpassed conventional building controls or building automation systems in their ability to integrate with both mission-critical physical and IT infrastructure.

Navigator: The Big View

That last word—infrastructure—is the difference between DCIM and DCOM packages. Ascent’s Navigator platform is a DCOM (data center operations management) package. While DCIM packages focus on the micro—right down to the server level—our DCOM solution brings together all the macro views to manage your entire data center portfolio. The two are not competing platforms, but rather, complimentary systems that look at different sides of the same coin.

For example, DCOM platforms like Navigator provide key connections between facility teams, maintenance providers, and 24/7 operations center. In this way, Navigator streamlines the maintenance contracting, maintenance services, and invoicing processes, while capturing data to provide real-time, key information to facility managers and executive leaders for portfolio oversight and SLA tracking. DCIM systems provide key connections as well, although their strength is in the rack-level management of IT equipment, and the systems that supply power and cooling.

Financial Management

Customized workflows monitor service events, give operations transparency, and help control spending at a site and portfolio level. Navigator shows the maintenance procedures that are currently in process, those that have just been completed, as well as those that are still committed to the budget. It shows notification-to-creation and creation-to-escalation metrics that score vendor performance. Navigator also allows you to manage your facility spending and decision-making in real time so you can maintain your budget, all at the macro level. And at the micro level, DCIM packages allow you to monitor events at the rack and row level—giving you yet another perspective on your facility that, along with your DCOM, brings the whole system into perspective.

Conclusion

To learn more about Ascent’s data center operations management DCOM platform, view our video here. You can also contact our team at 1.877.427.2368, or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

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How Do You Improve Your Data Center Workflow?

Meghan Reuther — Wed, 07 Sep 2022 19:19:28 +0000

While uptime is a given, the challenge in daily data center operations is seldom the equipment itself, but rather the management of workflows designed to ensure its proper operation. In some ways, the CRAH units and UPS system run themselves. But to ensure that they continue to do so day after day means managing the data that they produce, the contractors that service and repair them, and the processes in place to keep the operation running smoothly.

The Operations Challenge

It seems like the more equipment you have, the more sites you manage, and the broader the geography, the greater the challenge in managing workflows. Part of the challenge is that the industry does not necessarily provide the tools you need to get the job done. While DCIM and other monitoring packages have taken great strides in providing real-time, current state information, they aren’t designed to help manage your equipment portfolio.

Stopgap Portfolio Management

Many companies manage their critical sites with traditional property management software and processes, while others have been forced into expensive work ticketing systems with limited in-the-field support capabilities. Unfortunately, this is a little like the proverbial square peg in the round hole. Traditional property management software simply isn’t built for the equipment and processes found in data centers.

Worse probably are manual processes, checklists, and Excel spreadsheets. This approach leaves room for error, and reporting on a multi-site portfolio is difficult at best. Often maintenance service records and documentation aren’t centrally located, which means an onsite tech can’t quickly access current MOPs or service history. On the financial side, this approach makes it difficult to tie costs to specific equipment, which makes it difficult to identify areas to improve operations and reduce energy consumption and expenses.

The Platform Solution

At Ascent, we think the key is to simplify critical facility management for mission critical sites and infrastructure is through purpose-built software and targeted services. Critical facility managers need an operational platform that provides a key connection between their facility teams, maintenance providers, and our 24×7 live support. It is important to streamline the maintenance contracting, maintenance services and invoice processes in order to capture data to provide real time information to facility managers and executive leaders for portfolio oversight and SLA tracking.

Conclusion

Looking to learn more about improving workflows and operational reliability in data centers? Watch our new Navigator video for solutions to these and other critical facility management challenges. You can also contact our team directly to learn more about critical facility management solutions at 1.877.427.2368, or email us at answers@ascentcorp.com.

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