DCA REVIEW Resilience & Operational Best Practice
Improved resilience through reduced complexity and increased training
By Beth Whitehead, Sustainability Engineer, Operational Intelligence Ltd and David Cameron, Director, Operational Intelligence Ltd.
THERE IS SUFFICIENT RESEARCH into the causes of failure to assert that any system with a human interface will eventually fail. In the data centre, as with other industries, human error is believed to account for as much as 80% of downtime. Limiting these interfaces and the design complexity, and continually training the humans that operate them is therefore imperative for resilient data centres.
The biggest single barrier to risk reduction is knowledge sharing and lack of risk awareness. Many sites document risk analyses, but often these are not shared with all the operators and therefore their impact is limited. The accumulated experience of a company and the depth of experience of the individual, interact on the universal learning curve, and are important both in reducing risk and addressing energy wastage.
Knowledge sharing becomes more important as the complexity of systems increases, particularly where operators lack experience with the installed system.
Knowledge sharing The educational theorist, Kolb, says that learning is best achieved when we move through all four quadrants of the Kolb Learning Cycle: reflection, theory, practice and experience, shown below.
It is interesting to compare this process with how technical information is transferred on a construction project. Each quadrant is inhabited by a different role, between which contractual boundaries exist, making knowledge transfer difficult. Of particular interest is the handover from installation to operations teams. Much of the knowledge imbedded in the project is lost and the operations team is left to look after a live, critical facility with only a few hours of training and a set of record documents to support them.
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Integrated systems testing (IST), used contractually to ensure systems work as designed to, is now common on data centre projects, but generally includes only limited involvement of the operations team, and therefore limited knowledge transfer. Furthermore, many facilities have little or no communication with the original designer or installation contractor, again limiting opportunities for knowledge transfer.
Consequentially operators are not engaged, and don’t feel sufficiently informed to make changes to optimise system performance, and improve the energy performance of the facility, for fear of introducing risk. This lack of awareness can lead to operational errors, leaving the facility particularly vulnerable
at times of reduced resilience, for example during maintenance. As the complexity of a facility increases, so too does this risk of operational error. It is clear that most failures in the data centre are due to human error.
The human element Site-specific, facility-based training is therefore paramount in reducing the risk of failure from human error. In addition, itÕs important that teams are trained on more than just the area of the facility that they operate, and at every level of the team from manager to site operative. This approach helps them to operate the facility holistically, understanding how each system interacts, and promotes communication between different levels and teams.
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