14th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Professional Experience
Mr. Verblaauw joined CBRE in 1994 as the Chief Engineer assigned to the State of Ohio Computer Center (SOCC), a 358,000 square foot tier 3 data center in Columbus, Ohio. He currently holds the position of Director of Engineering Operations where he oversees all on-going facility engineering operations ensuring 24/7/365 uptime availability. He also manages fifteen CBRE technical staff members and numerous contracted data center infrastructure support service providers with an annual operating budget of $4 million. His responsibilities include a full range of mission critical infrastructure design, space planning, construction project management, facility operations, development of budgets as well as capital improvement planning and implementation. Gene is also responsible for staff training and development with the goal of leading team members to improve efficiency, developing replicable outcomes, consistency and standardization of work processes which has resulted in “five-nines” (99.999%) of uptime availability of the data center.
As a Director of Engineering Operations, Mr. Verblaauw is a subject matter expert in failure analysis and acts as a technical troubleshooter for diverse CBRE accounts housing data center operations advises on infrastructure reliability and technology trends and assists in the development of CBRE client technical proposals.
Prior to joining CBRE, Gene was a construction project manager with Paine Webber where he oversaw the successful completion of a major consolidation of the company’s facilities into a single location including institutional trading floors, commodity brokerage operations, regional management and brokerage offices and data center in Chicago, IL.
Achievements
- Greatest Accomplishment by an Engineering Professional 2006
- Chief Engineer of the Year 2001
- Chief Engineer of the Quarter 2001
Professional Associations
- Uptime Institute; Individual Member/Subscriber
- Data Center User Group; Columbus, Ohio Chapter
- National Fire Protection (NFPA); U.S./Canadian Member
Education
- Plaza School; New Jersey; Certificate in Architectural Drafting/Construction Management
- Rutgers University Training Seminar Series; Construction Cost Estimating and Bidding
- Refrigeration Service Engineers Society; Certified Type 1 & 2 Refrigerant Recovery & Reclycling
- Honeywell Commercial Buildings Division; BMS Training, Direct Digital Controls
- Trane Corporation; Interior Air Quality Certificate and CFC Training Certificate
- Nalco Chemical Company; Water Treatment Management Certificate
- OSHA; General Industry Safety and Health Certificate
- Liebert/Emerson Network Power; ICOM/DS Systems & XD Overview Training