Cable rooms often become a go-to space for random items that may be needed at a later point, ultimately consuming what could be a useful area. However, there is a major difference between a messy cable room and a catchall junk drawer: cable rooms house some of the most important tools necessary for business success. If something happens to the cables or worse, the whole room, chaos can ensue. If you’re delaying organizing your cable room, consider these three risks.
Increased Costs
Cords that are piled on the floor or hanging loose behind equipment are more likely to be damaged. Damaged cords must be replaced which requires time and money. Increased costs can also occur if wires are improperly distributed leading to overloaded circuits, damaged equipment, and exposed wiring. These issues cannot be identified early if the room is disorganized.
Difficulty Identifying the Problem Source
When a problem occurs with your technology and a team member or service provider needs to troubleshoot, there’s a high likelihood they’ll need to enter the cable room. However, if the cables look more like a pot of tri-colored spaghetti, it will be difficult to identify where the problem and corresponding cords are. This not only increases the risk of tripping, electrical shock, and other hazards, it also increases the time spent trying to remedy something that could have a simple solution.
Ensuring the cable room is organized and the cords are safely stored benefits everyone, especially when a technology problem or other questionable situation occurs.
Increased Risk of Fire
Your team works hard, so does your cable room. The servers and cables are constantly buzzing to keep your team working hard, especially if your technology is largely in-house. This means that your hardware has a high potential for heating up, causing a greater risk for a fire. This is an especially high risk if you also use your cable room for storage. If the cable room is difficult to sort through, a frayed cord could be overlooked easily, leading to trouble.
Fire is an unacceptable risk in an office environment, especially when it can be avoided.
So… how can you reduce the risks of a messy cable room? Where should you start?
Step one: tidy up the non-hardware items. Are there boxes that can be thrown out? Perhaps a filing cabinet can store smaller, miscellaneous items. Next, determine a way to organize and label cables. Organizing the cables may require the technology to go offline for a period of time – be sure to alert your team of that scheduled downtime – but, it can be done.
Worried about the risks of organizing on your own? You don’t have to go at it alone! The team of experts at HIG has extensive experience organizing cable rooms. Contact us today to get a start on yours!
