After a real flurry of activity during the main mezzanine installation, the last two weeks have been a little more restrained in terms of visual change, as the majority of our time and effort has been spent orchestrating the next phase of the project.
We’ve spent time otherwise completing additional works ahead of the internal walling and access fit-out, which will be the next major milestone here at the new data centre.
Weekly overview
Aside from lots of time spent in meetings with our structural engineers, service coordinators, electrical contractors and other critical contributors to the NLE project, we’ve predominantly seen the most visual change at the front of the facility over the past 10 working days.
Our new high-security perimeter fence has started to take shape. This will largely match the specification of the compound perimeter found at NLC; that being a 2.4M palisade design, with overhead razor wire.
The difference here is that we’ve actually been able to retain some of the existing posts, designing custom post extensions to allow for a much taller border, and a faster installation.
We’re also adding a matching pedestrian turnstile, along with a gargantuan 6M sliding access gate for vehicles. This will be a whopping 3M high, to match the full height of the razor wired compound.
The rear of the facility will be following suit, with large 3M pedestrian access and fire escape gates, along with rear security fence extensions and razor wire, to match the much larger front compound.
We’re very pleased with this progress as we continue to push towards the end of month four on-site at NLE.
We’ve been extremely pleased with our approach to the main compound fence runs. While the front side of the compound will require more in the way of new posts and additional hardware, the custom extensions have proved a great success in quickly deploying the main runs using existing posts, which have already been dug in to the subsurface.
The final consultative actions on the walls, doors and custom machine plinths are scheduled for next week, meaning this next phase of the build will be underway shortly. This will split the facility into its various rooms and fire zones for the first time.
What else has been happening?
We’ve continued with further roll-out of our new core node at CLL this past week. While there’s not much to show visually, as much of this involved logical work on our 100G+ ring, we did want to show our new custom MUXs, which are fully branded, and have new shuttered connectors.
All future MUX additions and/or replacements will be our new branded variants, which we’re excited to be partnering directly with the manufacturer for!
What’s next?
Aside from the forward-looking continuation of the main envelope, our own team will be pushing ahead with development on later-stage plans for the installation of containment and associated systems.
We’ll also be moving onto the parts of the perimeter fencing that include the turnstile and the large sliding gate, which are certainly more complex additions to the compound.