Data Centre

TKR Provides Discreet Data Centre Solution

The Client

Employing 179,000 people in 100 countries across the world, this food, personal hygiene and home care products manufacturer has a turnover of € 40 billion. A global market leader in all the food categories in which it operates and for skin and deodorant products, the company has 337 manufacturing sites spread across six continents.

The Challenge

Following a restructuring of the company's European business to create centres of expertise, the company decided to base its IT services in the UK. As part of this strategy, the client required a new data centre and a location was found on the Wirral.

As the new data centre was to house the mainframe computer supporting all the company's European operations, business continuity planning was critical. As a result, the fit out programme for the data centre not only needed to provide ideal conditions for the IT equipment, it also had to be extremely secure and vandal-resistant.

The Solution

The appointment of TKR offered the client a turnkey solution for the design & build, civil engineering, structural and electrical project.

TKR carried out all the required civil and structural modifications to the building, including the refurbishment of existing offices and installation of a secure reception area.

All aspects of electrical services were designed in-house by TKR. They were responsible for the installation of the specialist electrical cabling required for the data centre's complex IT equipment, including structured and fibre optic cabling systems. Hundreds of kilometres of cabling were necessary to provide LV power, lighting and emergency lighting to the interior of the building and to the perimeter of the building and car park.

The heating, ventilation and cooling systems were all critical to the success of the fit out, as the computer hardware must be kept at optimum temperature and humidity to extend equipment life and minimise the nuisance failure rate. The air conditioning system installed keeps the data centre at a constant temperature of 21º and is accurate to +/- 0.5ºC, while the atmosphere is controlled at 50% humidity, accurate to within +/- 5%.

To enhance security at the building, TKR installed Alarm systems, CCTV, a barrier and gates to the perimeter of the building, and sophisticated access systems including card and fingerprint recognition.