Technical · Reference design T-02
Modular Data Centre Buildings & Edge Facilities
We build the enclosure that modular data centers need: frame, envelope, zoning, and the line where the next phase attaches. Racks, power, cooling, fire and network are somebody else’s scope.
Decision Rooms
Four decisions before the shell is drawn
Scope line
Exactly what you are buying from us
You are buying the enclosure: structure, envelope, roof, internal partitions, zoning, doors, sealed penetrations and the finishes inside them. Racks, active power, cooling, fire detection and suppression, monitoring and network systems are excluded unless separately quoted. Agree that line in writing before design starts, because every argument on this kind of project happens on it.
Stating the boundary first loses some enquiries and spares everyone the wrong ones. A buyer who needs a complete facility with equipment, commissioning and a performance guarantee is better served by an infrastructure vendor, and we will say so. A buyer who already has an integrator and needs the building around them is who this page is written for.
Phase one
How much shell you build before you need more
Building the whole enclosure at the start and building the first hall with the next one planned are different commercial positions, and only one of them is reversible. Choose which you are taking, and have the expansion line planned into phase one either way, because a blanked wall detailed for a future connection asks very little of the first phase.
Site and access
What the plot and the route to it will allow
An edge facility is often on ground conventional construction dislikes: remote, constrained, seasonal, far from labour, tight for lifting equipment. That is the case for this method rather than an obstacle to it, but it is still surveyed first. Settle access width, turning, hardstanding and component storage before anything at all is manufactured.
Design authority
Who certifies what, and against which standard
We draw and build the enclosure. Your engineer certifies the design against the standards your project is held to, your systems integrator designs and commissions everything active inside it, and your commissioning authority signs the result. Decide who holds each of those three roles, and name them, before the first drawing is issued.
Those three roles get written into one document. A responsibility matrix is drawn up with you before design starts, listing design, supply, installation, testing, certification and ongoing responsibility line by line, with a name against each. It is the least interesting document in the pack and the one that decides whether the project ends calmly.
The perimeter and the delivery route
The approach is a security question before it is an architectural one. Where the perimeter runs, where a vehicle stops, where a delivery is checked and where staff enter without opening the same door all sit on the site plan, and every one of them is harder to change once a fence line and a hardstanding are in the ground.
The delivery route matters twice: once for the components that build the enclosure, and again for years afterwards, for the equipment that goes in and eventually comes out. A door and a route sized only for the first delivery is a facility that has to be partly opened up the first time something large is replaced.
Then the outside plant. Whatever your integrator specifies stands somewhere with access around it, screening in front of it, a route for cables and pipes into the building and a noise relationship with your boundary. We do not size it. We do draw the yard, the route and the sealed penetrations it will need.
The envelope, and how it grows
A steel frame carries the enclosure and manufactured panels close it, screwed together on the plot. The joint grid stays regular and there is no wet trade in the envelope, which on a remote site matters practically: no batching, no curing, and no water drawn from a supply that may not exist.
Roof and wall build-ups are specified for the climate the facility sits in and detailed against water in the way that matters here, which is not the way it matters on a house. Falls, upstands, the treatment of every roof-mounted item and the route of anything passing through are set out, because a roof over technical space has no tolerance for an improvised repair.
Growth is planned rather than promised. Phase one will end at a wall detailed as a future connection: its structure, its penetration positions and the way its cladding comes off and goes back are settled at the start, so extending later is a planned operation on a known interface rather than exploratory work on a live building.
Zoning inside the shell
The enclosure divides into rooms before it divides into equipment. Technical space, an electrical room, a mechanical space, a staging and unpacking area, a store and somewhere for people to work are the ordinary divisions, and where the walls between them fall determines almost everything about how the building is later maintained.
Those walls are set out with the systems in mind and specified without claiming their performance. A partition between technical space and plant, the sealing of its penetrations and the way a door in it behaves are all part of the building; the ratings that partition has to achieve are set by your engineer and certified by them.
Maintenance access is the zoning decision most often taken too late. Clearances in front of switchgear, room to withdraw a unit, a route from the door to the furthest position without crossing a live area, and somewhere to work that is not the technical space itself all take floor — and floor is easy to add on a plan and impossible after commissioning.
A sealed penetration through the wall panel
C01
The blanked wall where phase two attaches
The plant yard and its screen
The plant yard is the part of the site nobody puts in the brief and everybody photographs by accident. Whatever your integrator specifies stands out there in the open, and what it looks like from your approach road is decided by where the screen goes and how tall it is.
It is also the part that governs access. Room to bring a unit in, room to take one out, room to work around it in the rain, and a hardstanding that carries the load — all four go on the site plan, and all four are painful to retrofit once the yard is full.
And it is where the cables and pipes turn and enter the building. Each of those turns is a penetration, each penetration is sealed, and the position of every one of them is agreed with your integrator before the panels that carry them are manufactured.
The buyer’s folio
The technical buyer’s folio
Four short chapters for a technical buyer who already has an integrator: what sits inside our scope and what is firmly outside it, how the enclosure is zoned and maintained, how a second phase attaches to the first, and what a procurement team is given before anything is committed.
01What is in scope, and what is firmly outside itThe boundary stated first, the site case second, and no claim made about anything inside the racks.
The reason a precision-engineered enclosure suits this brief has nothing to do with novelty. A shell built from components manufactured to a drawing and assembled dry gives a repeatable envelope and very little wet work on a site that may have no water, no labour pool, and a season that closes the road.
We build the enclosure. What goes inside it belongs to your integrator.
That is also why the edge case is the strong case. A facility close to where data is generated usually sits on ground a conventional contractor finds awkward — access, water, labour, weather. Components arrive flat and the enclosure goes up dry, so the difficult part of the site is handled by the method rather than absorbed by the programme.
A shell that hints at a tier nobody engineered it for is worse than no page.
IN SHORT — The shell, its zoning and its penetrations are ours; racks, power, cooling, fire and network are not.
02Zoning inside the shellHow the enclosure divides, why the divisions are settled early, and what they are deliberately silent about.
Security zoning runs alongside the technical zoning and rarely matches it. Who reaches which room, which doors are controlled, where a visitor is escorted to and where a contractor works unaccompanied are your policy, and the building either supports that policy from the first drawing or forces awkward exceptions to it for the rest of its life.
Floor is easy to add on a plan and impossible after commissioning.
Every penetration through the envelope will be scheduled. Cable entries, pipe routes, ventilation and any conduit through wall or roof go on a list with their position, their size and the sealing detail they take, because an unscheduled hole cut on site is the failure that turns up months later as water, dust or a compromised separation.
What the drawings will not do is imply a capacity. No density, no load figure, no availability, no tier and no certification appears on this page, or on the sheets when they are drawn, because none of that is a property of an enclosure. Those figures belong to the systems designed into it and to whoever certifies them.
An unscheduled hole cut on site is a failure that arrives months later.
IN SHORT — Rooms, separations, maintenance clearances, security zones and a scheduled penetration list — and no capacity implied.
03The envelope, and how it growsWhat the building is made of, how a second phase attaches to the first, and what the plant yard asks of the plot.
Nothing in the load is room-shaped, which on an edge site is a practical point rather than a philosophical one. Frame members, panels, the roof build-up, doors, linings and fixings travel banded and flat on ordinary vehicles, so there is no abnormal-load route to survey between the factory and your plot.
Growth is planned, not promised. Phase one ends at a wall detailed to be opened.
Which also means the enclosure can be handed to your integrator in a defined and inspectable state. A dry, closed, sealed shell with its penetrations formed and scheduled, its rooms divided and its doors hung is a clean point at which one contractor’s work stops and the next one’s begins, and that point goes into the programme.
No batching, no curing, and no water drawn from a supply that may not exist.
IN SHORT — Steel frame, dry-fixed panels, scheduled penetrations, a planned expansion interface and a clean handover to your integrator.
04What a procurement team is givenHow the enclosure reaches a difficult plot, what the group’s figures cover, and everything this page refuses to imply.
More than a hundred projects, sixty to ninety days on site and a twenty-five year warranty are the record of the manufacturing group. That is a record rather than a programme committed to your facility ahead of a survey and an agreed phasing, and it is restated per project in the quotation.
The responsibility matrix is the dullest document in the pack and the one that ends the project calmly.
None of those three figures extends to anything electrical, mechanical, thermal or protective. They describe the manufacturing group’s delivery record and its warranty position on what it builds, and they say nothing whatever about uptime, availability, cooling, power or fire performance inside a facility whose systems are designed and commissioned by other people.
No figure appears here as ours — not structural, fire, thermal, acoustic, energy or seismic, and not capacity, availability, tier or certification of any kind. Standards that bear on the enclosure are named, and the certificate is your engineer’s to issue. There is no price either: an enclosure is quoted against its phasing, its plot and its scope line.
Our figures describe what we build. They say nothing about what runs inside it.
Search this term and the first page is four infrastructure vendors and a glossary, an encyclopaedia entry and two explainers. The vendors sell the systems; the rest explain the category. Nobody there offers an Indian technical buyer the building around their equipment with the boundary written down, and that gap is this page’s whole reason to exist.
IN SHORT — Components arrive flat, the enclosure is built on your plot, and nothing about capacity or certification is implied.
Questions a procurement team asks first
What exactly is included, and what is not?
Included: structure, envelope, roof, internal partitions and doors, zoning, sealed penetrations, internal finishes and the external plant yard as drawn. Excluded unless separately quoted: racks, active power, cooling, fire detection and suppression, monitoring and network systems. A responsibility matrix is drawn up with you, line by line with a name against each, before design starts.
Is this a tier-rated or certified facility?
No, and nothing here should be read as implying one. A tier, an availability figure or a certification is a property of a designed and commissioned facility, not of an enclosure. Your engineer sets the standards your project is held to and your commissioning authority certifies the result, against systems we neither design nor supply.
Can it be expanded after the first phase is commissioned?
Yes, when the expansion was planned into phase one. The boundary wall will be detailed as a future connection, with its structure, penetration positions and removable cladding set out, so extending becomes a planned operation on a known interface. Expanding a facility where none of that was planned is a much larger and riskier job.
Can it go on a remote or constrained edge site?
That is the case this method is strongest in. Components arrive banded flat and the enclosure goes up dry, so there is no batching, no curing and very little water or local labour needed. What still has to be surveyed first is access width, turning, hardstanding, component storage and room for lifting equipment.
What reaches the plot?
Components, banded flat. Frame members, panels, the roof build-up, doors, linings and fixings arrive numbered against the assembly order, and the enclosure is put together on your ground. Nothing in the load is a room-shaped object, so reaching a constrained edge site needs no abnormal-load route between the factory and the plot.
At what point does your work stop and my integrator’s begin?
At a defined, inspectable state: a dry, closed and sealed enclosure with its penetrations formed and scheduled, its rooms divided, its doors hung and its finishes complete. That point is written into the programme and into the responsibility matrix, so both contractors work to one handover rather than to two assumptions.