Making Connections

Retrofitting for sustainability: navigating Telehouse South's transformation with Skanska

• Telehouse • Season 1 • Episode 17

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In this episode of "Making Connections," host Nick Layzell, Customer Success Director at Telehouse, is joined by Julian Hennessy, Projects Director at Telehouse, and Dan Williams, Managing Director of Skanska Mechanical and Electrical. Together, they discuss the ambitious retrofitting of Telehouse South, the newest facility within Europe’s most connected data centre campus, located in London Docklands.

Julian and Dan explore the unique challenges of retrofitting a live data centre, detailing the project’s large-scale logistics, complex construction requirements, and strict safeguarding measures to keep operations uninterrupted. They highlight how Skanska and Telehouse collaborated to overcome supply chain pressures, inflation, and skill shortages, all while setting ambitious sustainability targets, such as reducing CO2 emissions, recycling materials, and supporting the local Tower Hamlets community.

Listeners will gain insights into why retrofitting, rather than rebuilding, is emerging as a sustainable approach within the data centre industry, balancing innovation with environmental and operational goals.

Visit telehouse.net for more information

Nick Layzell:

Nick, welcome back to making connections. Telehouse's, podcast series where we explore the IT challenges and the opportunities that face organizations today. I'm Nick Layzell, your podcast host and Customer Success Director here at tele house, in a previous episode, we explored the design and planning stages of the ambitious retrofitting project at Telehouse south with Julian Hennessy, our projects director and Chris Williams, technical director at Black and White. I'd encourage people to listen to that episode and learn why we chose to retrofit rather than rebuild, and the early challenges that we faced in the design stages. Today, once again, I'm joined by Julian Hennessy, projects director at Telehouse.

Julian Hennessy:

Hi Nick, delighted to be joining you again,

Nick Layzell:

and also I'm pleased to welcome our guest, Dan Williams, who's the Managing Director at Skanska, the company that's played a key role in bringing the Telehouse South project to life. Thank

Dan Williams:

you, Nick. Good to see you, Julian, and it's great to be here today. Thank you for the invite. Just to introduce myself briefly, I'm the managing director of Skanska mechanical and electrical business, SRW. We've been the principal contractor at Telehouse South, and been responsible for delivering the design and build.

Nick Layzell:

Fantastic. Thanks, Dan, and great to have you here today. Today we're exploring two crucial aspects of modern data center build the complexities of retro fitting a live data center and the sustainability and environmental approaches involved in the construction of the Telehouse South Building, specifically, just to give you some background on tele house south, it's the most connected facility on Europe's most iconic and connected data center campus, located in London's Docklands area, and it officially opened its doors in 2022 this is actually tele house's most ambitious refurbishment project, yet focusing heavily on infrastructure and design while keeping at the forefront sustainability and reducing environmental impact. The first phase of the project completed in less than 12 months from the acquisition and at full build out, the 31,000 square meter facility will provide 12,000 square meters of colo space and the total power capacity of 18 megawatts. So firstly, Julian, to start with, you retrofitting a live data center, especially a building as iconic as what is now telling our South must have been a monumental task. Quite a big headline there. But could you share some of the challenges that you and the project team faced during the life cycle of the project?

Julian Hennessy:

Yeah, sure, Nick, I think you hit the nail on the head there when you said projects like this and this scale, from a retrofitting point of view, don't come onto the market every day. This is something quite unique. All of the conversations that I've had with our supply chain, be it design teams and contractors worldwide, that are operating globally, basically no one's heard of something of this scale you rightly put there. We're in a 31,000 square meter building over 11 stories, where we practically had to return to every floor and do some element of works on it, strip out the majority of the floors to enable us to carry out the new infrastructure works and the new install in the building, when you bolt onto that that we had another external building where all of our generators are housed, and all our MV infrastructure had to be completely renewed of 4000 square meters across four stories, plus all of the external works around the campus as well. It turns into a mammoth task that you need quite close control over. Throw a live data center into that then, and you're putting just the risk profile of the project into another stratosphere, to be honest. So the lot of safeguarding, customer safeguarding plans went into place during design, and then obviously, when Dan and his team came on board, a lot more came to fruition and got refined through that, from design stage into construction and delivery stage, external pressures, then obviously everyone knows they're going to global landscape from when the project Inception started, and throughout all phases, we're seeing extreme market inflation, inflation to levels that we've never seen before, really in the construction industry. Implications of project budgets. Obviously, that brings about supply chain disruption across the globe in the aftermath of the pandemic and most recently, geopolitical unrest and have caused numerous impacts to project program and budgets as well. Obviously, the buoyancy of the data center industry and the construction industry as a whole is putting massive strain on widespread skill shortages across Europe. I can't really emphasize enough how important it is to ensure we're developing the next generation of skilled people that are coming into our industry.

Nick Layzell:

So apart from that, fairly straightforward then, but very straightforward, I think, I think we'll touch on a few of the things that you mentioned there, Julian, a bit later, and maybe in a bit more detail, obviously I picked up from my role as customer success live data center in the mix with all of the construction work. And then maybe that kind of presented you some challenges. But how does this project as a whole compare to the many projects that you've delivered in the past.

Dan Williams:

So data centers is one of our core sectors. Nick and complex projects are very well known to us. However, this project was unlike anything we tackled before. I think that's fair to say, the complexity of essentially replacing the heart and lungs of the building or keeping critical areas live. Brought many, many challenges that we have to overcome. This was certainly the most technical retrofit project we've completed, as well, and on a huge scale, with a contract value of 158 million we also had 600 people coming through onto the project each day, our own team and our supply chain, which put an enormous strain on logistics and making sure that we got that right now, within Skanska, we put a lot of emphasis on understanding our customers needs, and that was never more critical than on this project, Julian's mentioned some of the safeguarding. I mean, there's a number of things we had to do to make sure that we didn't disrupt the existing live data center. We had enhanced security clearance measures for our team, essentially, our people were subject to the same security protocols than you would have if you were entering a live data center. And we all know how strenuous and technical that can be. We had extensive safeguarding protocols, Julian touched on it earlier, where we had to make sure our works did not affect the live data center, and this would be in respect of you know, control of water systems as we were installing them, and also, if we were carrying out work such as, you know, roof renewal and things like that, and making sure that we were sensitive to what was underneath and what was going on in the live parts of the building. There was also a need for continual communication with tele house through this project, more so here than on, I think, any project I've ever been involved in, and that was to allow tele house to ensure they could keep their customers informed, which is really, really important to ensure we maintain that confidence throughout the program. A real positive I think, on the project has been the collaboration and teamwork between our team and the tele House team. I mean, this has been absolutely critical to ensure the project delivery process has been as smooth as possible.

Julian Hennessy:

Yeah, I think I can second that from our point of view as well, from a construction team, and as you rightly put, Nick the customer success manager team, when all of us are in the same room with the operations teams, facilities teams, everyone's on the same page with that collaboration all the way through. It's no small feat, delivering something this size in a live environment. As Dan touched on, 600 people coming through, additional to our normal customers and our normal staff, managing those people in the building where they have to work on every single floor, and it is a lot of collaboration, a lot of safeguarding that goes on around that. It's no small feat whatsoever.

Nick Layzell:

So that magnified, really the complexity of the project. Aside from the construction itself, there were lots of those logistics and that kind of customer element to think about. And was that plan prior to the project? Maybe, Julian, did you appreciate that that level of intense communication was going to be required beforehand, or was that something that developed through the project?

Julian Hennessy:

No, we always knew that there was going to have to be some element or a close management around that. I think from the tender that we sent out, Dan got that across in the tender as well. So all the tenders that did tender for the project got that across. It was all about making sure that customer is paramount in the building, customer safety, customer I am security. There's expensive kit and expensive data going through these facilities. So that was 100% paramount, in our opinion. Yeah,

Dan Williams:

and I think Julian's right. Enormous effort went into planning, but I think we also needed to be agile. You know, there were sometimes things that would crop up, and we had to overcome them. And I think we could only do that by working together sometimes during the construction process, challenges you can face that perhaps you didn't think you were going to face. And I think again, that's what really called the teamwork into action to ensure that we could overcome that as quickly as possible. And as Julian said, always keep the tele house customers and the live halls at the center of our thinking to make sure that nothing we did detrimentally affected those areas. Yeah,

Julian Hennessy:

I think a really, really good case in point to that was during the pre construction period where skens Skanska were doing their design, they were on site surveying, we had a 24 step MV migration, where customers would have been down to single supplies for an extended period. Throughout all of that migration and replacement of the MV infrastructure, we completely removed all of the customer supplies to a dedicated source. We got two new utility supplies into that source to make sure that they were completely disconnected from the work zone, completely delivered the work zone, and then we migrate them onto that future infrastructure once it's fully tested and commissioned.

Nick Layzell:

I think that was quite a key thing, telling house as a business, we're keen to satisfy the customers demand for space and wanting to be in the building. And we knew we had a very large project to to undertake while they were in and there are some critical businesses there, and there are numerous kind of small things that I can think of that happened throughout the project, and examples of that agility that Dan mentioned, I think adjusting delivery schedules to suit customers, doing their fit out lots of things like that. So I think that communication seems to be absolutely key. And of course, prior planning, given the complexity and the scale of of the building, and you guys have touched on it in terms of the size of the project and the complexity of the whole build. Do you see this retrofitting approach to construction becoming more common in the data center industry? Of course, we're now approaching a time when many data centers have been around for 20 or. Were approaching 30 years and Telehouse ourselves started 35 years ago. Dan, are other data center companies, other data center businesses, construction companies, going to face similar challenges?

Dan Williams:

Yeah, certainly. I mean, I think retrofitting, without a doubt, allows data center providers to upgrade their facilities to meet modern standards. And whether it's improving the energy efficiency, increasing capacity or enhancing resilience. This can all be done by reducing the time, cost and carbon implications of building new and I think that's really important. I think we see more and more customers recognizing that, I think with the right planning and execution, I think retrofitting can, without a doubt, extend the life of data centers by decades and deliver huge environmental benefits, and I think that's a focus for us. All we see is almost becoming a sub sector to the wider drive for sort of new data centers across the UK and into Europe. And I say sub sector because I think what we've learned from telehealth South is that it does need slightly different skill set and approach to working in a live environment, or next to a live environment, versus building new data centers. So there's a lot of new skills I think you'd learn as you go through a project this scale and complexity. And we're seeing an increasing prevalence of these sorts of opportunities coming to market from our customer base, all seeking to upgrade their existing facilities. And I can definitely see this type of work gathering pace in the market, in terms of its prevalence.

Nick Layzell:

And Julian we touched on before in the design podcast, it was really our commitment as tele house around the sustainability and the future that we took the decision to retrofit. Yeah, I

Julian Hennessy:

think the decision to retrofit the data center rather than rebuild was driven by our commitment to sustainability as much as practical considerations on business plan as well. By modernizing the existing structure, we could significantly reduce our carbon footprint compared to starting from scratch or demolishing the building and rebuilding it. Retrofitting allows us to respond to the growing demand of data center services much faster as well. So instead of that initial demolition of the building, clear the site, clear the piling, or redesign the piling around what's in the ground at the moment, and then rebuilding a whole structure. It gives us an option, that we have the structure there to roll straight into lighter demolition and then retrofitting.

Nick Layzell:

So sustainability was obviously a key focus throughout the south project. Julian, can you tell us a bit more about the specific sustainability goals that you set at the beginning of the project, and how were these achieved? Yeah,

Julian Hennessy:

sure. I think from the offset, improving sustainability and reducing our environmental impact were the two driving points behind every decision that we made throughout design, procurement and construction. We were committed to our company strategy, and we wanted to make telehealth South a benchmark for sustainability in the data center industry, from a retrofitting point of view, one of our primary goals was to significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the building during our redevelopment of the project. I think we've achieved this in several ways, starting with our decision to actually retrofit the building instead of demolishing it, and starting again with a new structure that alone saved over 10,000 tons of CO two emissions in the area. Ambitious recycling targets that we set during tender periods, so that Skanska and his team have taken on during the kind of strip out and enabling works sections of the build, we had 95% of all materials from the site to be recycled instead of sent to landfill, were really, really good points on that 97.87% that Dan and his team have sent for the recycling instead of landfill, which is really, really good, we focused on using environmentally friendly materials, including a new till water pipe work system that reduced the carbon footprint during manufacture and shipping by 90% compared to the traditional systems, we have a drastically reduced PUE figure compared to the existing building infrastructure. This has seen a drop from 1.72 PUE to under 1.3 we also wanted to ensure that our sustainability within the Tower Hamlet's community was felt. This was not so much on the carbon footprint or environmental improvement point of view, but on trying to support the community that we are a part of in an ethical way.

Nick Layzell:

Thanks, Julian and Dan. How did Skanska ensure that the construction processes that you used were aligned with telehealth sustainability goals, and were there any innovative techniques or technologies, from a scanska perspective, that played a role in this?

Dan Williams:

So first of all, Nick I think in the longer term, carbon reduction is one of the most significant challenges to overcome in the data center market at scanska, we've got a target for achieving net zero carbon emissions, including all of our supply chain, by 2045 and helping our customers decarbonise is a key focus of our business strategy. Our approach to carbon reduction is to focus on getting the most credible and reliable data on carbon calculation to be able to identify the broadest range of options. We think that's really critical, which then support decision making around what's best for our customers. So it's fair to say that environmental product declarations have become the gold standard for carbon calculation, and the more the industry. Invest in these the faster and more accurate carbon reduction assessments will become. There are many examples of carbon reduction in play at tele house, from reuse of existing materials to efficient design and manufacturing, just to name a few examples. So Julian's mentioned about the pipe work and the sustainably sourced materials that have gone into that now that saved an overall 515 tons equivalent of carbon emissions. We've reused widespread paving across the building, equal in 195 tons of reused materials, saving 25 tons of carbon emissions. We've optimized the services, bracketry design, and saved a further 19 tons of carbon emissions. And there's many more examples. That's just a few.

Julian Hennessy:

Yeah, I think just to add to Dan's point there as well, the green procurement that we set off on this project with was exactly what Dan's talking about there, making sure that we reuse what we can driving circular economy. So there was a lot of office furniture, chairs, desks, cabinets coming out of the building that the guys repurposed into the local community, to some schools and offices in the local community, I think, every single procurement package. So every package on the project got looked at from a sustainability point of view during procurement stages. So for the life cycle of the building, we're getting the most efficient building we can with the market availability, plant and equipment that suited the design for the building. It

Nick Layzell:

seems a remarkable achievement, with all of the challenges of retrofitting the building a live customer environment and also layering on some extremely aggressive targets around carbon reduction and being aware of the local community, the number of people working on site, I guess maybe in conclusion, rather than me concluding, I'm going to ask you guys the question we touched on the fact that we think that this might be a bit of a direction of travel, and Dan thinks it will be almost a complete sub sector of data center construction in the future. Does it all add up? Is it the way forwards in every case, do data center companies retrofit all of their old buildings. Maybe it's a quite difficult question to answer, isn't it,

Julian Hennessy:

but it is, it is, I think it is definitely a case by case scenario. There is some buildings that probably do deteriorate a bit more than telehealth south that we had. I think telehosouth, with the quality that it was built to, is unique in that manner. Again, if we talk about sheds in the middle of a greenfield site, it could deteriorate a bit differently. You might not be fit for purpose anymore. You might have to build a bigger structure to get what you need out of it, especially with new weight for plant and all that. You need to take all of those aspects into account. I think from where we got telehealth South was that it was existing data center, albeit not to the same capacity that we have now. It was still structured to hold heavy plant on the roof, to hold heavy plant on the kind of higher levels, on level 10 and level nine, and then the data center floors throughout the building. Data Centers are designed for this. But I think from a holistic point of view, it is a case by case scenario, and sometimes buildings just don't suit for what you want the end of life to be like

Nick Layzell:

as it was a purpose built data center in the first place. That gave us some advantage in having a look at the retrofit option.

Julian Hennessy:

I also do think that there's opportunities to explore existing buildings of offices somewhere as well and repurposing them into data centers. That Avenue has to be checked through moving forward, especially when we're talking about a new environmentally and sustainable future.

Dan Williams:

I think Julian's right. I mean, I agree with him about it is a project by project specific assessment that will have to be done, but I think we've inspired a lot of confidence that it can be done while there are live areas in the existing building, and you can do that whilst respecting that and keeping that running, and having the data center provider still delivering services to their customers, while you actually do works as extensive as this, and I think for that, it's a great case study. Some projects will be more viable than others based on their own characteristics, but I think to actually prove and give confidence to the market that it can be done on this scale, I think is definitely a step forward, just

Julian Hennessy:

to really, really pay homage to the Skanska team, and when we did, set out with the goal of charitable donations. We do have two charity partners in the local community, leaders in community and first love foundation. All of the recycling that we could see at the beginning of the project was quantified and taken as a discount off the bottom line of the project. Skanska were to notify us when we went over a certain tonnage, and then everything that we got, additional to that on the project was to go back into the community in some form. I think it's just to commend the guys as well. We've put £36,000 back into the local community with those two charities. We've donated our time to numerous colleges in the area. We have the Macmillan foundation as well, that have altered onto that from charitable donation side as well. And we've had a really, really good careers fair held in tele house south that was jointly held by tele house and scanska teams as well, just to make sure that we do drum up a bit of interest around getting into this sector and making sure that we are focusing on the next crop of people coming into. But

Nick Layzell:

yeah, it seems it's such an important part of everything we do now conscious that there is a perception, maybe that data centers do have an impact on on the environment, on the community, but also they power our lives. And getting a mix of support in the community and focusing on our ESG credentials, as well as delivering a complex project for the latest technology, is absolutely key, I think, to bring all that together in terms of where tele south south is now, I understand that the additional floors that have been fitted out now, floor seven and six are ready to go and available to the market. So that's brought us to this point, and fantastic work. Dan from scans, because perspective, and, of course, Julian, very complex project for you to manage on tele houses, behalf so. So thanks very much for the insights. It's been super interesting. Great information. Thanks very much. Nick, thanks Dan, thank

Dan Williams:

you. Nick, thanks Julian,

Nick Layzell:

thanks everyone for listening to this episode of The Making Connections podcast, and I hope you'll join us for the next episode soon.