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Bad "Buss Duct" Causes Week-long Closure of 5,000 Employee Federal Complex
McGruber (1417641) writes In Atlanta, an electrical problem in a "Buss Duct" has caused the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center to be closed for at least a week. 5,000 federal employees work at the center. While many might view this as another example of The Infrastructure Crisis in the USA, it might actually be another example of mismanagement at the complex's landlord, the General Service Administration (GSA). Probably no one wants to go to work in an Atlanta July without a working A/C.
Link doesn't work.
But then, that'd be admitting that privatization isn't a perfect and wonderful cure for all that ails us.
An electrical problem effects power to a signle building, this is news? This has nothing to do with "failing infrastructure" like old bridges, highway maintenance, or such. It's an electrical problem in a single building.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If you don't know, buss duct is a power distribution component. It generally carries at least 1000 amps, sometimes much more depending on size. So... Yeah. Basically no power in probably half the building.
For those who are wondering, a "buss duct" is a duct that contains "busbars", which are generally large flat copper bars that conduct substantial current.
From the Wikipedia...
The cross-sectional size of the busbar determines the maximum amount of current that can be safely carried. Busbars can have a cross-sectional area of as little as 10 mm2 but electrical substations may use metal pipes of 50 mm in diameter or more as busbars. An aluminium smelter will have very large busbars used to carry tens of thousands of amperes to the electrochemical cells that produce aluminium from molten salts.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
"Probably no one wants to go to work in an Atlanta July without a working A/C."
If the settlers were such wimps, Atlanta wouldn't be a city.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
A fool's drivel repeated often enough will some day end up in the lexicon, especially in the moden age of instant mass communications, but that does not make it correct.
"Buss" is not a word, but because there was an electrical manufacturing company called "Bussman" that makes fuses, and people would often shorten it to "Buss Fuses", other illiterates have created a spurious spelling that uses "buss" instead of "bus". It's still incorrect however, in spite of the illiterates repeating it on the internet.
This holds true within the electrical trade, as many old-timers frequently write (not type!) "buss" -- I often see it on equipment labels, one-line drawings, etc.
Beware of the Leopard.
That building complex was overhauled in 1997 by Inglett & Stubbs electrical contractors, who did $14 million of electrical work. This failure may or may not be their fault, but it's not because of neglected infrastructure.
Here's the article: Nunn federal building expected to reopen Monday
Here is a link to a story about the outage.
Therefore, the chiller plant and a large portion of the building’s electrical grid were rendered inoperable
It is also difficult to work without lights, computers, routers, PBX, etc.
I think that most of the early settlers weren't exactly going there for the tropical weather and field entomology experience.
The question is whether appropriate maintenance was done subsequently; a failure to do so would indeed constitute a symptom of the infrastructure crisis, which is often caused by routine maintenance being cut as a 'painless' cost saving for a financially strapped government. Then it comes back and bites them...
You're right - advocates of privitization have always claimed that no private person will ever screw up. Wait, no. So, better to hire somebody who cannot be fired ... because they'll never screw up? Are you sure this story isn't proving the opposite of what you think if does?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is all about conservatives promoting the meme that government can't do anything right is all. Generally speaking not worth wasting electrons on, which is ironic since a lack of them due to a mechanical problem is all we're talking about here.
Newsflash: in a large complex system any failure can and will have undesired consequences.
A fool's drivel repeated often enough will some day end up in the lexicon, especially in the moden age of instant mass communications, but that does not make it correct.
If it is used often enough it DOES make it correct, particularly when it is used that way within a trade. That is how languages are formed in the real world. Not from ivory tower dictates of grammar nazis like yourself.
"Buss" is not a word
Except that it is. It means Kiss according to Webster. It is also a fairly common shortened spelling of a Busbar. Bus is a contraction of the latin word "omnibus", meaning "for all".
This holds true within the electrical trade, as many old-timers frequently write (not type!) "buss" -- I often see it on equipment labels, one-line drawings, etc.,
Then you have contradicted your own argument and it is de-facto correct if it is used that way commonly within the relevant trade.
Similarly, one could say:
"You're right - opponents of privitization have always claimed that no public employee will ever screw up."
Wait, no, that isn't true, is it? So yeah, don't pretend the argument is against "somebody who cannot be fired" either.
If you want to think about it though, try this:
One, you can fire somebody to get your way, which may mean taking shortcuts, doing it cheaper, and violating safety, because you can always threaten to fire them, and doing things cheaper or whatever is more gain for you.
Or you can not be able to fire somebody to get your way, so when something is wrong, they can and will stand up and say "Hey, no, you shouldn't do that" and you can't threaten them into silence by terminating them.
So when is a person more inclined to do the right thing?
Answer that riddle, and we can implement your perfect form of operations management.
I work for a financial institution who's "geek campus" was knocked out by a very similar failure. The AC buss feeding the 4th-8th floors exploded; the site of the explosion was in the lower level network test lab. So not only knocked out the power of the building, but splattered burnt debris, molten metal, and a lot of smoke throughout a mini data center, many of whose more expensive fans (servers, routers, and a demo analytics engine) ran for about 30 minutes thanks to the uninterruptible power supply. The bar just somehow came in contact with the duct, in the middle of a Saturday night. (thank FSM no one was in there)
Buss bars and their ducts are inspected, including a periodic "scan" with infra red cameras to look for hot-spots. The point here is that the electric industry knows they can fail catastrophically, and have specs for maintenance that prevent this happening. So why does it happen? Are property managers being allowed to cut inspections to save money/increase rate of return? Are municipalities leaving the policing of this maintenance to "self regulation"? Are manufacturers skimping on the materials in a way that makes a much more subtle failure possible? The buss and duct event I'm relating here occurred some feet away from the up-turn; did the vertical component stretch, instead of the horizontal portion sag?
I've no knowledge of the events in Atlanta, other than to say "Holy shit, perhaps we SHOULD look into a systemic failure of our societal handling of buss duct maintenance." This generalization is based on working around hundreds of these ducts, ages measured in days to decades, and never seeing a failure before that weekend night explosion at work. I'll reinforce my statement with this event at the CDC, a place where such failures can have public health effects for the entire country.
They had to cut back on something so the ultra rich could pay less tax.
God bless America!
I worked for a company in the 2009 time frame where the AC went out regularly in the summer months in Houston. I came in after a stay in the hospital to an office that was 95 degrees. July anywhere on the Gulf Coast can be bad, but in August/September, it's even worse.
Not too surprising. I worked in a building in Atlanta where the UPS's in the computer room kept tripping for no apparent reason and kept reporting wiring faults. We had half a dozen electrical inspectors and electricians in to try to find out why and none could. I brought in a volt meter from home and checked the outlets. The "ground" from the sub-panel in the room was at +50 volts relative to the return neutral side of the line. The sub-panel had been connected to a transformer in the main electrical room on the floor that was not wired correctly. We had to shut down the computer room for two or three days while they replaced the transformer -- and then they wanted to charge us for it!
have always claimed that no private person will ever screw up
Cite one quote of a person in authority that has ever said or written that.
This is all about conservatives promoting the meme that government can't do anything right is all.
Where's there's smoke, there's fire. Maybe it's a meme because it's true?
Many of the effected people are not government employees, they are hourly contractors doing clerical and office work. They either have to take vacation or go without pay, and not getting paid for a week when you are making maybe $15/hour is not pleasant. Some can work from home but since the outage was unexpected they may not have their work laptop at home. How do I know this? I have a friend who works there.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Really think about it is there some filter that puts idiots in to government employment while private industry only get the goods ones while paying a lower wage?
How is that?
Why doesn't it affect the military?
Why doesn't it affect congress?
Maybe we should privatize that.
That is why it is a meme.
Just a rationalization to get a lower cost solution.
into the same structure per the National Electrical Code. Only exception is for different voltages, etc.
Every building has some electrical switchgear that constitutes a "single point of failure", and it is mandated to do so by code. Simplifies cutting off power by first responders in an emergency, etc.
Buss duct is generally not stocked by local distributors, and may have been custom made to order (angle/offsets/termination sections anyway) so depending on what exactly burned up, they could be a while sourcing replacement parts.
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It's a regular template among the privatization crowd. Government only had to accomplish X but screwed up here, here, and here. Privatize and that won't happen. Barely hidden assumptions include: private operations never screw up, private operations never cheat.
you have multiple electric entrance points, you have circulating currents among the grounds. every neutral/ground has to be bonded to the capacity of ALL the building current sourcing to prevent this. last one I visited with a camera, a paint store almost burned down. last one I visited on a data equipment field trip, the staff electrician almost got killed with a hand on one building wall and a hand on the next building's wall.
requires very careful engineering. you're better off to have a standby generator plant and screw trying to get multiple feeds in the first place. that kind of thing requires you to be in very precise locations between serving companies.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Problem is so bad that even duct tape can't fix it.
Table-ized A.I.
This actually is an infrastructure aging problem. And the incidence of buss duct failure has been increasing in older buildings. Many bus ducts installed in industrial and commercial facilities are immediately downstream of the transformers, but upstream of the main overcurrent device. Thus, transformer protection devices often inadequately protect the buss conductor from being fried by a short. I've seen them vaporized.
Such shorts occur due to water infiltration, corrosion, and most importantly in the summer, overheating. All three effects accumulate over time. If money were no object, every building would have a dual-buss electrical system, just like aircraft (and data centers) do. Alas, money is an object.
You're right - advocates of privitization have always claimed that no private person will ever screw up. Wait, no. So, better to hire somebody who cannot be fired ... because they'll never screw up? Are you sure this story isn't proving the opposite of what you think if does?
How about just a reporter who knows what a "bus" (sic) is?
n/t
It is actually, meaning "kiss", but a "kiss duct failure" sounds more like supposed plot of "the human centipede" than an engineering problem in Atlanta.
your claim that every building would use buss ducts at all shows that you are not knowledgeable of them, or electrical wiring methods in general.
No, the assumption is that when the private operator screws up he will get fired and replaced. This is unlike someone protected by the Civil Service Act, who is next to impossible to fire. The template of most in the privatization crowd (excepting those who are really just pushing to move that money to their cronies) is that the private operator will have greater incentive to avoid screwing up in order to avoid getting fired, while the "civil servant" has no such fear. Whether or not that template is accurate is another question entirely.
Apparently you are unaware of this basic economic principle which those who push privatization take as a basic assumption.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
buss
bÃ(TM)s/Submit
NORTH AMERICANarchaicinformal
noun
1.
a kiss.
verb
1.
kiss.
In my fading memory it also meant to touch or connect.
and there are modern data centers that only use buss ducts essentially as a high power plug mold for the racks to tap into. no where else in a brand new $300M data center is there a buss duct and it's not because of a budget. The government doesn't know what a budget is.
That's the second level. Your barely hidden assumption is that the contractor is easier to fire than an individual employee (so why hasn't anyone been fired for the F35?) and actually will be fired by the guys who look bad if they have to fire the contractor they hired.
At least the government employee can be made the permanent latrine officer until he quits.
It's a regular template among the privatization crowd. Government only had to accomplish X but screwed up here, here, and here. Privatize and that won't happen. Barely hidden assumptions include: private operations never screw up, private operations never cheat.
Making these kinds of generalizations are not very helpful. What is X, what was the screw up, here, here, here, and what's the best way to handle it? Sometimes privatization IS the answer, but jumping to it can lead to crony capitalism, favoritism, secret deals and even worse outcomes than before. Frankly, I always thought the best examples of slow, opaque, inefficient bureaucracy were in federal government agencies - then I had to deal with Northrop Grumman.
One major issue that must be considered when privatizing, is the function that is being privatized. If you have a service provided by government that can wholly be done by private companies and provide better and more efficient service to citizens, it's certainly a candidate to consider. What is often done, though, is outsourcing of internal functions, such as accounting or IT or, as in this case, facility management. The problem is that when these things are privatized, it's done though legislation, the function is handed over to a company, government employees are laid off or transitioned, and now the actually customer, which is the agency still providing services. But now they are stuck with basically a monopoly providing those services. Due to the top-down nature of control from the legislature and administration, the agency itself is unable to control the costs and service levels. I've seen agencies lay off front-line service employees to cover increasing costs from their private IT contractor. They are unable to fire or hold their service company to account - they have to lobby the legislators or legislative oversight committees to do that. And the contractor has their own lobbyists. This is where "privatization" goes horribly wrong.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
You ask a very good question, and it is a very good one. If the contractor screwed up, he should get fired. However, the failure to fire the private contractor is not a problem with privatization, but with government. As an example, the VA administrators who went beyond screwing up to active misconduct not only did not get fired, they received bonuses...and their bosses initially attempted to claim that those bonuses could not be withdrawn.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Really think about it is there some filter that puts idiots in to government employment while private industry only get the goods ones while paying a lower wage?
Sort of. It's generally referred to as "job security". Most government agencies have both good and worthless employees. The thing is, in government, the worthless employees are almost impossible to get rid of. So those agencies can never be as efficient as a company that can hire people at-will, and can cut staff that is not contributing. Yes, it's possible to fire government employees, but it's very difficult, and it requires putting resources into all the paperwork required to make it happen and avoid lawsuits. And there are all kinds of things that go on in government that perpetuates that, such as tribute, PC issues, long-term employees with strategic relationships, etc. And so the response when more resources are needed is never to look for the lowest-level contributors, but to simply hire more people to make up for the dead weight.
Of course this issue is not strictly limited to government, it can happen to some degree in any old, large bureaucratic organization. But since most government agencies fall into that category, and exist in perpetuity, and rarely if ever face budget cuts, it's more pervasive in government than in private industry.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Thus he has an incentive to hide the mistake for as long as possible. At the same time he has an incentive to cut as many corners as possible to minimize costs, so he can make the lowest offer. You can counter these by making him unfirable for anything short of intentional sabotage, and by providing the contract at profit + costs, but then you have lost all the supposed benefits of privatization and are actually paying more - those profits.
Economics has nothing to do with either proposing or opposing privatization, it's all about ideology.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Down at the bottom line though is that privitization can never be as cheap as optimal government services. Function X costs at least Y to perform. Even under ideal conditions, a private contractor can at best deliver it for Y+a profit. Supporters of privitization believe that the private corporation will be so much more efficient that that higher amount will still be less than it costs to do internally.
Of course, once you add all the overhead of dealing with the many checks and balances and all the metrics and paperwork to make sure the private contractor isn't cheating, you inevitably drive those nimble and efficient private contractors away leaving NG and their ilk to win the contracts. Every last bit of that bureaucratic bloat plus a hefty profit will be added to the bill. That includes the small army of lawyers on retainer to make sure that if anything goes wrong, it will somehow be the government's fault so they can tack the overruns on to the bill. Eventually, that procedure becomes easier and more profitable than keeping costs down. That happens with or without a legislated contract.
There is a balance to be struck. For example, while it is probably cheaper for the government to buy the toilet paper itself, it is probably not a good idea for it to actually manufacture the paper.
It's been my experience with A/C outages that people function better than desktop PCs, many of which apparently assume no more than 80F ambient temperature.