As lockdowns are lifted and reopening begins across the country, building owners, property managers, and employers face the same concerns: how to ensure their facilities are safe for their occupants and clients. Buildings have been closed for months, with only routine janitorial service and monitoring. Even after offices are aired and freshened, more than standard cleaning is going to be needed to keep everything safe and disinfected.

As we turn the corner in the COVID-19 pandemic, many workplaces are beginning the return to in-person work. While more and more people are getting vaccinated, not all will choose to or be able to do so. To return to work safely, you need to take steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in your workplace. In addition to masking and social distancing where possible, preventative decontamination is one of the best ways to stop the spread of COVID-19.

This past year has been hard on families and businesses in light of COVID-19, with many people losing their jobs or being forced to work from home. As businesses are starting to reopen and employees are planning to return to the office, businesses need to come up with a plan to keep people healthy.

Pegasus has been named to Inc. magazine’s annual list of the Best Workplaces for 2021. Hitting newsstands May 18 in the May/June 2021 issue, and as part of a prominent Inc.com feature, the list is the result of a wide-ranging and comprehensive measurement of American companies that have created exceptional workplaces and company culture whether teams are operating in person or remotely.

 

Learn how compassion drives a more connected company culture, employee satisfaction, and good business

 

If you’re a cleanroom manager, or if you work in a critical environment (like a robotics lab, a research facility, or a pharmacy) then you may have already heard about disinfectant fogging. Fogging solutions are getting a lot of attention these days because they’re one of the best ways to maintain a pristine and sterile environment. In fact, fogging is an amazingly thorough way to sterilize and disinfect not just cleanrooms, but any high-risk environment.

Maintaining a clean environment is one of the most important things we can do when it comes to keeping ourselves safe from disease. If you are a cleanroom manager, or if you work in a densely populated  environment (like an office building) or in a critical environment (like a pharmacy or a data center), then you already understand the crucial importance of cleaning protocols.  Today, the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic have made us all understand the limitations of our normal cleaning and disinfecting procedures. 

Cleanroom environments are unlike any other. They come with challenges and requirements that are specific to their construction, classification, and purpose. Not only do you and your cleaning crew need to have a thorough understanding of the regulations specific to the controlled environment, but so does everyone who enters the room. You need to establish a clear set of rules to follow to limit the amount of particulate in the room, the disruption of particles, and general contamination.

Keeping cleanrooms contaminant-free is a fundamentally crucial goal. When contaminants enter a cleanroom, it can cost a significant amount of money to remediate the facility. In extreme cases, the cost of a fast-spreading fungal, viral or bacterial infection can be human lives.

With so many responsibilities being faced by data center management today, consistent facility cleanings can easily go overlooked. Here's why regular maintenance is a good investment for your organization and a must for any data center. 

Cost Benefits of Regular Data Center Cleaning

With a global scale of 138.9 billion USD in 2020, the data industry has become one of the most prolific markets in the digital era today. Data has become such a precious resource because of the benefit it brings to successful business decision making. Still, for it to have any value, it must manage it effectively. Doing so is no small task, as data center managers have their hands full with the number of responsibilities it takes to ensure the successful maintenance of the facilities which store the 21st century's most valuable commodity. 

To appreciate just how vital data center management is, we'll take a look at all it entails, as well as one critical element that often goes overlooked: regular data center cleaning. As we'll see, a data center manager's job is a critical one, and although they face many technical duties, neglecting this aspect of facility management is a financial risk they cannot afford to take.

What is Data Center Management? 

As with any commodity, data must be stored, maintained, and protected to uphold its value. That process looks different for a digital resource like data, so preserving the worth of these 1s and 0s takes a particular skill set. 

Enter data center management. Charged with the task of maintaining the integrity of all stored and incoming data, these digital stewards face a number of IT and technical challenges, including:

• Upgrading hardware and operating systems.
• Managing data distribution.
• Optimizing storage capacity.
• Guarding against cybersecurity and hacking threats.
• Working within the financial constraints of the data center.
• Ensuring data center best practices.

A job description as challenging as a Data Center Manager requires a combination of technical and administrative expertise. When the cost of downtime and facility maintenance, coupled with that responsibility, data center management's importance that leaves no detail overlooked quickly becomes evident. 

Unfortunately, one aspect of DCM that is often neglected amidst all the security protocol and OS upgrades is thorough data center cleaning. It may sound trivial at first, but failure to implement a maintenance regimen that adheres to all data center cleaning standards can be very costly. It can have a severe impact on an organization's bottom line. 

Why is Regular Data Center Cleaning Important?

Today's servers are made from electrical circuits built on the micro — and sometimes nanoscale, making them more efficient and fragile than ever. The smallest dust particle or contaminant could potentially shortcircuit entire servers, resulting in expensive downtime and perhaps resulting in the loss of massive amounts of data. Because of that, DCM's must carefully clean these data centers following the strictest guidelines, and much investment goes into ensuring their optimal performance. Here are a few statistics to explain just how much is riding on the maintenance of these facilities and how much it costs when something goes wrong.

• The average data center outage costs $8,851 per minute.
• The average data center outage time is 83.6 minutes, at a cost of $740,357 per outage.
• 11% of all outages are caused by inadequate duct and air conditioning system cleaning — 10% more than those caused by weather. 
• The cost of electricity for a standard 150,000 square foot data center is $100,000 per year, much of which is used for cooling. 
• 60% of available cooling is wasted due to bypass airflow, resulting in wasted electricity expenditures. 
• A thorough cleaning could reduce the typical data center electric bill by up to 20–25 percent. 
• The International Standard for Clean Rooms, Clean Zones, and Controlled Environments requires a maximum particle count of 3.52 million particles per square meter that may exceed 0.5 micrometers. 

The high data center cleaning standards that must be met show that this type of maintenance requires a technical skill that matches the servers they protect. We've compiled a list of cleaning procedures that should be practiced in any data center. Still, the takeaway from the above numbers is twofold: First, that a data center outage is a severe financial burden to be avoided at all costs, and second, that consistent data center cleaning to prevent those outages is an investment worth making.