Phasing out hot work

Despite years of discussion, warnings and strict regulations in some countries, hot work remains a contentious issue in the data center industry. Hot work is the practice of working on energized electrical circuits (voltage limits differ regionally) — and it is usually done, in spite of the risks, to reduce the possibility of a downtime incident during maintenance.

Uptime Institute advises against hot work in almost all instances. The safety concerns are just too great, and data suggests work on energized circuits may — at best — only reduce the number of manageable incidents, while increasing the risk of arc flash and other events that damage expensive equipment and may lead to an outage or injury. In addition, concurrently maintainable or fault tolerant designs as described in Uptime Institute’s Tier Standard make hot work unnecessary.