The company moved into another building, and the IT department was dazzled by their inherited computer space -- a space that had a surprise in store Back in 1990, I was reminded of why to beware of what can feel like “mousetraps” — by which I mean when you move into a space vacated by another company, don’t forget to evaluate all systems to see what you’re dealing with. It’s much easier to discover any surprises ahead of time than when under stress.At the time, I worked for a little company that was growing by leaps and bounds under Reagan’s Star Wars program. We merged with a division of a large Aerospace and went after a big contract. This required hiring a bunch of engineers and getting more office space. So we expanded into another office in the neighborhood, formerly occupied by another big-name research company.[ Do you have an IT tale when something went right, a war story, or a lesson learned? Submit it to InfoWorld’s Off the Record. If we publish your story, we’ll send you a $50 American Express gift card.] To support the project, the computer guys brought in a big DEC VAX machine. But even so, the computer room we inherited was half empty. It was quite a step up for us, with a raised floor, dedicated AC, and a huge circuit breaker panel inside the door that seemed to be obsolete.About six months after we moved in, there was a sudden cacophony of Klaxons in the hallway.We all thought, what is this? Another fire alarm test? But the source turned out to be the computer room holding the brand new VAX. Yikes! So we went inside to figure out what was causing the noise and under the big red flashing light there was a little teensy vendor sticker on the circuit breaker panel that we hadn’t noticed before that read, “Pyrotronics, in case of emergency, call this number.” At this point the facilities guy was freaking out and pretty much worthless, so I grabbed a telephone and called the number.Which was how I found myself with one ear pressed to a phone talking to a tech at a fire suppression company, and with the deafening Klaxons in the other ear.The tech started in, Now, have you got a screwdriver? Remove the access panel. Now find the red wire. OK disconnect the red one, not the blue one!” (“Uh, can you repeat that? It’s a little loud in here!”)When I finally got the cable disconnected, the alarm ceased, and the tech walked me through how to reset the Halon system so it would not dump the Halon gas into the room. We didn’t know whether the system was charged with gas, or how long the countdown would be, but we certainly didn’t want to find out.We had the fire suppression company in to fix the sensors. Apparently, the prior tenant had never deactivated the Halon fire suppression system, leaving us with a time bomb that would have gone off eventually when the sensors malfunctioned. In addition to closely evaluating all systems when inheriting a computer space, I’ve found it best to develop my own documentation for our IT department going forward — since a computer room like this rarely comes with any documentation and oftentimes IT isn’t even involved with the planning of office space. And it’s always a good idea to bring in vendors and contractors to look over the space with a microscope, alerting you to any problems such as building plumbing or the space’s cooling, heating, electrical, flood zones, amount of dust … and of course, fire suppression systems. Data Management