Pre-Construction for STFC

The Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) selected Keysource to undertake pre-construction services for the data centre upgrade at its Daresbury Laboratory facility in Warrington.

This involved supporting the live operation upgrade of the data centre facility which included the lifecycle replacement of critical power, cooling and protection systems.

Under the terms of the deal, Keysource was responsible for establishing a detailed brief and performance specification for stakeholder agreement and senior level approval. Preferred solutionswere then agreed to meet the brief, including associated commercial, technical and delivery related risks and considerations.

Finally, Keysource produced a developed design and commercial information for the contract and completed key enabling activities in preparation for the construction phase.

The agreed pre-construction approach enabled Keysource to collaborate with STFC to plan the works and mitigate risk to the high performance computing load which had to remain available throughout. In addition, this approach to the project enabled a key agency driver to complete the project within a relatively short programme, to be confidently agreed and executed providing asmooth transition into the delivery and commissioning phase.

Project Highlights

• Fast team mobilisation to support key project and funding requirements

• Multiple customer stakeholder management and communication

• Evaluation of solution options with clear opportunities and benefits

• Commercial certainty of project requirements

• Clear risk mitigation and management plan

• Early procurement of critical path items to support fast-paced programme requirements