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Service organizations supporting energy, infrastructure, and data-center assets face a structural mismatch: uptime requirements are being tightened to near-zero, while maintenance models and technician capacity have not kept pace.
Demand is accelerating fastest at the grid edge. The U.S. Department of Energy cites Electric Power Research Institute analysis showing data centers could consume up to 9 percent of U.S. electricity generation by 2030, more than double their 2023 share. That pressure already shows up in downtime costs: the Institute for Supply Management reported unscheduled downtime now costs the world’s 500 largest companies $1.4 trillion annually — 11 percent of revenue.
Meanwhile, the workforce needed to prevent that downtime is shrinking. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 81,000 electrician openings annually through 2034, driven largely by retirements rather than new entrants.
Fragmented equipment data compounds the gap. The National Institute of Standards and Technology found inadequate interoperability of facility and equipment data costs U.S. capital-facilities owners and operators $10.6 billion annually during operations and maintenance alone — the same fragmentation that leaves technicians without asset history or manuals at the point of service, unable to deliver a first-time fix without next-best maintenance guidance.
