Frank Burchi, director of site operations, Aligned Energy, was named second runner up in the 2018 Mission Critical Magazine Facility Manager of the Year. Frank currently manages three Aligned Energy’s data center facilities with a footprint of one million square feet. Additionally, he works with platform delivery on schedules and oversees condensed delivery dates to ensure customers’ needs are being met, and utilizes Aligned Energy’s deep talent pool to find the best products (reliable and cost effective) for its customers and business operations.
Nominees were judged in three areas: efficiency, innovation, and management.
Efficiency
As director of site operations for Aligned Energy’s Phoenix data center facility, Frank works closely with the company’s mechanical solution controls team to ensure that Aligned Energy can deliver the most efficient solution utilizing its P-Sync deployment and still create the most redundant system possible. This was achieved by commissioning the system in the middle of summer in Phoenix. With these harsh (high temperature) conditions, Aligned Energy was able to trend and track all environmental situations during deployment, to find the thresholds for the entire system. By having this data, Aligned Energy was able to maximize its efficiency with minor adjustments to the chilled water temperature and fan speeds to reduce PUE even more, and still provide the redundancy required to operate in a 2N power and cooling condition.
Additionally, Frank operates directly with Aligned Energy’s customers during their server rack installation to make sure all hot aisles are efficiently contained. Although Aligned Energy’s P-Sync design can handle a mixed air environment to achieve maximum efficiency, containing the hot aisle throughout the server deployment, reduced power consumption.
Aligned Energy’s award-winning data center cooling technology removes heat, instead of forcing cool air into a data hall. Factory-built absorption units capture and remove heat at its source, resulting in a hyper-scalable and highly-efficient environment that constantly adapts to changing IT loads. This cooling technology is efficient in any climate, with an industry-leading power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15.
Innovation
Frank implemented and utilized SharePoint as a document depository for all three facilities (Dallas, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City) to maintain and store all essential documents needed for audits and critical information. He additionally employed a CMMS system for all three facilities to manage work orders, PM’s and projects. By utilizing a centralized system, the customer experience is the same in each facility, thus creating a more efficient and simplified reporting and processing operation.
Management
Frank works directly with the head of IT to get PCI, SOC, and ISO certifications, and with the IT department to develop a customer portal that reflects customer needs.
He also conducts weekly meetings with Aligned Energy’s customers to make sure all KPI’s are being met and that their data center experience is exceptional. A great example of this “white glove” service is assisting in the layout of the cabinets while installing the desired buss plug configuration to support customer needs, making sure that all delivered equipment is tracked and secured as soon as it arrives onsite, auditing their access request as needed and making sure the security team has met their expectations.
Frank has been with Aligned Energy for over three years. He previously worked for
CBRE, Turner Construction, Digital Realty, and AT&T. He resides in Phoenix with his wife and three children.
