Rick Schuknecht

Vice President-Operational Sustainability, Uptime Institute Professional Services

Rick Schuknecht has over 14 years of experience in progressively increasing positions of responsibility in Critical Environment management with Fortune 100 corporations. Mr. Schuknecht’s current work involves putting a definition and boundaries around the concept of Operational Sustainability as it relates to a data center’s ability to achieve or exceed it design requirements and parameters.

From 2008 to 2010 Mr. Schuknecht was a Principal at EYP Mission Critical Facilities where he oversaw the integration of the Chicago office during the acquisition of the company by HP. Additional assignments included acting as Principal-in-Charge on several multi-million dollar engineering design deliveries. From 2007 to 2008 he was a Consultant for ComputerSite Engineering (CSE), Inc., where he provided data center operations and management consulting to various Fortune 500 companies as the executive level. From 2005 to 2007 he was the global Critical Environments Director for Trammell Crow Company (now CB Richard Ellis) where he provided internal Critical Environment consulting and guidance to over 200 facilities management account teams charged with managing nearly 50 million ft2 of critical facilities on behalf of client companies. From 2004 to 2005, he was President of ComputerSite Engineering (CSE), Inc. CSE is an internationally recognized consulting company in the field of data center design and critical environment operations and management. From 2002 to 2004, he was a First Vice President at Bank One where he headed up the Corporate Real Estate Critical Environments group. In his two year stint there, he developed and implemented a global management program to wrap the Critical Environment in processes and standards in order to enhance UPTIME. In addition, he oversaw major construction projects that brought three Tier IV-equivalent data centers (totaling 630K ft2 of space, 245K ft2 of raised floor area) and three Tier III-equivalent operations centers (approximating 950 ft2 in total) out of the ground. He directly managed the transition of all six sites from construction to operations. From 1997 to 2002, he worked for CB Richard Ellis, first on the Bank of America account as the Director, Critical Facilities, with direct facilities management oversight responsibilities for three top-tier data centers (encompassing nearly 3 million ft2 of total space and nearly 1.1 million ft2 of raised floor), all of which directly supported the cash management component of the US Federal Reserve and then as the national director of critical environments on the Washington Mutual account. In 1995, Mr. Schuknecht retired from a successful 28+ year career in the U.S. Navy as a Navy Captain and Chief of Staff to a Navy Admiral. In his military career, his specialty areas included operational logistics and shipboard/shore-base facilities management.

Mr. Schuknecht is a 1971 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy Navy professional classification in: operational logistics, command and control and personnel management. He is also a graduate of the Navy’s surface ship engineering, operations and management training continuum.