Critical Facility Operations II — Night & Weekend Operations
This course extends critical facility operations into the reduced-staffing conditions typical of night and weekend shifts, where a technician must independently triage, stabilize, and escalate conditions before a full response team is available. Students practice single-technician round prioritization, emergency generator start-up and load-transfer verification, fire alarm and VESDA aspirating smoke-detection system response, security and access-control anomaly handling, and after-hours vendor and emergency-services coordination. Topics include alarm-fatigue management, the difference between an alarm requiring immediate isolation versus one requiring monitoring, and the legal and safety limits of a single technician's authority to act without a supervisor present. Laboratory sessions use the Atom Lab Bench's FACP/VESDA trainer, access-control and IP-camera lab, and BMS consoles to simulate overnight alarm cascades. Students complete a capstone simulated night shift in which they must correctly prioritize and respond to a sequence of concurrent alarms within a fixed time window.
What you'll be able to do
- Prioritize a queue of concurrent facility alarms by severity and required response time. Safety-critical
- Verify an emergency generator start and automatic transfer switch (ATS) operation during a simulated utility loss. Safety-critical
- Respond to a fire alarm control panel (FACP) and VESDA aspirating smoke-detection alarm following the correct response sequence. Safety-critical
- Investigate an access-control or IP-camera anomaly and determine whether it constitutes a security incident.
- Determine when a single technician must escalate rather than act independently, per the facility's after-hours authority matrix. Safety-critical
- Coordinate an after-hours vendor dispatch or emergency-services notification for a facility incident.
- Distinguish a nuisance alarm from a developing fault using historical trend data to avoid alarm-fatigue-driven dismissal.
- Complete a full simulated night-shift capstone responding to a sequence of concurrent alarms within a fixed time window. Safety-critical
- Document a night-shift incident report suitable for morning-shift handoff without direct supervisor review.
Train the team that runs the factory.
The Institute travels with every SAVRN campus.