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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

A short-and-sweet instalment of the build blog this time around, as the real meaty content starts in anger from next week.

It’s been another fortnight of completion and tidy-up works across a number of areas at London East. This will be the final post of what has effectively been a prelude to the main build blog content, which will begin on Monday – the envelope installation process.

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Weekly overview

We’ve spent time this past fortnight across a number of areas, to bring open tasks to their conclusion ahead of the main envelope installation. We’ve also spent time away from the NLE project, with ongoing maintenance and improvement works at NLC, and the finalisation of our new core node deployment at CLL.

As you can see, we’re fairly light on fresh visual content for NLE this time around, both in part due to the nature of the work, and also due to time spent on other projects in the past couple of weeks. This will all change in a very big way next time around, which we’re all very excited about.

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What’s else has been happening?

In other news, much time has been spent back at NLC this past two weeks, across a number of areas. The bulk of the time has been spent finalising plans for the primary construction work to begin at pace next week; logistics mainly.

We’ve also completed other works outstanding at NLC, and finalised the commissioning of our new POP at CLL.

Busy times indeed for the team at Netwise, as we maintain ongoing growth and expansion like this across our estate, as works continue at NLE.

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What’s next?

Next time around, we’ll be reporting back on progress of the main envelope build. We have two teams coming in from Sweden to undertake the first phase of the envelope, which will be the large mezzanine structure destined to contain all of the technical spaces in the new facility.

We’re very excited! We hope you’ll share in the next few months of the build with us, which will be the most transformative of the entire process.

Another two weeks of work are now in the books on-site at NLE. We’re now just two weeks away from the main mezzanine going in, which will house the technical side of the facility, including all four data halls.

This most recent fortnight of work has seen some of the open jobs complete – or at least reach near-completion – as we look to totally sign-off all preparation works before the large envelope construction begins.

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Weekly overview

Focus remained on preparing our new loading bay and warehouse area on-site at NLE this past couple of weeks, along with time spent back at NLC completing some other necessary works and actions.

Our new loading bay, warehouse and workshop area is now complete (though still pending a final photo of the mezzanine end-capping in the final grey finish), which ties in with the visual language of the workshop and loading bay area at NLC.

We’ve also taken delivery of some more interesting items, including the turnstile for NLE, another forklift to join our growing fleet, and some of the main components of the UPS for NLE phase one.

We’re also able to share with you some new design drawings, which show the forthcoming mezzanine installation for the envelope portion of the build – an exciting look behind the scenes.

What we hope comes across most clearly from photos of non-technical works is the extreme level of quality and attention to detail we’re carrying over to NLE. It’s a large part of what NLC is known for, and something we’re extremely proud to carry through to every aspect of our operation.

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What’s else has been happening?

We’ve bought another new forklift!

Meet Linde V2. She’s been delivered to NLC to assist with the movement of some heavy equipment, including 17 tons of UPS and batteries which have now been shipped across Europe.

She will be heading over to join Linde V1 at NLE in the coming weeks.

We’ve also started installing some new checkerplate at NLC. The entry door to Data Hall 1 has been clad on both sides, with more to be installed inside the data hall in the coming two weeks.

We’ll provide updates on the data hall installation of the same checkerplate as it goes in.

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Envelope mezzanine design

We’re working with a number of design and build contractors for the steel work, along with a private building services coordinator, for getting our in-house designs realised – both initially in 3D, and in later in reality.

Here are a few early-stage output renders of the main mezzanine, showing the access staircase and open atrium that will also house the lift shaft.

Next time around, we’ll show you more of the containment for the data halls, as they’re coordinated into our master drawings.

We’ll be providing further insight into the design side of the build project over the coming weeks, as more of our area and system designs are coordinated into the master drawings.

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What’s next?

In short, another fortnight of preparation works.

From 6th July, the main envelope works will begin in earnest, likely to take around two months to fully complete. While our contractors undertake this work, we will also be bolstering the perimeter compound fencing, to match the security standards found at NLC.

Another busy couple of weeks are now concluded on-site at NLE, as we reach the end of month two. Phase one is certainly coming along nicely.

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Weekly overview

Given where we’re up to with regards to the full build timeline, we continue to predominantly push ahead with supporting works on-site, with the main envelope set for installation in early July.

We’re also still very hard at work behind the scenes, pulling together all final adjustments to the many plans and schematics that make up the entire project. This will of course continue throughout the project, however with many of the larger components of the construction phase now at a critical ‘bake-in’ point, this is of keen importance at the moment.

In terms of visible changes on-site, focus has been on the storage mezzanine and racking in the loading bay / warehouse, closing stage works in the NOC, and the NOC kitchenette. Alongside this, there have also been further integrations on security and core systems.

We’re very happy with the continued progress at NLE. While we are naturally most excited for the heavy works to begin, which is where the ‘data centre’ elements will really begin to show, we’re still very glad to see such fantastic progress this early on.

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What’s else has been happening?

Our new core POP in CLL is now almost completely deployed. All Layer 1 links for this location are now connected, with the final onlining of our routing layer to complete next week.

We’ve also nearly completed our large deployment in Frankfurt, with most carriers now online, servicing the nodes installed for use there. This has been a large and complex project, so our team will be very happy to see this reach total completion.

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What’s next?

We will continue to push ahead with the final stages of preliminary works, ahead of the main envelope installation now scheduled for July. The next 3 to 4 weeks will provide an excellent on-ramp to this next phase, as various smaller tasks reach completion.