Conventional data center builds often struggle with lengthy timelines, unpredictable quality and significant budget overruns. As the appetite for digital infrastructure accelerates, stick-built approaches can’t keep up with demand. Is there another way?
Modular construction offers unmatched speed and consistency. PCX makes the case for modularity in your data center build to ensure efficiency and resilience for long-term growth.
When building a data center, you have two options: approaching construction the
old-fashioned way or modernizing your approach. Traditional and modular construction represent both sides of this coin, with best practices increasingly skewing toward modularity. Your choice hinges on how agile your organization wants to be.
Stick-built construction had its place in time, enabling organizations to build some of the earliest successful data centers. But it’s also time-consuming and expensive, and facilities often face a myriad of challenges with this approach, such as:
● Rigid design constraints
● Weather delays
● Limited scalability
This leaves you struck, hindering agility and innovation. To create a facility that fully supports your unique needs, a modular approach is a must.
Modularity allows for both standardized build processes and room for customization. This industrialized construction approach goes beyond containerized IT by building components in a controlled factory setting, including:
● Pre-engineered power modules
● Integrated switchboards
● Mechanical skids
It’s simple to make the case for modularity. Create and test fully integrated subsystems—from structural frames to electrical cabling—off-site before deployment and minimize on-site disruptions.
Deploy an operational data center quickly and thoroughly. With industry-leading construction processes and stringent testing, off-site construction leaves nothing to chance.
Adopting a parallel approach enables site preparation and factory manufacturing to occur simultaneously. Reduce construction timelines by 30-40% over traditional builds and take the electrical room off the construction path to mitigate bottlenecks related to on-site labor availability and sequencing delays.
Off-site testing and commissioning offer peace of mind before full deployment. Every aspect of a modular data center is pretested and validated to identify and reduce safety risks and startup failures.
Another case for modularity is its predictability. Factory construction reduces the risks of unknowns—such as budget creep, weather variables and labor shortages—that impact time and ensure predictable pricing.
Create infrastructure you can count on over time and as your operation grows. Modular data centers are a boon to operators because they keep you moving by design.
Think of modularity as a well-oiled machine. Every data center component is built in a repeatable, redundant manner across sites to improve system reliability and uptime. Build for Day 10 capacity on Day 1 so operators can align infrastructure with demand, support maintenance and monitoring—and even reduce the risk of human error.
Whether you have a goal to be net zero or simply improve your operation, one major case for modularity is its ability to support sustainable business practices. Propel sustainable growth through data center construction that mitigates waste and energy use.
While traditional, stick-built construction accumulates significant waste, a case for modularity is to reduce your footprint. Modular data center construction minimizes the scrap that piles up from making on-site adjustments. Not only is this because each component is pretested, but standardized designs also use materials more efficiently to reduce costly waste of:
● Steel
● Copper
● Components
Modular units can be purpose-built to support even the highest-density workloads, including those that leverage artificial intelligence. Boost your overall energy efficiency by retrofitting legacy infrastructure.
Additionally, you can decrease PUE below industry averages. Manufacture components to tighter tolerances to enhance thermal containment and airflow management.
If you can build them somewhere else, you can move them later too. While traditional brick-and-mortar data centers are fixed real estate, there’s a valuable case for modularity in that modular data centers and skids are 100% movable. Contribute to a circular economy by transforming your data center to serve new functions as business needs evolve:
● Relocate
● Repurpose
● Refurbish
Extend the asset’s lifecycle and reduce your carbon footprint by foregoing new construction and repurposing your infrastructure.
Transitioning to modular data center construction offers more control over your build, overcoming the bottlenecks of stick-built processes. Develop your data center solutions off-site to accelerate timelines and test for consistent quality—and unlock untold scalability along the way.
Discover the value of modularity for your organization. Download our e-book, Embracing Modularity: Powering the Future of Data Center Construction, for insights to optimize your next build.