“All projects have similarities,” says Rob Dean, CoreSite’s VP of Design and Construction. “However, every project has its own nuances, and each one has the potential to challenge the limits of your team’s skill, expertise and patience.”
Rob Dean, VP of Design and Construction, CoreSite
The data center industry is hot. By 2023, analysts project the global data center market to grow at an average compound rate of 17%, a jump of more than $284 billion during the forecast period.
Enterprise organizations across the spectrum are rapidly adopting multi-cloud strategies to gain speed and efficiency. At the same time, massive growth in data from streaming content, connected devices and a proliferation of new apps and services are driving companies to look for more space, power and extensible infrastructure. The demand is driven by current business needs and the need to have good optionality to use new cloud and digital products delivered in the future.
As a result, solutions providers are investing heavily in new data centers at the edge and retrofitting existing facilities to incorporate the latest technologies. But building future-proof facilities at the breakneck pace the market demands is no easy feat.
Over the course of my nearly 15 years of construction management experience, I’ve been involved with most every aspect of successful construction project. I’ve led capital improvement projects for a renowned public American university, managed projects for national general contracting companies, and now lead the team that designs and builds CoreSite’s world-class data center facilities.
One thing I’ve learned across each of my stops is that projects all have one thing in common: nothing. While all projects have some similarities, every project has its own nuances, and the potential to challenge the limits of your team’s skills, expertise and patience in ways you’d never considered or imagined.
With that, here’s a look at what I’ve learned it takes to build a modern data center, how companies might decide whether to create a new facility or update an existing one and the lengths involved in juggling multiple projects while prioritizing quality technology.
Market-driven decisions
Deciding on where to build a data center isn’t a matter of just throwing darts at a map and starting construction the next day. My team carefully considers customer feedback concerning their data center requirements — site security, accessibility, and adequate power and cooling — and where they want it located.
With that basic information, we do a deep-dive evaluation of our current footprint in a given market. That means understanding how much capacity we may already have, if any, with existing buildings and comparing that with the projected demand. It also means gathering details about land ownership — whether we already own the land or need to purchase it — as well as evaluating the surrounding areas for fiber availability, power capacity and availability from nearby substations, and any zoning issues we may face.
Our general manager and the in-market sales team play a vital role in pulling much of that data together and connecting with the right local stakeholders to help the construction team determine whether we need a brand new center or if we can build-out existing space to satisfy demand both in the short and longer term.
Building the team
Once the decision is made to construct a new space, our construction team coordinates with other internal departments and spearheads the creation a holistic execution plan. The construction team — consisting of construction project managers, a design manager, and me — is responsible for everything including:
- managing the design development process
- applying for applicable permits
- ordering equipment
- managing specific budgets and timelines
- adhering to quality standards for both individual hardware items and the building as a whole.
Project managers routinely collaborate with other stakeholders such as the data center operations team, engineering department, and other experts in our organization to ensure the entire process — from conception through delivery and post-grand opening customer support — is well-aligned.
It’s imperative for data center construction leaders to evaluate their current operations and replace outdated or ineffective ones with a methodical, integrated strategic approach that enables them to address both customers’ and their own business needs now and in the future.
And as one might imagine, coordinating multiple departments, personalities, and projects simultaneously is incredibly challenging. That’s why our construction team comprises seasoned industry professionals with years of experience in the construction industry and who understand the nuances and complexities of major construction initiatives.
More importantly, we’ve made a concerted effort to hire employees who are innate communicators and problem solvers, because effortless collaboration and tighter integration with other teams is key to properly leveraging diverse skills that help deliver projects on time, on budget, and beyond expectations.
Vetting partners and refining processes
Of course, the size and scope of building a data center (whether brand new or rejuvenating an existing space) can’t be done by a skeleton crew. Effectively developing modern data centers requires a multidisciplinary team of consultants, designers, builders, and vendors.
Like many organizations, our team’s focus on exceeding customer expectations directly influences the way we choose general contractors, trade contractors, and all related vendors. Our selection process begins with an extensive request for proposal (RFP) in which competing partners must validate their team’s experience, demonstrate their competency, and explain their plan for delivering a high-quality project.
But it’s not enough for vendor partners to tell us they can deliver on our expectations for a project. They need to prove it. Often, we’ll pose theoretical questions and scenarios to prospective partners to gauge their responses and evaluate the processes they propose.
Because we have limited resources to manage projects directly, we’re dependent on our partners pulling their weight. That means in cases of equipment, for example, a vendor must take what we’re buying, understand it, and have detailed plans in place for installing, testing, and configuring it — and then be able to validate those processes.
Additionally, we’ve implemented internal processes that allow our stakeholders to discuss and coordinate all facets of a new project throughout its lifecycle. This helps create a smooth transition to operations and sales teams once construction is complete. More importantly, it’s also a vital learning opportunity for identifying scope gaps, design concerns, and budget or delivery challenges that could impact future projects. We take all those data points and discussions and add them to a formal “lessons learned” meeting we host with all vendor partners and stakeholders that allows us to identify strategies for improvement to apply to the next project.
A goal without a plan is just a wish
When a core service or solution is in such high demand, it’s easy for a business to get caught up in the madness of a feeding frenzy. But simply chasing the next deal or overcommitting in the name of revenue is a sure path to failure — especially in the data center realm, where entire businesses depend on high-quality, reliable infrastructure.
It’s imperative for data center construction leaders to evaluate their current operations and replace outdated or ineffective ones with a methodical, integrated strategic approach that enables them to address both customers’ and their own business needs now and in the future. Emphasizing collaboration, alignment, and continuous improvement is repeatable and scalable. It also makes it possible to rapidly deliver consistently secure, reliable, and future-proof data center facilities organizations across the country your customers have come to expect in the data-first world of the Digital Age.
Rob Dean is the VP of Design and Construction at CoreSite.