Dean Stanberry talks with Jim Uhalt and Kyle Butler about keeping data centers resilient. They cover proactive maintenance, aging infrastructure, staffing challenges and how AI, automation, and renewables are driving future-ready, secure operations.
Dean Stanberry, past chair of IFMA’s Global Board of Directors, hosts a discussion with Jim Uhalt, Chief Revenue Officer for Quality Uptime Services, and Kyle Butler, President of RavenVolt, about data centers, uptime, and future-proofing strategies. They explore the importance of maintaining infrastructure, handling aging equipment, and proactive versus reactive maintenance models. They highlight the increasing importance of resilience, climate risk, and cybersecurity in data centers. Additionally, they discuss modernizing energy infrastructure using renewable resources, addressing the challenges of staffing qualified personnel, and the role of AI and automation in optimizing maintenance and meeting ESG goals.
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Jim Uhalt: [00:00:00] Human error is always one of the greatest challenges, right? Until AI starts turning wrenches and actually does maintenance and things of that nature, we're always gonna have that element in our workspace. I think it takes, you know, a three-tiered approach of the facility management, company, the operator, the owners and the vendors to be able to talk about the mops ops, eops, and how they operate those things and do continued training.
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In today's episode, Dean Stanbury, past chair of ifma. Global Board of Directors host a discussion with Jim Alt, chief Revenue Officer for Quality Uptone Services and Kyle Butler, president of Braven Volt about data centers, [00:01:00] uptime, and future proofing strategies. They explore the importance of maintaining infrastructure, handling aging equipment, and proactive versus reactive maintenance models.
They also discuss modernizing energy infrastructure using renewable resources. Addressing the challenges of staffing qualified personnel, the role of AI and automation, optimizing maintenance, and much more. Now, let's get into it.
Dean Stanberry: Hello, and welcome to today's connected FM podcast. I'm Dean Stanbury past chair of IFMA's Global Board of Directors, and today I'm joined by ABM Technical Solutions team members. Jim Uhalt, who is the Chief Revenue Officer for Quality Uptime Services which is a division of ABM and Kyle Butler, president of RavenVolt.
Also a division of A BM. And today we're gonna be talking about data centers [00:02:00] and uptime and future proofing. Myself, I am a former data center manager in my prior life in it ran mainframe data centers back in the dark ages when we still had data stored on magnetic rocks. So we're gonna talk about what the state of the art is here today.
So, Jim, Kyle, anything you want to add before we get started?
Kyle Butler: No, Dean, just appreciate the opportunity to be here. Excited to be a part of the conversation today and dig into this with my colleague Jim, and hopefully give some insights into what we're seeing out in the industry from a resiliency and uptime standpoint as well.
Dean Stanberry: Well, let's dive right into it then. So we have a few areas we wanna touch on. First one is, let's kind of get into that big picture. What does future proofing mean in the context of data center facility maintenance today? And why is it more critical than ever in the digital economy?
Jim Uhalt: Dean, I think items like keeping up to date on [00:03:00] what infrastructure is aging outta support for parts. For life cycling of that equipment. You know, upgrading at a time that has lower risk or impact on your systems before it's an emergency replacement. I think that's one of the things that we're seeing a lot right now in the marketplace.
People trying to extend the life of that equipment beyond the manufacturer's lifecycle and able ability to support.
Kyle Butler: I think. From the broader infrastructure side which is oftentimes the lens we look at it through we're seeing an aging infrastructure issue with the broader electrical grid, right? So it, it enhances the need or puts a microscope on the need to harden our clients behind the meter infrastructure themselves.
and we're seeing that as a theme as we're seeing, how can they ensure that their systems are operational long term, when again, the broader utility grid isn't as reliable as they would like it to be with all the demand and increase in demand we're seeing on the grid.
Dean Stanberry: Now, not everybody I think understands the cost of [00:04:00] downtime in a data center. Do you have any examples of, uh. you know what some of those costs might be for, you know, data center outages, power outages, things like that.
Kyle Butler: I it's a big number. I think it's different for every facility and every client. But I think, again, from an infrastructure standpoint. The fact that we see clients investing so heavily in resiliency and ensuring their systems are driving as, as high of uptime as possible, tells you that the number is big again, regardless of, or depends on what the facility size is and what their specific operations look like, and you know, what client base, they're, they are serving as a data center.
But we always follow the dollars and where clients are investing in resiliency. We know the importance of uptime is critical to their operations.
Jim Uhalt: you know, future proofing and what that means, one of the bigger issues today that we're seeing is having the right staffing, retention strategy. That can affect, you know, how you take care of that gear. So it's beyond the equipment. Today people are one of the bigger challenges we have in this industry to [00:05:00] have enough qualified people to do work at these facilities.
Not only take care of that resiliency, but operate that gear and making sure that, you know, you have the right team that's trained correctly and is doing the right things for ads, moves, and changes.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah. And with resilience. What about the impact of climate risk? Is that something that you're seeing in your planning and design now to, for certain areas, you know, trying to address some of the potential climate volatility in those areas.
Kyle Butler: Yeah, I think it, it inherently comes along with, again, you look at most data centers are very large power users, right? So there's additional focus on these larger power users with their, I'd say outsized impact on the grid and available capacity. Where it is a consideration may, where maybe it wasn't five or 10 years ago.
So we're seeing kind of increased interest in not just your traditional switchgear and backup diesel generation, but we're seeing data [00:06:00] center clients look more holistically at bigger microgrids that include you know, renewable energies, whether it be solar, whether it be batteries or any other types of assets out there.
It's part of the conversation now for sure.
Dean Stanberry: Okay, well let's move on to the next area. So there's really been a real shift towards more strategic approach to maintenance. The industry, how does that differ from the traditional or reactive models that we see in office in buildings? And what does it what impact does that have on reliability and uptime?
Jim Uhalt: So from my perspective, I would say that the reactive or the traditional model often uses a run to failure approach where maintenance work is performed only after a piece of equipment or an asset breaks down. With current lead times on new equipment parts availability, it makes it hard for just in time repairs.
I think, you know, you're starting to see some of the true benefits in ROI of a proactive approach beyond the financial benefits. I think this [00:07:00] builds value with our clients seeing a reduction in impactful incidents and more uptime. It's also just very important to have some of these discussions around.
Capital expenditures in advance with the operations team and the vendors to develop real heat maps to plan accordingly for some of this work in the following year.
Kyle Butler: Yeah, I think I'd add to that. I agree with everything Jim said there. I'd say one, one piece we're seeing not just in the data center world, but across kind of the electrical infrastructure space, the microgrid space that we live in. Is information is power. So when you have a reactive approach and something breaks on site and you send a service technician there to address it, they may or may not have the right spare part.
They may or may not go in with the correct information where they can address the issue as quickly and as efficiently as possible. So. We're seeing more of our clients utilize services similar to what we offer in remote monitoring of these assets. The assets are becoming more sophisticated.
The clients are becoming more sophisticated and their [00:08:00] operations are more and more critical. So with. The ability to remotely monitor down to very granular levels of detail of our equipment. We can do what Jim mentioned, which is be proactive on maintenance and not running to failure, and we can also arm our service technicians with information prior to getting to site where hopefully it's a one and done type trip where they go in, they know what the issue's gonna be. They bring the appropriate parts and knowledge as opposed to having to do an exploratory trip to a site or have to rely on a client to feed us information that may or may not be everything we need to address the problem as quickly as possible. So that kind of internet of things ability to gather information from very granular small pieces of equipment inherently allows us to be more proactive with our maintenance.
Dean Stanberry: So what you're describing is essentially the condition based and predictive maintenance models.
what about any in, in involvement with reliability centered maintenance, [00:09:00] RCM, it's kind of like the next level up.
Kyle Butler: Jim, I'll defer to you on this one.
Jim Uhalt: Yeah, I think many of our customers are running reliability matrix within their portfolios, right? And trying to make the use of all the data that's available in addition to the PM data, in addition to the monitoring that Kyle described, right? You have to. You have to grab more than one point of data.
And it used to just be the calendar based right at this date, we're gonna change out this asset. And that pertains to parts like Kyle said. I think that with supply chain being what it is and having some constraints and just in time repairs are tough to do. Having the right parts strategy with your vendors is one of the more impactful things that you can do.
and who owns those parts? The days of. Comprehensive contracts being a thing for maintenance providers has kind of gone to the wayside and people do a PM only strategy and hedge their own bets on what parts they think they need that are critical. And it's not just your standard parts kits [00:10:00] where it has everything in it that you may never use.
It's more targeted on the most commonly failed parts and trying to get some consistency with their gear and their portfolio and standardization so they don't have to have a myriad of different parts, but. But rather some common ones that are easier to stock across the portfolio.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah. And that all comes with the reliability analysis as well, right? Determining where is our most critical exposure and and that involves procurement, purchasing. You know, is this easy to get or is it hard to get and the harder to get ones you want to have close by 'cause they're not on the shelf at Home Depot. so what are some of the emerging approaches to modernizing data center energy infrastructure? And Kyle, I think you touched on a little bit, such as solar and battery and microgrids, and how does that strengthen the resiliency and reduce costs across the portfolio?
Kyle Butler: Yeah, so this is an area that we're extremely [00:11:00] passionate about and we're seeing a lot of changes in the industry here and trend we're. Is the old model of calling up a local utility and saying, Hey, we wanna build a data center or any large facility here, and we need infrastructure in place. That model is out the window, right?
You hear horror stories of facilities not being operational for years on end because there's just not the local infrastructure there from the broader grid. So we're seeing this trend of especially large data centers taking energy production and their infrastructure into their own hands. Some large players getting into the nuclear game now, or partnering with utilities to get into the nuclear space to give them the capacity they need.
So it's this mix now of owning their infrastructure or at least driving their infrastructure. Not just looking at infrastructure to support resiliency now, but also blending in the economics of it as well. Whether that be using onsite generation for programs like demand response or peak shaving or energy arbitrage or taking [00:12:00] assets and providing base load themselves as opposed to relying on the local utility.
We're seeing that trend. I think the important part is always partnering with your local utility. It's never good to try to work against things always work better when you collaborate with utility, figure out where their pain points are, and now utilize this tremendous set of assets that data centers typically have to work alongside the broader grid.
If you don't take that approach, it's gonna be really difficult for our country in general To meet the demand that we're seeing within the data center space is just simply not gonna happen.
Jim Uhalt: Yeah, Kyle, I agree with everything you just said there. I mean, from what we're seeing, the feeling remains that being in control of your own energy supply is the key to resiliency.
Kyle Butler: Absolutely.
Dean Stanberry: Right. So that kind of gets into the microgrid strategy as well or what they term islanding, you know, get off of the main grid so that you have more control over your local resources. I know that a lot of these apply to, if you use the uptime institute's tier [00:13:00] structure this would be the tier three and tier four style data centers.
Correct. Those are the higher end of the scale. And that's where you probably see a little more investment on these types of strategies. Do you agree?
Kyle Butler: Yeah absolutely. And it's to my comment earlier knowing what the lost revenue or the cost of downtime is. The further you get up that tiering system, typically the bigger the impact is gonna be and therefore the willingness to invest capital to ensure as high of uptime as possible is where that's made possible.
Jim Uhalt: Dean, there's no question integrating renewable energy sources like battery energy, storage systems, microgrids, and even AI driven optimization is what's gonna help get us there.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah, I noticed we, we talk a little bit about the you know, lithium ion battery banks. In my day it was rooms full of the old VR la style, you know, submarine batteries and you have racks and racks of them, you know, for days. I do not miss that part of it.
Kyle Butler: Technology's changed just a little [00:14:00] bit. That's for
Dean Stanberry: just, Just a little bit. What are some of the most common vulnerabilities or overlooked risks in data center facilities that can jeopardize the uptime and how can those be proactively addressed?
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Jim Uhalt: I guess for me, Kyle, it's deferring maintenance That can have a huge impact on uptime, whether that's switch gear, generators, UPS batteries, any failure can [00:15:00] really cripple the overall uptime in unforeseen circumstances.
Kyle Butler: Yeah I'd say the one area that we see fairly consistently across the data center space, or a lot of mission critical facilities in general. Is we have clients that invest a lot of dollars into resiliency. Let's just assume backup diesel generation, for example. But they're afraid to touch it.
They will do that calendar based maintenance on it, run it every month for, you know, five minute, no load test, maybe bringing a load bank every now and then. What we've seen, and there's plenty of studies out there that, that support this. But I tend to use the analogy of. If you had a vehicle parked in your driveway and all you did was turn it on and let it idle once a month for five minutes and you, and in a year you needed to drive that vehicle across country, would you trust it to get you where you needed to go?
Or would you rather have a vehicle that once or twice a month, you started up, you drove around town for a little bit and then you parked back in the driveway, but you actually turned the tires, you got the engine [00:16:00] up. Tell me which one of those scenarios you'd be more comfortable hopping in that vehicle and driving across the country.
And we see the mindset of data centers, hospitals, other missions. If I have to turn my generator on, that's bad thing. We view it as if you look at this generator asset that you have, and you participate in demand response or arbitrage, or some program out there with utility where you're regularly exercising it in real world operations under real world load when the utility's actually available.
So if something goes wrong, you fail right back to the most reliable source, which is your utility. Inherently your system's gonna be more reliable than just hoping and praying that you never have to turn it on. And then in five years you go to start it up. When you do have an emergency, it's not gonna operate the way you want it to.
So, kind of bringing it full circle, looking at assets and trying to utilize them within reason as much as possible to exercise them in real world scenarios is inherently gonna drive reliability for [00:17:00] the site. Again, as opposed to letting it.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah, Jim, I think you referenced this earlier in the conversation that, one of the big challenges is also human error. And that comes from, you know, experience and having, you know, good qualified, experienced staff. 'Cause at least in my day, we had just as much human error as we had, you know, infrastructure failures or some of the problems.
Jim Uhalt: Human error is always one of the greatest challenges, right? Until AI starts turning wrenches and actually does maintenance and things of that nature, we're always gonna have that element in our workspace. I think, too, Dean, as we think about operations of these facilities. Many times we see outsourcing of the operations to different companies.
And the end user maybe not keeping enough involvement or collaboration with the vendors, with the people that are doing that work. I think it takes, you know, a three-tiered approach of the facility management, company, the operator, the owners and the vendors [00:18:00] to be able to talk about the mops ops, eops, and how they operate those things and do continued training.
And stay involved and take ownership of their equipment and not just think that it's gonna operate correctly. And, not considering lessons learned from previous incidents is another one that just seems to pop up in our world all the time. They don't take those lessons learned and cascade that to the organization to improve and not let something happen again.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah, another risk with more things going digital cybersecurity becomes a real issue for itt, ot operations. You know, what are you seeing in terms of, i, I boosting or improving the cyber threat resilience.
Kyle Butler: I think in, in, in our world we see a flavor of it. You know, we lean more towards the infrastructure side, whereas Jim's team handles more of the maintenance. Where we see on the front end of design or even in replacement is depending on the facility. This, as you described, Dean, huge focus on cybersecurity, whether that's [00:19:00] looking at really strict sourcing requirements made in America type requirements.
Lot more due diligence around it than again, what we've seen in the past and. You heard me talk about remote monitoring earlier. That's always a pain point that we see in a lot of questions that we get around. Are we meeting you know, SIP requirements associated with our onsite equipment? And it's again, an area of due diligence.
Not insurmountable, but certainly an area of focus that we tend to have conversations with our clients about.
Dean Stanberry: Okay, so, you know, there's a growing focus on sustainability in data center space. We hear a lot about it today. How can facility maintenance strategies contribute not just to the performance, but also meeting some of those ESG and carbon emission reduction goals?
Jim Uhalt: Yeah, this is a big one, right? Items like air filters, generator fluids, UPS batteries, and some of the items, people will use realtime data to make better decisions versus a calendar based only approach, right? There's things that you [00:20:00] can plan for and do as they're needed. The market is changed.
That's a cost savings. You know, it also contributes to the ESG goals and reduce carbon footprint by not having to do as much of that stuff, dispose of some of those hazardous materials. I think it optimizes performance as well. And then I think you can get into AI and automation, right?
AI driven systems can optimize energy use by predicting equipment failures or optimizing cooling systems, balancing workloads. There's. There's a lot in that area that we're using with our customers today to make it more resilient and meet some of those reduction goals for the carbon footprint.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah, even some of the cooling requirements, again, in my day, we put a bunch of crack units in a room. You set 'em at 66 degrees and leave 'em alone. Now you can use, you know, monitoring, you know, predictive analytics to adjust those temperatures. So maybe you're not cooling it down all the time.
You can reduce some of the load, when it's not [00:21:00] needed. So, you know, data centers come in all shapes and sizes. What are some of the facility maintenance strategies or approaches? That can support data centers of varying sizes and operational needs.
Kyle Butler: I think Jim would probably echo this as well. But a lot of it's gonna come back to the staffing and the people, right. You know, the larger the facility. The more difficulty you're gonna have getting the amount of qualified folks that you, that you need from a maintenance standpoint, from an operation standpoint that is where partnering with the company like a, BM and others out there to outsource some of that staffing with expertise that we can bring into the critical environment, I think allows clients to be flexible whether they operate small or large facilities.
certainly again, the larger your facility is the more qualified folks you need. Just the bigger hurdle it is to keep staffing levels at an.
Jim Uhalt: Yeah, there's no question, Kyle. I think the one thing that we do a little bit differently is we self perform a lot of those maintenance [00:22:00] activities, whether it's switchgear, mechanical, UPS, maintenance, batteries. Not having to outsource that and do a managed service or have to chaperone those employees, having 'em show up all the time to do preventative maintenance, to have a crew that does all the repairs.
It becomes their facility and they take a vested interest in making sure that it has, you know, the highest level of serviceability and, you know, ability to stay up all the time. I think at the core of all this, and what I see more times than not in any facility across the country is their asset management.
I. A comprehensive practice that details and documents the equipment, you know exactly what you have, the configuration, the repair histories. I can't tell you how many times we've come across a facility that doesn't have an accurate equipment list or the proper breaker coordination documentation. It all starts and ends right there with having a successful maintenance program.
Dean Stanberry: don't have to sell me on that. I'm right there with you. You know, I've spent a lot of time [00:23:00] looking at you know, maintenance management systems across a variety of industry sectors. The data quality or lack thereof has been one of the biggest issues that I find almost every time when I walk in a door is that they want the advanced features, but they haven't done the basic blocking and tackling.
And so all we got is garbage data to feed into the, you know, advanced tools and that doesn't work. So,
Jim Uhalt: That's it.
Dean Stanberry: e exactly. Last question, and we'll try to keep this one brief, is just looking ahead, what innovations or trends in facility maintenance and infrastructure resiliency do you think will define the next decade of data centers?
Kyle Butler: Yeah I'll hit the infrastructure side. I alluded to it earlier, but clients really taking ownership of their energy production. Again, not just counting on the utility and whether that looks like I. Clients truly taking ownership of their energy production and building, owning, maintaining their own [00:24:00] microgrid assets or baseload assets, or another theme we're seeing and that a lot of third parties are looking to own the energy infrastructure for data centers and other large power users, allowing those large users to focus on their core business while a third party that is not the local utility.
Owns the energy infrastructure in a PPA arrangement or other financial structure. We're starting to see a flavor for that, you know, bridge to permanent power or third party ownership of generating assets on site that allows the client to scale up faster and focus on their core business as well.
Jim Uhalt: Yeah, that's great Kyle. I agree with that 100%. I think as I go back to the maintenance side of the house there's a lot to learn on liquid cooling maintenance and how the manufacturers of the equipment plan to support. Some of our mutual clients. I also go back to the ability to train and invest in the people and the workforce to develop them, to be able to take care of these facilities.
Having enough skilled professionals between all the different disciplines, whether you're an [00:25:00] OEM and independent a property management firm and end user, we're all struggling and competing for some of the same talent out in the marketplace.
Dean Stanberry: I'll just add that one of the things I see is the increase in, you know, autonomous inspection capabilities. You know, drones, robots, fixed vision systems. You know, basically augmenting the lack of, you know, what we used to have is building tours, right? People walking around, putting eyes and ears on equipment and so forth.
Having something that can actually literally monitor at 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and warn you when you think there's a problem out there.
Kyle Butler: Very
Jim Uhalt: there's no question that's gonna be augmenting the talent shortage, right? That you're not using it to cut workforce, but you're using it to. Keep the good ones that you have and reward them and use that to gain some efficiencies within your workforce.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah. Supplementing what we do have, well, I think that kinda wraps it up. Any closing thoughts either of you'd like to share before we wrap up the [00:26:00] conversation?
Kyle Butler: I think just to close it out from our end, again, appreciate the opportunity and always enjoy talking about resiliency and trends in the market that we're seeing you know, would ask you to keep an eye out for Raven Volt and a BM in the space. It's a, an area that we're really excited about and add a ton of value to our clients from a resiliency and infrastructure standpoint. Us out on LinkedIn. Check us out on our website. Happy to have conversations around any of your facility infrastructure needs.
Jim Uhalt: Yeah, I appreciate the time from everyone here today. It's always good to catch up with some like-minded industry folks on what some of the trends are and where the market's going. You know, we're excited for our self performance and our operations model within a BM quality uptime.
So, you know, what's next is always the most exciting piece for us.
Dean Stanberry: Yeah. And from my perspective this is an area where the increasing levels of sophistication really demand, you know, the qualified professionals working on it. So it's not something you can [00:27:00] just bring in anybody. Or if you're not paying attention to it as an owner, you know, you're, you can expect that there's gonna be those disasters happening and you don't want that.
So, happy to see a BM, you know, leaning into this space and making sure you've got all the right, you know, talent and resources behind it. So, thank you.
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