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William (Bill) C. Schaumann, III, PE has more than 25 years of experience in the design and construction of industrial, mission critical, and telecommunications facilities. He has experience in new and renovation projects focusing on electrical systems, including power distribution, UPS systems, DC power systems, wiring, lighting design, and relay coordination studies. Bill focuses design efforts to achieve energy efficiency, reliability and flexibility, with an emphasis in emergency/redundant power to support mission critical environments.
Bill grew up in the Chicagoland area where he has spent his entire career. He lives in the Western Suburbs and is an avid Chicago Bears fan. He spends much of his time with his family and is a lifelong Star Wars and Marvel comics fan.
He has a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois and is a registered Professional Engineer and former Electrical Contractor. He received the Charles Steinmetz Award by the Consulting Electrical Engineers (CEE) division of the Electric Association of Chicagoland for Technical Merit for the GM New Enterprise Data Center in Warren, MI, in June 2013.
Bill is the Mission Critical Section Manager – Electrical at Burns & McDonnell for the Chicago office. Burns & McDonnell plans, designs, permits, constructs, and manages projects all over the world with one mission in mind: to make our clients successful. Burns & McDonnell is a family of companies with a team of 7,600 engineers, construction professionals, architects, technologists and scientists. Their singular mission since 1898 has been to make clients successful.
Involvement in the Mission Critical Industry
Prior to joining Burns & McDonnell, Bill was an Associate Partner at Syska Hennessy Group where his main responsibilities included overall electrical power system design and project management including design, commissioning, business development, and quality control. He was also a Senior Electrical Engineer at Teng & Associates responsible for completing complex electrical project in the Telecomm, Datacenter, and Light Industrial industries. He started his career at Chicago Bridge and Iron where he held various positions such as project engineer, lead engineer, startup/cx engineer, and electrical superintendent.
Bill is involved with a number of local and national Data Center Associations including the 7×24 Exchange Lake Michigan Region Chapter where he serves as President. He is also a member of AFCOM, CEE, and IEEE. Bill is an Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Designer (ATD). He has spoken at various local and national conferences as a Data Center designer.
Throughout his 25+ year career he has designed projects that have been built all over the World and across the United States. His early construction experience greatly influenced his career and gave him insight into the overall construction and design processes. He has successfully designed retail and wholesale collocation datacenters, enterprise datacenters, and multiple hyperscale datacenters.
Involvement in 7×24 Exchange
Bill has been involved with the 7×24 Exchange Lake Michigan Region Chapter for over 10 years. His first Board of Directors position was as the Program Director and then progressed to Vice President and eventually President.
Aside from his involvement with the 7×24 Exchange Chapter, Bill has been a presenter at numerous 7×24 Exchange national conferences speaking on Urban Colocation, Colocation of Data Centers in Diverse Climates, and other data center topics.
