Silent Aire
The Resilient Integrator of Engineering and Manufacturing

“Business Continuity” might be a simple two-word phrase to the reader’s eye; but to some it symbolizes much more. Back in 1987, two brothers, Dan Leckelt and Lindsey Leckelt, had their parents’ business facility completely wiped out by an F4 tornado. Having been acquainted with one of the worst-case scenarios of ‘business discontinuity’, the two brothers renovated the company’s direction to build a global business focused on data centers—the very heart of business continuity for enterprises today. Dan Leckelt, the Co-CEO of Silent-Aire, states, “That experience in 1987, infused the thought of business continuity and resiliency into our very DNA, and the way we have managed the company reflects exactly that, both internally and externally.”

Tackling Challenges with Resiliency

From a single facility and twelve employees, Silent-Aire has now developed into a multi-national organization that builds mission critical, end-to-end, and custom-engineered Modular Data Center (MDC) and HVAC solutions, mainly for hyperscale data center providers. The company also caters to CDNs and other private and public organizations in healthcare, recreation, education, energy, and other sectors. However, considering the service areas Silent-Aire specializes in, it’s evident that the ride has never been easy for the Leckelt brothers. In the current data center market, especially for hyperscale data center providers, the foremost obstacle lies in scaling of businesses in accordance with the ever-growing customer demands and aggressive delivery deadlines. For Silent-Aire, it became imperative to rapidly scale up it’s manufacturing facilities. Lindsey Leckelt, Co-CEO of Silent-Aire, explains that building every extra manufacturing facility requires new physical space, machinery, and human labour, which presents endless complexities to be dealt with. Lindsey points out that the inherent attitude of resiliency, developed from the experience of 1987, has guided them to tackle every such challenge that comes along the way.

Silent-Aire now has three world-class manufacturing hubs, boasting a combined area of six hundred thousand square feet, spread over Canada, U.S., and Ireland to address customer demands and deliver quality solutions on-time. Amidst all of these, the striking fact lies in how Silent-Aire continues to implement business continuity. All three facilities have the same infrastructure, manpower, and operational ability. In case of a disaster in any one facility, the other two can provide the exact same quality service and products to the clients, residing anywhere around the world.

The Journey

Within a few years, the company had become a pioneer for delivering turnkey HVAC solutions using direct evaporation and air economizer CRAHU technology for cooling of hyper scale data centers.

The company recognizes customers’ core problems, models a specific solution to cater to those challenges, manufactures the designed solution, and finally deploys it on the client’s premises. The organization has immense control over every step of the process right from designing to the manufacturing stage, which speeds up the whole process and allows Silent-Aire to deliver the solution on-time.

"The inherent attitude of resiliency, developed from the experience of 1987, has guided Silent-Aire to tackle every challenge that comes along the way"

For instance, a renowned hyperscale data center provider had to build a 30 MW data center in four phases. Silent- Aire partnered with the organization as a supplier and met their requirements with purpose-built models and customized solutions, without any time lag. The company has managed various such projects over the years where they have delivered scalable outcomes to the customers, helping them gain increased productivity.

The pillars which empower a company to stand the test of time are greatly rooted in the values it infuses in its internal and external environments. As one follows the story of Silent-Aire closely, one gets acquainted with the principles that Dan and Lindsey have inculcated into the company. It’s the resiliency and the way the two Co-CEOs have pride in building a company that has earned them the recognition of being a “resilient problem solver” in every domain — design engineering, manufacturing, and customer service. Silent-Aire’s solutions reflect the company’s attention to the ‘safety’ of its customers and a stringent ‘focus’ on integrating design and manufacturing, while its client approach draws the attention toward end-to-end ‘collaboration’, ‘customer-centricity’, and ‘constructive learning’ from customer experiences. Lindsey reveals the reason that has enabled them to build such a strong team culture in the company. He says, “Since childhood, we brothers have been fortunate enough to take part in numerous sport activities. This helped us to create a strong team-oriented work environment where everyone feels a sense of accountability and ownership.”

Silent-Aire’s competent design engineering team has always been the enterprise’s biggest strength in driving breakthrough innovations in HVAC and MDC technologies. The company has recently launched its innovative Silent-Aire Ener-Loop Cooling technology to compete in the higher CFM Indirect Evaporative or Economizer Cooling market for data centers. Dan and Lindsey envision that Silent-Aire’s Ener- Loop cooling technology will eventually lead the global industry in efficiency, cost, and rapid deployment for existing and greenfield facilities.

There have been many lessons learned by the Leckelt brothers, but the most consistent message you hear them talk about is resiliency and problem solving. “When our parent’s business was wiped out we learned how much drive and hard work is needed to survive, recover, and succeed - you have to be resilient!” stated Dan. Lindsey concurs, “A big part of resiliency is problem solving. We are viewed as a partner when we solve problems for our customers. We do that through team work, leadership, and collaboration within our internal and external teams. There is a lot of pride at Silent-Aire when we see our customers succeed.”