What could the Airline Mission Critical team learn from its Flight Department?
Jet airlines and data centres have to keep the busses powered – In fact the Boeing 787 really is a flying data centre that moves at over 80% the speed of sound.
Joe ‘Jonesy’ Jones, CEO and Co-Founder of ICɅRUS OpsTM. Jonesy has 30 years of flight both in commercial and military aircraft
It now appears the latest 100 million dollar error was not a “power surge” but a preventable human error during routine critical power system maintenance. So what could the airline Data Center team learn from its Flight Department?
No, airline Data Center operations and the flight department don’t normally collaborate – but that needs to change.
Both teams operate incredibly complex, expensive and redundant machines but flight operations makes it easy for pilots (us humans) to do their jobs. Mission critical teams focus on systems and redundant hardware not on the human interaction with it.
Both teams do face similar consequences for an untrapped human error, possible loss of life. Just think of a hospital that cannot get access to medical records, and millions of dollars of direct and indirect cost. Airline flight operations departments have been forced to mitigate the consequences of human error in order to conduct daily flight operations with non-lethal outcome.
Data Center operations however can get by with very little operational focus since it can be years until an abnormal event occurs that requires direct and professional human input.
New airliners are equipped with modern digital checklists systems to help make it simple for pilots to complete every step, every time for both normal and emergency procedures. We are also given hundreds of hours of quality training and simulation before we actually fly a new jet.
Joe ‘Jonesy’ Jones, CEO and Co-Founder of ICɅRUS Ops.
In contrast, multi million dollar data centers operations teams are often handed a few crappy generic procedures in three ring binders, engineering diagrams and one liners to operate the mission critical sites. Poorly written procedures are often thrown together during commissioning with very little effort to actually test the procedures when the is no critical load present to verify they work and are simple to follow.
To make things worse those present at the commissioning, are often no longer present years later when those critical power system need to be properly isolated for maintenance. Or when emergency procedure is required to get the facility off UPS when it did not happen automatically. Tick tock, tick tock.
Training syllabus, “Why bother this baby is unsinkable!”
The way forward:
-Make a perfect automated system that requires no human interaction at all.
If unable then:
-Deploy the right team and allocate enough time during commissioning to accurately write and test all normal operations (MOPs, SOPs) and anticipated abnormal procedures (EOPs) to make sure they can be easily followed by the Mission Critical Operations team. Capture pictures and videos to embed in the procedure to make it easy to accomplish them in the future.
-If the facility is already commissioned, just get cracking on improving all normal and abnormal procedures, do it every day. Get some outside help if required.
-Today’s procedures should be available on mobile technology and should guide a technician step by step. With embedded pictures, videos and animations where required to make it simple to get things right.
-Make sure your system and leadership actually measure completion and compliance. It’s of no value to have good procedures if they are not followed.
-Use the system everyday during rounds checks and conduct regular practice walks of abnormal and normal procedures to ensure they are understood, constantly improved and that the team is proficient in their usage.
-Use your high quality procedures and procedure system as the baseline for your training syllabus.
Whose Job Is It Anyway?
Its leadership’s job to make sure they have the tools and training to minimize those risks. A good example is Compass Data Centers. Their CEO Chris Crosby is building the 737 of data centers with solid engineering and redundant Tier III systems but he also knew that to be truly successful over the long hall the data centers actually have to provide operational tools needed to mitigate human error.
With his backing and support ICɅRUS Ops have invested 3 years building and maturing an interactive digital checklists system based on what we learned in military and commercial aviation, as well as high reliability and mission critical environments such as Dad Centers.
As a result new Compass Data Centres are delivered with advanced operation procedures housed in our ICɅRUS Ops system, this makes it easy for new operators to manage their new Compass Datacenter.
Bottom line let’s make it easy for mission critical teams to do their jobs; so easy in fact even a pilot could do it! Jonesy
Please give us a call or drop an email to info@icarusops.com to set up a demonstration.
