Learn three major differences and find out what suits you best.
Think of traditional facility maintenance, such as for an office building, as your local doctor in a nearby clinic. Critical facility operations, on the other hand, is like a trauma surgeon in a hospital ER.
1. Critical facilities operations focuses more than just the basics.
Traditional facilities management focuses on the basics – making sure the lights, heating and cooling are working. Critical facilities operations rigorously adheres to industry best practices. In a critical facility, if various elements aren’t tuned precisely it could mean equipment failure and potential customer downtime, which is unacceptable.
2. Critical facilities operations document EVERYTHING.
For traditional facilities management, documentation and reporting likely comes down to a manual that may be years old, with a list of services performed in the past.In a data center, teams document every little tweak, including who made it and why. This means necessary changes can be done in real time and on the fly to prevent downtime. In addition, critical data center operations teams conduct emergency preparedness drills and have in place detailed emergency response plans to ensure all personnel are aware and competent.
3. When downtime is an inconvenience or a catastrophe.
In terms of financial risk, if the power goes out in an office building, it’s an inconvenience, but not the end of the world.But if power goes out in a data center, downtime can cost enormous sums of money – an average of USD8,850 per minute according to a Ponemon Institute study.
