New Colocation Data Centers: Meeting Increasing Demands through Smarter Building Solutions
Discover how a different kind of partnership can deliver certainty earlier, improve execution and prioritize speed to market
BY NATHAN WELCH AND CAMERON MCCLAY
Read time: 8 minutes
As the digital revolution accelerates, the demand for robust, scalable and sustainable data infrastructure has never been greater. Across the industry, colocation offers a method that provides power, cooling and specialized physical environments for multiple businesses to house their equipment, instead of hosting on-site. Colocation data center construction, pivotal in this digital revolution, must overcome a complex yet universal landscape of challenges to maintain exceptional reliability and meet speed-to-market demands. However, the true question facing colocation providers, is not only how can we deliver a secure and reliable data center on time and on budget, but how can we reduce complexity along the way and ensure flexibility and scalability for the future?
To disrupt the way it has been done before and get better results, it is critical for colocation data center facility leaders to think beyond a traditional construction approach.
Allow for Flexible Solutions and Thorough Planning
Colocation serves as a crucial resource for businesses needing secure and reliable, yet flexible data solutions. Today, the role of colocation data centers extends far beyond server housing; it addresses the complexity of maintaining exceptional reliability for multiple tenants around the clock. These high-performance buildings require the ability to operate at full capacity at all times, even during maintenance periods, making redundancy for all utilities essential. It is critical these facilities cultivate a robust environment that drives innovation and enhances operational efficiency and prioritizes flexibility and scalability.
Any disruption can lead to significant losses. In the colocation industry, where spaces are handed over at varying times, ensuring zero disruptions while maintaining flexibility in your project plan is crucial for the success of the campus.
This focus ensures businesses can adeptly navigate inevitable project changes while guaranteeing uninterrupted operations and meeting the highest standards of performance and dependability.
Mortenson takes a refined approach to project execution, ensuring earlier certainty to the customer from day one. While we can plan and execute everything flawlessly within our scope, it’s ultimately the customers’ building to operate, and we must seek to understand their goals for operations early on. To avoid the risk of unplanned costs and potential change orders, it is critical for us to work with you to plan how you will handle outages and manage disruptions before the design is complete.
Another major component to preventing operational disruptions is through a greater level of commissioning for electrical-redundant paths and mechanical equipment review. This is required early in the project with flexibility woven into the plan. “The implementation of advanced disruption avoidance planning techniques, including detailed outage planning, and options for inevitable project pivots, is essential for reliable building operations,” explains McClay.
Integrated Partnership
At the end of the day, owners are constantly navigating an ever-evolving industry with increasing demands in how they operate and protect their commitments. Overcoming the reliability challenge that all colocation providers are up against relies heavily on selecting the correct construction partners.
While many partners are capable of building a data center, there are less that offer a broad spectrum of technical and operational expertise spanning colocation, enterprise, and hyperscale data center markets. To ensure you are delivering on your commitments, ensure your integrated partner has a proven track record in flexible project planning.
For example, on a recent hyperscale data center project in DeKalb, Illinois, the Mortenson project team developed an execution and move-in ready plan to allow for a seamless transition for operations. This broader hyperscale experience and planning approach provides currently unrealized benefits to owners building new colocation data center facilities, prioritizing speed to market for your business and the capacity to get across the finish line with greater ease and fewer challenges.
The Mortenson team has done a tremendous job lately navigating a myriad of Owner Furnished Contractor Installed [OFCI] challenges by working closely with vendors and trade partners on resolutions and execution plans. The flexibility and buy-in from the team have extended to trade partners and third parties, and has significantly reduced/mitigated overall impacts to the project.
Elevate Innovation through Modular Scalability
Colocation sites are often designed to be built or expanded in phases based on precontracted demand, which minimizes upfront capital expenditure and accelerates speed to market. These phased projects typically require compressed construction schedules with strict deadlines, often tied to financial penalties for delays. As a result, simpler and modular designs have become prevalent. This expedites construction, maximizes capacity, reduces costs, and maintains flexible redundancy and adaptable configurations to meet individual customer needs. While not universally applicable, these solutions offer more rapid scaling options than ever before, making them a valuable consideration for many sites.
To meet increasingly fast schedule demands, many owners and colocation data center builders are deploying prefabrication specifically for MEP disciplines, such as electrical, mechanical, and IT needs – allowing for faster setup, integration, which vastly decreases onsite labor hours. On one colocation project, with our mechanical trade partner, the project team was able to more efficiently manage onsite labor hours by executing approximately 70% of the refrigerant piping fit-out offsite, bringing entire pre-piped racks ready to install.
Moreover, the colocation industry shares the common challenge of navigating and preparing for ongoing supply chain issues. Mortenson is partnering with data center owners from across the nation to drive innovative solutions and mitigate supply chain challenges. This foundational work happens in a thorough yet flexible project plan through vendor and code clearance coordination, control system integrations and understanding, and equipment component knowledge to accommodate multiple equipment options. This adaptability ensures that changes in customer preferences or equipment delays do not result in additional costs and provides the freedom to choose the best solutions for their facilities.
By addressing these challenges head-on, colocation data center owners successfully deliver their projects providing their customers the most flexible, secure and reliable solutions exactly when they need them, while maintaining the highest standards of technological innovation and operational efficiency.
Efficiencies Through Non-Traditional Scheduling Approach
According to a McKinsey report, the US data center market is estimated to grow by 10% year over year until 2030. With this rapid expansion comes heightened supply chain issues, skilled labor shortages and scalability pressure.
By taking a non-traditional construction approach to scheduling, colocation leaders and their partners are focusing on lean principles and a manufacturing mindset to get better outcomes. This method ensures a predictable schedule, reducing the disfunction and risks associated with traditional construction approaches.
“By scheduling projects with this assembly line methodology, we avoid the pitfalls of having too many workers on-site, which often leads to increased labor costs and potential safety hazards. Instead, we create a safer, more predictable environment that guarantees quality without sacrificing speed,” states Nathan Welch, Project Executive with Mortenson.
Moreover, this industry is highly motivated to find cost-effective construction solutions and through this method, and being able to rely on a smaller workforce, is a significant advantage, especially given the current constraints in the experienced labor market. This unconventional approach not only lowers labor costs but also addresses the challenges faced by colocation providers and developers looking to lease space efficiently.
Cultivate a Desirable Work Environment
Despite the pressures to open facilities quickly and cost-effectively, prioritizing safety ensures there are no shortcuts and creates a desirable work environment for skilled laborers. This, in turn, boosts productivity while ensuring the certainty of cost, quality, and overall project delivery.
I have spent almost a decade of my career on the QTS Chicago site, and I can honestly say I have not had a single day where I wished I was working somewhere else. The culture of integrity, honesty, respect, and teamwork is to the highest level. I hope to continue to be a part of this team!
Adopting non-traditional construction approaches with stable project plans can help meet and even exceed world-class safety standards, all while reducing overall project costs. Experts have seen dramatic results when the site superintendents share a strong partnership with the site safety professionals. A proven track-record of this is highlighted by our QTS Data Center - Chicago project, located on a 30-acre campus near downtown Chicago, IL. It has recently surpassed a noteworthy 880+ days of active work without any recordable injuries. This benchmark demonstrates the effectiveness of well executed safety protocols and ongoing partnership with experienced builders.