Author: Stéphanie Eggermont

We are pleased to announce that two new students from Palestine and South Africa have been selected as a recipient of an iMasons scholarship award to follow the HELHa Datacenter training program! Thank you, Imasons to support our training!

iMasons is an association of digital infrastructure professionals, the builders of the digital age. Our members work at a huge range of companies including the leading hyper scalers, boutique consultancies, equipment vendors, software companies, and co-location operators, and they all share a common problem – they can’t find enough qualified people to enable their planned growth. They want YOU! After you’ve accepted your award I’ll contact you to learn more about your career interests and to help you leverage the iMasons network of professionals to help you find and take your place in our industry.

Thank to Google connection, we are connected to all training schools working on the datacenter facilities. Despite the confinement, we organise sessions of discussion to create a new European project on this area.

When you replace a meeting at HELHa — Haute École Louvain en Hainaut with European partners with a conference call in your office, living room, kitchen… another way to get to know each other and move forward on datacenters training project !

This week was a day of training for our Irish students but not only ! Our electrical trainer Xavier Donnet went to Atlantic Language Galway Dublin to improve his English for the electrical labs of It Sligo and HELHa datacenter students and to learn how to introduce English in his electrical class for HELHa youngest students.

The Datacenter Engineering HELHa team met a delegation from a Danish college,  Fredericia Maskinmesterkole. It was the first step of a new collaboration to create a pathway between their students trained in datacenter facilities to continue their training in HELHa Master degree. They visited the labs, they discussed with HELHa trainer. It was interesting to compare their education system to ours !

It was an international week between the Irish training and the Danish visit !

About ten people from Google are training the laboratories of the CeREF Technique building. A training course created especially for them covers the operating principles of cooling systems used in data centers.

We present cooling equipements used in datacenters to remove heat from the hot air in the computer room and rejected to the atmosfer. We propose to do experiments on real sized devices : heat exchangers, refrigeration cycles and cooling towers. From measurement of temperature, pressure and flow rate, we try to identify the performances and the possible sources of trouble shootings. The module covers the use of water in cooling process and the water characterisation to understand the principles of the operation of water treatment technologies and water chemistry that are core to the field of data centers facilities engineering.

This training is integrated in a 3-days training of Google team. Their profils come from electronic team from Finland, Irland, Holland and Belgium.

Un article sur la formation dans le Trends Tendance du 20 novembre, “A l’heure des formations 2.0”

… “HELHa, la Haute Ecole Louvain en Hainaut, propose sur sept campus des formations de type court et de type long dans de nombreux domaines. Elle dispose ainsi d’une école d’ingénieurs à Mons. Sa proximité avec l’implantation belge de Google va l’amener à développer un master 100% digital qui forme des ingénieurs spécialisés en maintenance et design de data centers. ” L’idée vient de Google qui cherchait un partenaire local pour développer cette formation spécifique où les profils sont rares, explique Valérie Seront, la directrice de l’Ecole d’Ingénieurs de la HELHa. Nous sommes les seuls à avoir répondu favorablement. Et pour cause, cela correspond tout à fait à nos compétences et à notre manière d’enseigner, très applicative. Il nous a fallu près de deux ans de travail pour mettre en ligne un cours très complet qui comporte, dans sa forme certifiante de deux ans, des périodes d’une semaine dans nos labos de Mons. Ce fut un projet très enrichissant où nous avons mis nos propres compétences en avant. ”

A l’arrivée, après une première année de rodage, la formation vient de connaître ses véritables débuts à la rentrée de septembre. Quinze étudiants sont inscrits. Ils viennent d’un peu partout en Europe. Pas mal pour un concept novateur qui requiert des prérequis assez précis. Outre Google, la formation s’est mise en place grâce à des partenaires belges comme Agora, Engie Cofely ou ABB. ” Google a fourni un véritable travail d’accompagnement sans influencer le contenu de la formation, poursuit Valérie Seront. Nos autres partenaires interviennent à des degrés divers, certains sont conférenciers,
d’autres supervisent les travaux demandés aux étudiants ou utilisent nos labos pour former leur personnel. “…

After DCD in London, Jeff Omelchuck, Executive Director of Infrastructure Masons came in Belgium where he visited HELHa. To remninder, iMasons provides scholarships for the HELHa Data Center Engineering program, our DC Facilities Engineering training.

3 of our students are currently receiving scholarships, we currently have 18 students enrolled, including some from Google, Facebook, etc… He toured our different labs of cooling, power distribution, BMS, etc. , taking time to discuss with all trainers. It was a great occasion for our trainers to  have a different point of view on our labs, to create contacts for the future of our training !

HELHa team was present to DCD London 2019 thank to Infrastructure Masons invitation.  We assist to conferences on security or sustainibility, we discover new technologies as HPC immesion cooled from Submer solutions : an immersion fluid specially crafted for optimal heat transfer and hardware compatibility. We creates contacts with industry working in the datacenter area as EkkoSense or Innovative Research, working both in cooling management.

HELHa team participates to the dinner of Imasons Infrastructure.

One of the most pressing challenges we face in the digital infrastructure industry is attracting and retaining talent – there simply aren’t enough available, qualified people in the current talent pool to build and operate the systems and continue the pace of technological innovation. Fortunately, we needn’t look far for a solution: women and other underrepresented groups represent a huge and relatively untapped pool of tech talent.

Infrastructure Masons are committed to expanding diversity and inclusion by promoting a culture of awareness in our industry. The Infrastructure Masons launched The Diversity & Inclusion Champion Award in 2018 to recognize and celebrate achievers in diversity and inclusion so their contributions become visible, rewarded and amplified throughout the industry.

The aim is to change the image of the industry and convince underrepresented groups to consider a career in IT and attract a wider group of people to the industry.

Ivonne Valdes, working at Schneider Electric, the finalist continues to make a significant impact in the advancement of inclusion and diversity in technology.

HELHa attended to the IT infrastructure Datacenters 2019 in Afligem, an great occasion to create contacts with the datacenter industry, to discover new technologies in this area. For exemple, trainers discuss with Out of Use, a company, whose business body is the destruction of servers and their recycling.