Reprinted with permission of the Charleston Regional Business Journal

December 3 - 16, 2012 • www.charlestonbusiness.com Volume 18, No. 26 • $2.00

Data center floor salesman refurbishes tiles, finds niche

By Lauren Ratcliffelratcliffe@scbiznews.com

After selling new raised flooring panels as a contractor, Robert Boyle had an idea to create a new business model that would

save his clients money and allow him to work nationally with a mobile trailer.

In 1997, Access Floors OnSite was launched as a raised access flooring company specializing in refurbishing existing units. These flooring units are used in data centers and help keep the systems running.

“It’s most obviously the platform that supports our servers – all the equipment that enables our Facebooking, our eBaying and all the data,” Boyle said.

He’d been selling new flooring systems for many years before deciding to go out on his own. Originally tried to sell as many new panels as he could, but said a contract with the Federal Avia-tion Authority changed his thinking and led him to change the way he operated. He started out selling the FAA new panels, but then realized an opportunity.

“The old panels were intact except for the covering,” he said. “The carpeting was wearing out, and they were buying all new panels.”

Boyle found a way to strip and recover the existing panels, and in doing so was able to keep the entire building operational during the resto-ration process.

Access Floors OnSite became a mobile opera-tion through the use of a 40-foot trailer. That unit goes to the data center, and small groups of tiles are rotated in and out of the facility.

A recent project with CSX Corp., a transpor-tation company based in Florida, involved the refurbishing of 3,500 panels.

“We picked them up,” he said. “Their only problem was that the panel and the laminate (covering) was separating. We just glued them back together.”

Refurbishing panels costs 30% less than purchasing new panels, Boyle said. He esti-mates that by providing on-site service, he saves companies up to 75%. Traditional refur-bishing efforts would require shipping away the panels, re-installation and the renovation costs.

His decision to go mobile was driven by the FAA, he said.

“They have to be running 24-7,” he said. “You can’t make any noise. You have to provide a safe environment. That’s what drove the notion to show up on-site.”

He said every data center has several spare tiles and a refurbishing process always begins with those tiles.

“You redo the first 30 and then (the staff) walk in with them, and they swap them out and it goes around and around and around,” he said.

Boyle’s team can refurbish 60 panels per hour and typically doesn’t do jobs smaller than 500 panels.

In addition to saving costs for data centers in need of new flooring, Boyle has begun working to refurbish old tiles from centers that are being decommissioned.

“We can show up, refurbish that product to ‘as new’ and get it tested by a third party,” he said. “Then we ship it off to a site that is being installed presently.”

In the coming year, Boyle said he hopes to expand both regionally and locally as more data centers are built. He’s also patenting a product to convert heat energy produced by the servers to the system and level out the energy consumption for the facilities.

His next project is working with Google’s data center in Moncks Corner, and Boyle said he hopes work with the large data users like this will help his business continue to grow nationally. cr

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Reach Lauren Ratcliffe at 843-849-3119.

Photo/Leslie Burden