Monday 1 November 2010

Standby power testing

I visited the bank's branch office on the edge of Istanbul. As part of my brief I inspected the building and IT infrastructure supporting the local trading floor. I was being shown around by the local IT Director. It came to the point where I was investigating the standby power facilities.
"Show me the standby power facilities please?"
"Oh you mean the generator? It is out the back in the shed on its own."
Three minutes later...
"This looks to be in good order. How frequently do you test the generator? Once a month?"
"Oh no Sir, we don't ever do test runs."
"Why not? How are you confident the generator will start if there is an outage?"
"It is not a problem. The mains power here fails at least once a month. So we know the generator works just fine."
Stunned silence on my part ...

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