Courses

This course prepares data center personnel to safely perform routine work in electrical, mechanical, and IT infrastructure spaces by covering OSHA-aligned data center safety requirements, including electrical safety and arc-flash protection, lockout/tagout, confined spaces, hazard communication and PPE, fire safety and battery rooms, hearing conservation, and walking-working surfaces and ergonomics.

Data centers are among the highest-risk environments for serious electrical injury in general industry. This course prepares data center personnel — facilities technicians, electricians, critical-facilities engineers, and operations staff — who work on or near energized UPS, PDU, switchgear, and battery-plant equipment to recognize electrical shock and arc-flash hazards, apply OSHA 29 CFR 1910 Subpart S and NFPA 70E requirements, select correct PPE, and respond safely to an electrical emergency.

Fire is one of the few hazards that can simultaneously threaten every person in a data center and the mission it supports. This course covers the fire triangle and prevention, portable fire extinguisher classes and use, clean-agent gaseous suppression and pre-action sprinkler systems, VRLA and lithium-ion battery room fire hazards including thermal runaway, and each employee's role in the facility's Emergency Action Plan.

Data centers are not chemical plants, but they are not chemical-free either: battery electrolyte, diesel fuel, glycol coolant, refrigerants, cleaning agents, and adhesives are all present in a typical facility. This course covers OSHA's Hazard Communication Standard (GHS labels and Safety Data Sheets), the chemical hazards commonly found in a data center, and OSHA's general PPE requirements, including the employer's hazard assessment obligation and correct PPE selection.

Not every data center hazard is dramatic. Hearing loss, slips and falls, and musculoskeletal injuries develop gradually or happen during routine, everyday tasks. This course covers hearing conservation (OSHA 29 CFR 1910.95), walking-working surfaces and ladder/fall protection (OSHA 1910 Subpart D and 1910.23), and ergonomics and safe lifting principles under the General Duty Clause and NIOSH guidance.

Lockout/tagout (LOTO) — formally "the control of hazardous energy" — is the set of practices that keeps machinery and equipment from unexpectedly starting up, energizing, or releasing stored energy while someone is servicing or maintaining it. In a data center, LOTO is complicated by redundancy: equipment is often fed by more than one source, so a device that looks "off" can still be energized. This course covers OSHA's energy control requirements and how they apply to UPS systems, generators, PDUs, switchgear, and battery plants.

A confined space is any area large enough to enter, with limited means of entry or exit, that is not designed for continuous occupancy. Data centers contain more of these spaces than most people realize: crawl spaces beneath raised access floors, underground cable vaults and manholes, cooling-tower basins and sumps, water-treatment vaults, and some battery room and electrical vault configurations. This course covers how to recognize these spaces and the OSHA-required permit system (29 CFR 1910.146) that governs entry.