Paul Hood, vice president of engineering operations at JPMorgan, makes sure the global bank’s building services are up and running all day, every day. Could this be one of the most stressful jobs in engineering in the UK? Paul Braithwaite asks the questions.
Honesty, health and safety, and resilience. If I had to condense this article down to just a few words, those are the ones I would choose.

Investment banking is reputed to be one of the more stressful professions to work in. Building services within this sector mirrors that pressure because of the level of support that investment banking demands. And Paul Hood typifies this in his role of head of Engineering Operations at JPMorgan.

Occasionally, Hood has to make very difficult decisions in very serious circumstances.

'We were on a conference call with New York about some essential maintenance work that had to be done. The choice I had to make would either allow continuous operation of a comfort cooling system or provide a safe working environment for one of my team. I have to choose safety every time.'

When I met Hood at a Trox press event recently, I decided this was a man I wanted to interview for an engineer profile. He was, after all, the man in charge of the engineering operations for JPMorgan's facilities across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) including the Mission Critical Trading Floors and Data Centres.

He and his team are a vital link, bridging the gap between investment banking, IT and building services.

Most stressful
Doesn't that have to be one of the most crucial, risk-adverse jobs in the UK or even Europe and possibly the most stressful?

It took some time before we could match diaries but eventually I managed to interview him.
We met early one evening in central London; he could not be too late as he had to get up early in the morning as he was flying off to Cape Town.

So what was happening in South Africa? The Cape Town offices are being upgraded. Part of this upgrade was to beef up the redundancy of the diesel generators, which take over when the electricity supply goes down - as it does regularly in Cape Town and other areas of South Africa.

Knowing how crucial the electricity supply is to JPMorgan's offices there, Eskom, the local supplier, phones to warn of the cuts.
Before the upgrade, and when a cut was due, JPMorgan fired up its single generator and ran it in parallel to the mains power supply until the electricity switched off and the generator took over. The new generators will make the facility more resilient, he says.
Hood was to oversee the project, also making sure that the health and safety aspects of the job ran smoothly.

Cultural differences
'There are cultural differences across the world and some countries do not have the same health and safety culture as the UK. No job, however important - be it installation or maintenance - is worth a life!

In all, Hood is responsible for the engineering operations and maintenance engineering in 12 buildings in the UK and a total of around 80 across EMEA.

These range from one- and two-man regional offices to multi-storey offices, trading floors and data centres. In all he is responsible for around four million square feet.

Last year, Hood calculates he was out of the country on business 60 times. Some of these may have been hops across to Frankfurt for an overnight stay, while others to Dubai, Riyadh, South Africa or the US were longer trips - which brings its own pressures.

Hood started as an apprentice engineer with the Post Office. When he had served his time, he worked there for several years as a shift engineer. While there, he became interested in process controls and so he joined Johnson Controls.

During the last three years there, he changed tack and worked as a maintenance engineer, servicing equipment rather than installing it.

He worked on a 750,000ft2 building owned by JPMorgan as a commissioning supervisor for Johnson.
He obviously did well because he was approached by JPMorgan to be the engineering manager for the new building on Victoria Embankment.

Several promotions later, Hood is now vice president of JPMorgan's Engineering Operations portfolio across EMEA.

'I quickly grew in the corporate world and understood the ethos. And at the same time JPMorgan grew as a company.'
It has been through four mergers and acquisitions in Hood's time there.

'Safety is paramount; I pride myself on my ability to ensure contractors, who come into the building to maintain the equipment, work in a safe environment.'

Health and safety always comes first at JPMorgan. And Hood's drive is to adopt this health and safety culture outside of the UK.

He says that in some of the countries where he is in charge of engineering operations, the health and safety culture can be less strongly ingrained and at times not up to the high UK standards. But that does not stop him striving to bring the culture across his whole region.

In the UK, there is a team of 128 engineers but only a small number are employed by JPMorgan directly with the others out-sourced, from SPIE Matthew Hall. And JPMorgan sponsors a number of apprentices a year at SPIE MH.
All the work abroad is outsourced, which, says Hood, brings its own challenges - but in a good way.

Post Office
His apprenticeship at the Post Office was groundbreaking as far as health and safety was concerned.

'Because it was a government business in those days, the bosses were strict on health and safety, and this at a time when there
was less awareness of a need for good health and safety practice in construction. One thing I learned about electricity during my apprenticeship is that you cannot see it or hear it - but, boy, you can feel it.'

So what about energy efficiency? With all the computers and servers which must be up and running all the time, is there an energy efficiency agenda or is it just a case of keeping the business going whatever the cost?

'Any upgrades or new projects must have an element of energy efficiency - and we are also looking for BREAM excellence in our new facilities.

'JPMorgan has made a commitment to reduce its carbon footprint and, of course, the amount of energy consumed.'

There is also a full-time projects team which deals with the construction side of the business but Hood still keeps himself involved as it is his job to know what is going on and the impact the work might have on the business.

Hood says it is like having people in to work on his own home. 'You want to know what is happening.'

And, when the building work is done, Hood and his team need to understand what has happened so they are able to take over the operations work from day one.

How JPMorgan keeps its dealers cool

ONE of the exciting parts of Hood’s job at JPMorgan is his work with the dealer desks.

“The front office is more often than not an all-day every-day facility, with teams of traders working around the clock.” Don’t forget, while London and America are trading, Asia Pacific is sleeping – and vice versa.

So, with all the dealer desks going all day every day, when is there time to maintain the systems?

“There are low-risk times when the plant can be maintained with less disruption to the users and further there are systems which are 2N. This means there are twice the numbers of machines needed so half can be taken off line for essential maintenance.”

There are also systems which are designated N+1, which allows the engineer to take a spare machine off line for maintenance. And low-risk times usually mean late at night or at weekends, so even the maintenance business is 24/7.

“It is a large and crucial part of the job with everyone focused on the front office,” he says. The average dealer uses 450-760W, and this is rising. “Simply, JPMorgan wants to be the best, and this means maintaining its competitive edge over the competition. This, in turn, means having the fastest, most powerful computers which increases the heat load under the desk.”

One recent innovation for the firm is Trox AITCS’s CO2OL desk system, which uses CO2 to absorb the heat from the dealers’ PCs. “Key here was the energy efficiency and the ability of the CO2 to absorb the very high heat loads generated by the computers under the trading desks.”

Further, he says: “It is a green system, using CO2 recovered from industrial processes. It also reduces our carbon footprint because it works so efficiently as well.”

He believes this is a revolutionary product, and he suggests there is a big market for it. In fact, he is very pleased with the PC coolers which have already been installed in one of their offices.

The idea came from the Trox AITCS CO2 blade server cooler system which Hood saw first in an article in the trade press, and then at the Trox research and development labs in Norfolk.

He adds that CO2 is electrically benign so that, should there be a leak, unlike water-cooled units, there is no chance of damage to equipment.

“Again, this is about the trading desks and running water through or near them is not my ideal way of cooling that equipment.”