by Matt Seaton

London East Build Blog – Week 13

What a transformation we’ve seen this week at the NLE data centre project. The main mezzanine is now in place, ready to receive walls, doors, raised floors and ceilings, which will form the data halls and all other technical spaces. The true scale of the build has now begun to show itself.

What was once an empty, blank canvas of a building is now well on its way to becoming our newest flagship London data centre.

Weekly overview

This week, we’ve had two teams on-site installing our new heavy-duty mezzanine system. This system was designed here in the UK by our structural engineering contractor, and manufactured in Sweden.

Quite remarkably, this structure went up in just 3.5 days. That’s the entirety of the steel work, and nearly 20 tons of surface boarding, in a little over half a week.

Delivery
The first of three articulated lorries arrive on-site from Sweden
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A look at some of the steel work awaiting installation in the front compound
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Materials making their way inside, ahead of install
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The first sections of steel being installed
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The first skeleton bay of the mezzanine steel work in place
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A look across the steel work as bay three is installed
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A look across to what will be the open double-height atrium, from our storage mezzanine
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A look at where the final bay will be installed
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The underside of the completed steel work structure, ahead of surface installation
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The top surface of the structure nearing completion
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A view from the underside of the structure, with the top surface in place
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The underside of the new mezzanine structure, with temporary site lighting now in place
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Our new triple-flight staircase, which will function alongside the new lift, which is pending installation
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A look across the finished top surface, towards the access atrium and storage mezzanine in the warehouse – with safety barriers now in place around the open perimeter, ahead of wall installation
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The top side of the finished mezzanine structure, facing towards the rear of the facility

The visual change on-site over the last five days has been incredible. This is set to continue, as we look ahead to the full envelope installation, which will present us with the final building layout.

What you’re looking at here is a 470 square meter mezzanine floor, designed to support 450 tons, but with a max design loading of around 700 tons.

This will be holding up the two first floor data halls, along with service corridors, build and breakout rooms, and a fully-featured DR suite to match that on-site at NLC.

The underside will house a further two data halls, plus our heavy plant and electrical switchgear rooms.

We couldn’t be happier with the outcome of this tranformative phase of the project, and while we are acutely aware of the work that still lays before us, we’re extremely happy to see such a major milestone reached.

Our time lapse camera has been running throughout this phase of the build, so we’ll be pushing out a quick cut of the process soon.

What’s next?

Next up, will be the walling and door / access installation, which will fully zone off each area. There may be a week or two of layover ahead of this installation, so there will be plenty more supplementary works ongoing throughout this time.