If you’ve ever been in an office when construction is happening, you know how distracting it can be. You’re trying to concentrate, but all you can hear is the thud, thud, thud of the hammer. Let’s hope you have headphones to block out the noise or you’re able to find a quieter place to work. Otherwise, it’s going to be essentially impossible to work at your full capacity.
Beyond these distractions, construction can also disrupt meetings. You can’t really talk about the upcoming business initiative or the next critical project with your team when there’s a crew of people using power saws on the roof above you.
There could even be problems if the construction isn’t happening anywhere in the immediate vicinity. We’ve all heard the tales of fiber optic cables being inadvertently cut in half during construction projects in the area.. You never know when a slight miscue might knock your systems offline for an extended period of time, tanking your team’s productivity along with it.
Although you can’t necessarily eliminate these problems from occurring every now and again, you can take a smarter approach to data center construction to reduce the likelihood that such incidents affect your company during a construction project.
Invest in Off-Site Construction to Reduce Data Center Construction Downtime
Just because you’re building a data center doesn’t mean a crew has to come to your property to move construction forward.
To mitigate downtime during construction projects, more and more organizations are investing in off-site fabrication. Under this method, data center components are designed and manufactured off-site and then brought to the final destination to be assembled. In addition to considerably reducing disruption to your staff, off-site construction can also reduce project timelines by as much as 30 percent. The timeline acceleration is perhaps most noticeable when your project is located in an area that doesn’t offer ideal conditions for construction projects.
When you choose to work with the right modular data center construction partner, you get the peace of mind that comes with knowing you’ll end up with a high-quality final product. In fact, leading fabricators are able to deliver modules that are 95 percent defect-free. They know the ins and outs of data center construction because they do it every day. By taking the pre-fab approach, you’re able to avoid pouring a lot of time and resources into a project, only to find out the hard way your data center doesn’t meet your requirements or is riddled with easily preventable mistakes.
How Modular Construction Can Help Prevent Downtime
Let’s take a deeper look at some of the ways modular data center construction can help businesses like yours keep your systems online.
1. Less disruption to work when construction is done off-site
Your data center project is incredibly important. But that doesn’t mean the bulk of the heavy lifting needs to be done right next to your employees.
When you opt to move forward with off-site construction, your workers can go about their days as they normally would, free of distractions or disruptions. The vast majority of the design, manufacturing, and testing is done elsewhere, and productivity stays consistent.
2. Installation can take place during off-hours
Once your data center is ready to be put together, the crew can come whenever you ask—even at night or on the weekends. As scheduling permits, your team might not even have to glance at the construction team, because they’ll never be on site at the same time.
3. Less planning is needed
When you choose to go with off-site construction, there are much fewer logistics that you need to be concerned about. Instead of trying to figure out things like whether you need to stagger shifts or where the construction crew can eat lunch, you only have to worry about coordinating the actual install, which is considerably shorter than traditional stick-build construction.
4. Less technology downtime for employees
When you partner with the right off-site construction team—one that prioritizes quality management standards (e.g., ISO 9001:2015)—you gain access to experts who stay on the cutting edge of data center design and deliver data center modules that are defect-free. Not only does this mean your systems can stay online during the entire design process, but it also means that you’ll enjoy better construction quality on the other side.
For more information on how modular data center solutions can help your business accomplish its objectives without forcing you to endure extended periods of downtime, check out The Complete Guide to Modular Data Center Solutions.
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