Global data volumes have surged by more than 1,500% over the past decade and are predicted to treble in the next 5 years, driving sustained growth in data centre construction. Dickens Architects' expertise in mission critical projects draws from personal experience working with a world leading technology company on their ambitious hyperscale development programme. In parallel with teams working in other continents, 5 high-capacity data centres were designed, constructed and delivered across 2 northern European campuses over an extraordinary 42 month period.
Close collaboration was vital between the UK based design team, client stakeholders dispersed worldwide, and contractor partners sited in two different countries. An intense work programme demanded phased masterplans covering over 100 hectares, negotiation of multiple local building permits, accelerated multidisciplinary design from concept through to technical detail, and monitoring construction activities on concurrent projects through to commissioning, handover and post occupancy.
The scale was vast, encompassing cavernous data halls, giant cooling towers, subterranean substations, warehouses the size of football pitches, sprawling security infrastructure and extensive staff amenities. Every detail was specified down to the signage and furniture to create an environment that attracts the best industry talent.
The lessons learned provide invaluable insights into an array of technically complex considerations: from tier ratings and uptime to design metrics and fast track construction, from plant redundancy and single points of failure to understanding tenant and staff requirements, from fire safety and cooling strategies to layered security and NDAs, from PUE and TCO to sustainability and wellbeing. Dickens Architects understand mission critical and look forward to bringing our knowledge and skill to your projects.
“Always proactive, always focused on the customer and wider team needs and leads the team and the process in a collaborative way to ensure team goals and commitments are being achieved”
Warren Pickance
Managing Director, Burns & McDonnell
Data Centres
Images: Jestico + Whiles. Please refer to Acknowledgements for project team credits.