Welcome to the new decade, where uber-scale is the new normal. I can’t even keep track of the new data centers announced last year. We seem to have mastered the art of data center power delivery systems at scales that were previously unimaginable.

Six years ago, Richard Zbin was asked to “fill in” as facility manager while his company searched for a permanent replacement. Today, he is the proud winner of the 2019 Facility Manager of the Year contest. So how did he get from point A to point B?

Within a short time frame, hyperscale data centers have gone from being designed with a typical wholesale data center layout to industrial-level design.

ASHRAE, a global nonprofit membership organization with more than 57,000 members in more than 130 countries worldwide, has been leading the engineering and development of facility standards and guidelines for 120-plus years.

There is a growing move toward more normalized data center equipment and designs, especially among cloud and colocation providers and extending from core to edge.

Old manufacturing facilities bite the dust every year in the U.S. Artificial intelligence (AI) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) have provided opportunities for newer “smart plants” to replace stodgy, old manufacturing systems that aren’t worth rebuilding.