ITAD During a Pandemic

Everything changes during a pandemic, including the way essential businesses operate. We’ve all read about the changes in policies and procedures at hospitals and grocery stores. But what about the removal and processing of retired IT assets, sanitizing the data off of data-bearing devices, the resale of marketable assets, and the recycling and disposal of e-waste, collectively known as IT Asset Disposition? How has the pandemic impacted the ITAD industry?

To get some insight I interviewed Jeff Londres, Founder and CEO of NextUse, and a 35-year veteran of the industry. He’s seen the impact of numerous economic ups-and-downs, but this is his first pandemic. I also interviewed some of NextUse's clients and ITAD vendors in NextUse’s international partner network for their insight into how they’re dealing with evolving challenges.

Jeff explained to me:

• NextUse didn't cease operation because ITAD is classified as essential work (1), but due to regional lock-downs impacting clients' ability to execute jobs, he had to implement some furloughs, temporarily reducing staffing by as much as 50%, and impacting front office roles more than operational ones.
• As most regions later entered into one reopening stage or another, customers across the country began rushing to close offices and end leases as part of migrating to work-from-home strategies or to downsize workforces as revenues plummeted. (2)
• In response to the resurgent business, in late July Jeff opened facilities back to full staffing and began hiring to help meet client demand.
• He asked me to be part of the team that helped formulate comprehensive protocols for operations in the office, processing facility, and at client sites during the ongoing pandemic. (3)
• NextUse has been fire-drilling managing projects since the end of July, many on very short notice with unusual or unique requirements, requiring flexibility to accommodate. He asked me to help define and refine that process as well.
• Part of NextUse’s expanded workforce’s role is learning where clients are at regarding new ITAD requirements and the challenges they’re having meeting them under the circumstances, and customizing programs to fit their needs. (4)
• New or seldom-used ITAD services are becoming more prevalent during this period. (5)

(1) ITAD is an Essential Service During a Pandemic? Really?!

All waste removal is considered an essential service, from household garbage getting curbside pickup, to larger items going to the transfer station, to e-waste up to enterprise scale. Organic garbage piling up is a disease vector, and e-waste is composed of elements that are toxic to the environment if disposed of illegally, requiring specialized processing to recycle properly.

(2) Why is there a lot of ITAD happening during a pandemic? Why not wait until it’s safer?

During the pandemic, many organizations are:

• Migrating from offices to work-from-home business models
• Downsizing personnel and locations as a result of shrinking revenue
• Consolidating, scaling-back, and closing offices
• All often on short notice before lease-expiration deadlines.

Keeping offices open that aren’t being used, which is what the property management considers a tenant is doing if the office space is full of their [unused] stuff, is the last thing that many financially struggling companies can afford to do. So, they’re forced to vacate the office space as quickly as possible, even under these less-than-ideal circumstances.

(3) What’s being done differently by ITAD vendors operating during the pandemic?

The emphasis of ITAD vendors is prioritizing safety for their staff and clients.

ITAD, unfortunately, is not a work-from-home job, it requires personnel from both the client and the vendor to interact, typically at least 2 times:

1. Preparation: No matter how many forms, emails, photos and spreadsheets are exchanged between the client and vendor, the best way to execute the job correctly on the first try with minimal risk and additional costs is a walkthrough.

• A client site-contact with familiarity with the location, the project’s objectives, and the assets, meets with an ITAD vendor-contact, and they physically walk through the environment, going over every aspect of the job from the loading dock to the office space and data centers that need to be decommissioned. The idea is to avoid any surprises that will unexpectedly require additional equipment, personnel, or time, which pre-pandemic would have raised the cost of the job, but which now also increase exposure and risk for the personnel involved.
• As the pandemic drags on, clever clients and ITAD vendors may resort to a “virtual walkthrough” like NextUse has started doing. Using streaming video technology allows the client site-contact to be on-site and connect with the ITAD vendor-contact remotely. Then the client site-contact walks around to show the vendor everything they would see if were they there in person, allowing the vendor to ask questions, request something be looked at closer or from a different angle, and generally providing the same utility as a physical walkthrough. All with the benefit, as one client put it “of doing the walkthrough without the risk of being coughed or sneezed on”.

1. Execution: There are numerous terms for the day the job gets done: takeout, pickup, and others. The truck(s) to haul the assets and vehicles with technical and support personnel from the ITAD vendor arrives at the building. They unload tools, ladders, pallet jacks, wall & floor-coverings, etc. needed to disassemble equipment from server racks, workstations, and conference rooms, move it all safely to the trucks and pack them securely for transport back to their processing facility.

• With some items being large, bulky, weighing 10’s or hundreds of pounds, and requiring multiple people to maneuver safely, it’s often impossible to maintain social distancing, so PPE becomes critical.
• A client site-representative is on hand as well to facilitate any last-minute client requests and to help resolve any unexpected circumstances that arise.

During both stages, the guiding principles are minimal interaction, social distancing where possible, PPE at all times on-site, and sanitizing as the assets and work-surfaces may be handled by client and vendor representatives within days or hours of each other.

(4) What’s being done differently by ITAD clients during the pandemic?

The pandemic is affecting clients’ ITAD processes and procedures as well.

Pre-pandemic, organizations had dedicated IT Asset Management (ITAM) staff and Hardware Asset Managers (HAM), as well as Cybersecurity personnel and Facilities teams. They all played a part in decommissioning and retiring IT assets while prioritizing data security and chain-of-custody of items until the hand-off to the vendor. Smaller and even some mid-size locations may not have had dedicated staff, with some teams traveling between locations regionally, nationally, and even internationally to facilitate installs, moves, adds, changes, & disposal projects.

With rolling city, state, or regional lockdowns, travel restrictions, and safe-travel concerns, many organizations are having those dedicated IMACD resources working remotely with personnel from the site in question, and many of those site-contacts have no asset management, technical, data security, or facilities experience or expertise.

Add to that, pre-pandemic, these sorts of site closures and retiring of IT assets were usually part of a long-term plan in response to a slow-moving development such as a merger & acquisition or an economic downturn. In comparison, since the pandemic began, revenues have plummeted, businesses have declared bankruptcy, companies have moved entire workforces to work-from-home models in a matter of days in some instances, and in many cases have decided to leave them there. All this has led to downsizing of staffing levels and closing of offices, requiring facilities to be emptied, often in a very short period between when the rushed decision is made and when a financial penalty will arise due to lease agreements.

(5) What services are in high demand during the pandemic, and why?

The pandemic is forcing organizations to disrupt their IT assets’ lifecycles. They have assets that aren’t at end-of-life, still have value, and would still be in production if the offices were still being staffed and operating.

As a consequence, two less-frequently used services for ITAD vendors are seeing more demand:

1. Storage of assets: Organizations aren’t going to pay the lease on expensive, unstaffed office space to act as a secure storage facility, but at the same time they can’t put valuable IT hardware and data whose loss could shutter the company, in a self-storage shed on the side of the road.

• Certified ITAD vendors have secure facilities, and are used to acting as logistics and processing hubs for when clients decide if they want assets relocated, sold, or scrapped. Most importantly, they have varying qualifications for data security and destruction, with some holding NAID AAA and ADISA data security-specialized certification.

1. Relocation of assets: Some businesses realize during the reorganization of their office spaces that some of their IT assets can immediately benefit their remaining facilities, either to go into production to replace aging assets or to go into stock as back-up devices for business-continuity purposes.

• Most ITAD vendors can do any level of processing a client desires, from factory resetting networking devices to sanitizing data off of data-bearing assets.
• Many are also experienced at packing delicate IT assets for shipping all over the world to ensure they get to their destination undamaged. They know to use packaging material specialized for IT assets. For example, laptop computers stacked on top of each other laying horizontally damage the screens and keyboards on the bottom rows of units due to the weight, so an experienced ITAD vendor will use dividers and separators that allow the devices to be stored standing vertically.

Conclusion:

The ITAD industry, like every other, is operating under different, often dynamic conditions, requiring both clients and vendors to be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances. All parties want to prioritize mitigating the risk of impacting the health and well-being of the personnel involved. But ITAD projects still need to ensure data security and responsible recycling, as well as, increasingly, to provide storage or relocation, and they need to be done as cost-effectively as possible while meeting all those seemingly competing requirements. Both clients and ITAD vendors need to be aware of the restrictions each is operating under and be as cooperative with each other as possible in order to successfully execute ITAD projects in these challenging times.