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Co-location

First Integrated Water Treatment Facility construction begins, Singapore. – Construction Review

Singapore has begun construction of the first phase of its first Integrated Water And Solid Waste Treatment Facility, the Tuas Nexus, according to a statement release by National Environment Agency (NEA) and PUB. The Tuas Nexus is expected to be complete all its phases by the beginning of 2025,and is a co-location of two mega facilities the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant (Tuas WRP) and Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) that will help forge a more sustainable Singapore by optimizing land use, and maximizing energy and resource recovery. The Integrated Water And Solid Waste Treatment Facility in Singapore is expected to be energy self-sufficient which will result in carbon savings of more than 200,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to taking 42,500 cars off Singapores roads. In addition, integrating the two facilities will result in land savings of up to 2.6ha, approximately the size of four football fields, as compared to building the two as standalone facilities, the release added.

Also Read: Singapore begins construction of the worlds largest inland floating PV system.

By employing the latest technologies, Tuas Nexus will harness the synergies of the water-energy-waste nexus from used water and solid waste. The by-product of one facility becomes a resource for the other facility, PUB and NEA explained. For example, IWMFs Food Waste Treatment Facility will convert source segregated food waste into food waste slurry suitable for co-digestion with used water sludge at Tuas WRP.

The co-digestion of food waste and used water sludge will increase biogas production by 40 percent at Tuas WRP, compared to biogas yield from treatment of used water sludge alone. The biogas produced will then be combusted at IWMF and the combustion heat energy recovered to improve the overall plant thermal efficiency and boost electricity generation, said the agencies. The electricity generated by IWMF will be used to sustain the operations of Tuas Nexus with excess to be exported to the grid. This excess electricity exported to the grid will be able to continually power up to 300,000 four-room HDB apartments.

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First Integrated Water Treatment Facility construction begins, Singapore. - Construction Review

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Co-location

Remote Work Doesn’t Have to Mean All-Day Video Calls – Harvard Business Review

The Covid-19 crisis has distanced people from the workplace, and employers have generally, if sometimes reluctantly, accepted that people can work effectively from home. As if to compensate for this distancing and keep the workplace alive in a virtual sense, employers have also encouraged people to stick closely to the conventional workday. The message is that working from home is fine and can even be very efficient as long as people join video calls along with everyone else all through the day.

But employees often struggle with the workday when working from home, because many have to deal with the competing requests coming from their family, also housebound. So how effective really is working from home if everyone is still working to the clock? Is it possible to ditch the clock?

The answer seems to be that it is. Since before the pandemic weve been studying the remote work practices of the tech companyGitLab to explore what it might look like if companies to break their employees chronological chains as well as their ties to the physical workplace.

From its foundation in 2014, GitLab has maintained an all-remote staff that now comprises more than 1,300 employees spread across over 65 countries. The git way of working uses tools that let employees work on ongoing projects wherever they are in the world and at their preferred time. The idea is that because its always 9 to 5 somewhere on the planet, work can continue around the clock, increasing aggregate productivity. That sounds good, but a workforce staggered in both time and space presents unique coordination challenges with wide-ranging organizational implications.

The most natural way to distribute work across locations is to make it modular and independent, so that there is little need for direct coordination workers can be effectively without knowing how their colleagues are progressing. This is why distributed work can be so effective for call centers and in patents evaluation. But this approach has its limits in development and innovation related activities, where the interdependencies between components of work are not always easy to see ahead of time.

For this kind of complex work, co-location with ongoing communication is often a better approach because it offers two virtues: synchronicity and media richness. The time lag in the interaction between two or more individuals is almost zero when they are co-located, and, although the content of the conversation may be the same in both face-to-face and in virtual environments, the technology may not be fully able to convey soft social and background contextual cues how easy is it to sense other peoples reactions in a group zoom meeting?

All this implies that simply attempting to replicate online (through video or voice chat) what happened naturally in co-located settings is unlikely to be a winning or complete strategy. Yet this approach of seeing the face is the one that people seem to default to when forced to work remotely, as our survey of remote working practices in the immediate aftermath of lockdowns around the world has revealed.

There is a way through this dilemma. Our earlierresearchon offshoring of software development showed that drawing on tacit coordination mechanisms, such as a shared understanding of work norms and context, allows for coordination without direct communication.

Coordination in this case happens through the observation of the action of other employees and being able to predict what they will do and need based on shared norms. It can occur either synchronously (where, for instance, two people might work on the same Google doc during the same time period), or asynchronously (when people make clear hand-offs of the document, and do not work on it when the other is).

Software development organizations often opt for this solution and tend to rely extensively on shared repositories and document authoring tools, with systems for coordinating contributions (e.g., continuous integration and version control tools). But GitLab is quite unique in the for-profit sector in how extensively it relies on this third path not only for its coding but for how the organization itself functions. It leans particularly on asynchronous working because its employees are distributed across multiple time zones. As a result, although the company does use videoconferencing, almost no employee ever faces a day full of video meetings.

At the heart of the engineering work that drives GitLabs product development is the git workflow process invented by Linux founder Linus Torvalds. In this process, a programmer making a contribution to a code forks (copies) the code, so that it is not blocked to other users, works on it, and then makes a merge request to have the edited version replace the original, and this new version becomes available for other contributions.

The process combines the possibility of distributed asynchronous work with a structure that checks for potential coordination failures and ensures clarity on decision rights. Completely electronic (which makes remote work feasible) and fully documented, it has become an important framework for distributed software development in both for-profit and open source contexts.

GitLab has taken the git a step further, applying it also to managerial work that involves ambiguity and uncertainty. For instance, GitLabs chief marketer recently outlined a vision for integrating video into the companys year-ahead strategy. He requested asynchronous feedback from across the company within a fixed time window, and then scheduled a single synchronous meeting to agree on a final version of the vision. This vision triggered asynchronously input changes from multiple contributors to the companys handbook pages relating to marketing objectives and key results that were merged on completion.

GitLabs high degree of reliance on asynchronous working is made possible by respecting the following three rules right down to the task level:

1. Separate responsibility for doing the task from the responsibility for declaring it done.

In co-located settings, where employees are in the same office, easy communication and social cues allow them to efficiently resolve ambiguities and manage conflict around work responsibilities and remits. In remote settings, however, this can be difficult. In GitLab, therefore, every task is expected to have a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI), who is responsible for the completion of the task and has freedom in how it should be performed.

The DRI, however, does not get to decide whether the task has been completed. That function is the responsibility of a Maintainer, who has the authority to accept or reject the DRIs merge requests. Clarity on these roles for every task helps reduce confusions and delays and enables multiple DRIs to work in parallel in any way they want on different parts of a code by making local copies (forking). It is the Maintainers role to avoid unnecessary changes and maintain consistency in the working version of the document or code.

In a non-software context, say in developing the GitLab handbook page on expenses policies, individual DRIs, who could be anyone in the company, would write specific policies in any way they choose, and their contributions would be accepted or rejected by the CFO acting in the capacity of Maintainer, who could also offer feedback (but not direction) to the DRIs. Once live, the merged page serves as the single source of truth on expenses policies unless or until someone else makes a new proposal. Once more, the Maintainer would approve, reject, or offer feedback on the new proposal. In contexts like this, we would expect people in traditional management positions to serve as Maintainers.

2. Respect the minimum viable change principle.

When coordination is asynchronous, there is a risk that coordination failures may go undetected for too long for instance, two individuals may be working in parallel on the same problem, making one of their efforts redundant, or one person may be making changes that that are incompatible with the efforts of another. To minimize this risk, employees are urged to submit the minimum viable change an early stage, imperfect version of their suggested changes to code or documents. This makes it more likely that people will pick up on whether work is incompatible or being duplicated. Obviously, a policy of minimum viable changes should come with a no shame policy on delivering a temporarily imperfect output. In remote settings, the value of knowing what the other is doing as soon as possible is greater than getting the perfect product.

3. Always communicate publicly.

As GitLab team members are prone to say, we do not send internal email here. Instead, employees post all questions and share all information on the Slack channels of their teams, and later the team leaders decide what information needs to be permanently visible to others. If so, it gets stored in a place available to everyone in the company, in an issue document or on a page in the companys online handbook, which is accessible to anyone, in or outside the company. This rule means that people dont run the risk of duplicating, or even inadvertently destroying the work of their colleagues. Managers devote a lot of time to curating the information generated through the work of employees they supervise and are expected to know better than others what information may be either broadly needed by a future team or that would be useful for people outside the company.

However well implemented, asynchronous remote working of this kind cannot supply much in the way of social interaction. Thats a major failing, because social interaction is not only a source of pleasure and motivation for most, it is also where the random encounters, the serendipitous exchanges by the coffee machines and lift lobbies, create opportunities for ideas and information to flow and recombine.

To minimize this limitation, GitLab provides occasions for non-task related interaction. Each day, team members may attend one of three optional social calls staggered to be inclusive of time zones. The calls consist of groups of 8-10 people in a video chatroom, where they are free to discuss whatever they want (GitLab provides a daily starting question as icebreaker in case needed, such as: What did you do over the weekend? or Where is the coolest place you ever traveled and why?).

In addition, GitLab has social slack groups: thematic chat rooms that employees with similar interests can participate in (such as: #cat, #dogs, #cooking, #mental_health_aware, #daily_gratitude, #gaming) and a #donut_be_strangers channel that allows strangers that have a mutual interest to have a coffee chat to get together.

Of course, GitLab managers are under no illusion that these groups substitute perfectly for the kinds of rich social interactions outside work that people find rewarding. But they do help to keep employees connected, and, at a time when many employees have been working under confinement rules, this has proved very helpful in sustaining morale.

***

Working from home in an effective way goes beyond just giving employees a laptop and a Zoom account. It encompasses practices intended to compensate or avoid the core limitations of working remotely, as well as fully leverage the flexibility that remote can offer working not only from anywhere but at any desired time. We have focused on GitLab because it not only has extensive experience in remote working but also because it pursues an unusual mode of solving the intrinsic challenges of remote work. While some of GitLabs core processes (like its long, remote onboarding process for new hires) and advantages (like the possibility of hiring across the world) cannot be fully reproduced in the short run in companies that will be just temporarily remote, there are others that any company can easily implement.

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Remote Work Doesn't Have to Mean All-Day Video Calls - Harvard Business Review

Categories
Co-location

Vela Expands Fixed Income Offering with Fenics UST – Business Wire

NEW YORK & CHICAGO & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vela, a leading independent provider of data and execution technology for global multi-asset electronic trading, today announced the addition of Fenics US Treasuries (Fenics UST), owned and operated by BGC Financial, to its fully-hosted and managed Direct Market Access (DMA) Platform. With Fenics, Vela expands its Fixed Income offering providing global clients with access to cash and derivatives trading venues via a single platform.

Velas award-winning multi-asset DMA Platform is cross-connected to Fenics co-location facility in New Jersey, delivering a short path to the venue and ensuring superior transactional and communication performance. Leveraging Velas DMA Platform, low-touch trading desks at buy- and sell-side firms can benefit from Velas fully-normalized order entry, pre- and post-trade risk layers and market data for all the major listed derivatives venues, while trading cash and derivatives U.S. Treasury markets through a single API.

Ollie Cadman, Chief Product Officer at Vela, commented: With the levels of automation in the Rates and Credit markets continuing to trend upwards, the addition of Fenics UST products to our DMA Platform provides our clients with ultra-low latency access to U.S. cash and derivatives treasuries data through a single API. Our high-performant execution platform can easily be integrated into any in-house or third-party EMS/OMS. He added, Vela is excited to have added Fenics onto our platform as part of our goal to expand our Fixed Income coverage and functionality to help Rates trading desks with price discovery, order routing and workflow automation.

Velas DMA Platform offers normalized order entry, pre-trade risk, drop copy, full risk management and normalized market data, supported by a strong clearing member ecosystem. This high-performant and scalable platform provides low latency and fully-normalized access to all the major listed derivatives venues for buy-side and sell-side firms. Vela offers the platform as a fully-hosted and managed solution (as-a-Service), leveraging its existing infrastructure network, exchange connectivity lines, and major points of presence across the globe.

About Vela

Vela is a leading independent provider of data and execution technology for global multi-asset electronic trading. Our software enables clients to rapidly access global liquidity, markets, and data sources for superior execution. We help firms successfully differentiate and innovate in an ever-changing, increasingly regulated and fiercely-competitive landscape, while also reducing total cost of ownership.

Velas market data, execution and automated trading software deliver a unique, ultra-low latency technology stack to simplify and streamline electronic trading. We leverage the latest innovations in technology to deliver cutting-edge performance, features and reliability. Our modular stack provides access to a comprehensive set of trading data and risk APIs and can be delivered as-a-Service from multiple co-location data centers globally.

With access to more than 250 venues, Vela provides global coverage across all major asset classes. Clients are supported by an award-winning team of technical and business experts available 24x7 from our multiple offices in the US, Europe, and Asia. Velas clients include traders, market makers, brokers, banks, investment firms, exchanges, and other market participants.

Visit us at http://www.tradevela.com

Follow us on Twitter @TradeVela

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Vela Expands Fixed Income Offering with Fenics UST - Business Wire

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Co-location

New data center in Greenville County brings expected investment of more than $200M over next few years – WYFF4 Greenville

A new data center is coming to Greenville County. DC BLOX will be located in Global Business Park bordering I-85 and close by Clemson Universitys CU-ICAR campus. The new data center will bring five high-paying new positions initially to the community along with an expected investment of over $200 million combined between DC BLOX and their tenant customers over the next few years."Organizations across the Carolinas and North Georgia have increasing demand for a Tier III rated regional data center that can provide the security, reliability, cost efficiency and expertise that lets them focus resources strategically," a news release said. "DC BLOX is answering that need by unveiling plans today to establish its next state-of-the-art data center in Greenville County, South Carolina."DC BLOX believes in serving locally and connecting globally, said Jeff Uphues, CEO of DC BLOX. We have long been attracted to this booming economic region and are grateful to Greenville County, the Greenville Area Development Corporation, City of Greenville and the South Carolina Department of Commerce for working collaboratively with us to create a strong business case for DC BLOX to come to Greenville. We are excited to be able to serve South Carolina businesses and the greater Greenville and Upstate community.The new Greenville data center will join the interconnected data center fabric of DC BLOXs sites in Birmingham, Atlanta, Huntsville and Chattanooga. Customers of the new Greenville data center will have access to DC BLOXs full range of co-location, connectivity and cloud storage solutions, including private, 100Gbps+ capacity network access to carriers, public cloud providers and internet exchanges.The 6-acre location will have five data halls with 45,000 square feet of data center space, capable of 15 megawatts of critical power, secure storage and shared and dedicated office space ideal for locating enterprise Security Operations Centers (SOC). Company officials say the Greenville data center will be the first of its kind in South Carolina, including the security required to protect Controlled Unclassified Information. DC BLOX is addressing changes in the technology landscape, which are driving many organizations to increased digitization and distribution of IT infrastructure, including mobile applications, the Internet of Things, and the cloud. Recognizing surging demand in underserved markets across the Southeast, DC BLOX brings data center, connectivity and cloud capabilities that have previously been available only in major metropolitan areas to underserved regions and markets. Its exciting to see another company recognize the benefits of doing business here in South Carolina. We celebrate DC BLOXs decision to locate in Greenville County, and we look forward to seeing them grow here in the Palmetto State, stated South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster. DC BLOXs decision to locate its high-tech operations here is another sign that South Carolinas business-friendly climate, infrastructure and skilled workforce are attracting companies to our state. This investment is a win for the Greenville area and the entire state of South Carolina, added Secretary of Commerce Bobby Hitt. The new facility is expected to begin construction in the first quarter 2021 and be operational by the third quarter. Individuals and suppliers interested in joining with DC BLOX should visit the organization online at dcblox.com for more information.As a state-of-the art data center provider committed to serving locally and connecting globally, DC BLOX brings well-paying jobs and significant capital investment to Greenville. With its customers, it will help Greenville County accelerate economic growth and build on our reputation as a world-class technology community. DC BLOX is a welcome addition to the mix of companies doing business here and should attract interest from many others, said Greenville County Council Chairman and Greenville Area Development Corporation board member H.G. "Butch" Kirven. It was a pleasure to meet with Jeff and his team two years ago when they began to explore Greenville, said Greenville Mayor Knox White. We welcome this company with cutting-edge technology solutions that is committed to serving locally and connecting globally. DC BLOX will create an attractive environment for other organizations seeking to do business in our region.Duke Energys Carolina Investment Fund for economic development has approved a grant toward project expenditures incurred by the company, while the Coordinating Council for Economic Development has approved a $50,000 Set Aside grant to Greenville County to assist with the costs of site preparation and building improvements.

A new data center is coming to Greenville County.

DC BLOX will be located in Global Business Park bordering I-85 and close by Clemson Universitys CU-ICAR campus.

The new data center will bring five high-paying new positions initially to the community along with an expected investment of over $200 million combined between DC BLOX and their tenant customers over the next few years.

"Organizations across the Carolinas and North Georgia have increasing demand for a Tier III rated regional data center that can provide the security, reliability, cost efficiency and expertise that lets them focus resources strategically," a news release said. "DC BLOX is answering that need by unveiling plans today to establish its next state-of-the-art data center in Greenville County, South Carolina."

DC BLOX believes in serving locally and connecting globally, said Jeff Uphues, CEO of DC BLOX. We have long been attracted to this booming economic region and are grateful to Greenville County, the Greenville Area Development Corporation, City of Greenville and the South Carolina Department of Commerce for working collaboratively with us to create a strong business case for DC BLOX to come to Greenville. We are excited to be able to serve South Carolina businesses and the greater Greenville and Upstate community.

The new Greenville data center will join the interconnected data center fabric of DC BLOXs sites in Birmingham, Atlanta, Huntsville and Chattanooga.

Customers of the new Greenville data center will have access to DC BLOXs full range of co-location, connectivity and cloud storage solutions, including private, 100Gbps+ capacity network access to carriers, public cloud providers and internet exchanges.

The 6-acre location will have five data halls with 45,000 square feet of data center space, capable of 15 megawatts of critical power, secure storage and shared and dedicated office space ideal for locating enterprise Security Operations Centers (SOC).

Company officials say the Greenville data center will be the first of its kind in South Carolina, including the security required to protect Controlled Unclassified Information.

DC BLOX is addressing changes in the technology landscape, which are driving many organizations to increased digitization and distribution of IT infrastructure, including mobile applications, the Internet of Things, and the cloud. Recognizing surging demand in underserved markets across the Southeast, DC BLOX brings data center, connectivity and cloud capabilities that have previously been available only in major metropolitan areas to underserved regions and markets.

Its exciting to see another company recognize the benefits of doing business here in South Carolina. We celebrate DC BLOXs decision to locate in Greenville County, and we look forward to seeing them grow here in the Palmetto State, stated South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster.

DC BLOXs decision to locate its high-tech operations here is another sign that South Carolinas business-friendly climate, infrastructure and skilled workforce are attracting companies to our state. This investment is a win for the Greenville area and the entire state of South Carolina, added Secretary of Commerce Bobby Hitt.

The new facility is expected to begin construction in the first quarter 2021 and be operational by the third quarter. Individuals and suppliers interested in joining with DC BLOX should visit the organization online at dcblox.com for more information.

As a state-of-the art data center provider committed to serving locally and connecting globally, DC BLOX brings well-paying jobs and significant capital investment to Greenville. With its customers, it will help Greenville County accelerate economic growth and build on our reputation as a world-class technology community. DC BLOX is a welcome addition to the mix of companies doing business here and should attract interest from many others, said Greenville County Council Chairman and Greenville Area Development Corporation board member H.G. "Butch" Kirven.

It was a pleasure to meet with Jeff and his team two years ago when they began to explore Greenville, said Greenville Mayor Knox White. We welcome this company with cutting-edge technology solutions that is committed to serving locally and connecting globally. DC BLOX will create an attractive environment for other organizations seeking to do business in our region.

Duke Energys Carolina Investment Fund for economic development has approved a grant toward project expenditures incurred by the company, while the Coordinating Council for Economic Development has approved a $50,000 Set Aside grant to Greenville County to assist with the costs of site preparation and building improvements.

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New data center in Greenville County brings expected investment of more than $200M over next few years - WYFF4 Greenville