LON1: Infrastructure Upgrade

Gratte Brothers was appointed Principal Contractor for the mechanical and electrical shell and core infrastructure upgrade of 2No existing 1.9MW data halls in an operational Data Centre.

The electrical installation consisted of new low and medium voltage (MV/LV) switchgear, generators, uninterrupted power supplies (UPS), power distribution units (PDU), LV busbars and lighting/power. These services were in addition to fire alarms, automatic transfer switches (ATS), earthing, static transfer systems (STS), ring main units (RMU), transformers, security and IT wireways.

Mechanical services included the installation of new chillers, smoke and leak detection, building management systems (BMS), trace heating, sprinklers and computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units. As Principal Contractor, Gratte Brothers also undertook all builders work and steelwork. All new pipework was prefabricated at Gratte Brothers’ pre-fabrication unit.

Road closures were needed for the lifting of the generators, chillers and pipework to the roof area and shutdowns had to be carefully planned for the extension of the LV services to ensure no loss of power to the existing systems. Co-ordination proved challenging as the existing converted building space was not designed to current data centre and challenges presented by COVID-19 were not anticipated but each challenge was overcome by the project team to reach practical completion a week early in March 2021.