As part of an ongoing relationship supporting a global organisation’s workplace needs, the client appointed us to deliver an engineering-led design and construction project for another key asset within its UK portfolio.
We completed a full data centre infrastructure renewal across a 28-week programme, upgrading plant and building envelope, while keeping the facility live, its redundancy intact and its operational risk profile unchanged.
The facility is part of large-scale financial services infrastructure that cannot go offline. In practice, that means the N+2 resilience architecture across power, cooling and fuel governed every decision on this programme. Shutdown, partial load reduction and any loss of redundancy, however brief, were not options.
The team planned all works around independent failure domains so we could isolate each system without affecting the others. The team built in temporary parallel capacity to maintain redundancy before any existing plant came down.
As a result, the risk profile of the facility remained unchanged throughout, and maintained regulatory compliance at every stage.
100T mobile crane setup location enabling safe swing radii and uninterrupted operations during roof installation The team replaced plant system by system, sequencing each intervention to keep the failure domain boundaries intact. In turn, every replacement went through commissioning and live performance testing before handover to the building management system. Only once a stage passed sign-off did the programme move on.
Similarly, we planned access, logistics and lifting to the same standard as the technical works. No equipment movement created a dependency on critical infrastructure. A 100-tonne mobile crane was positioned to provide safe working angles without cutting off operational access. Throughout, environmental conditions inside the facility stayed within required limits.
3D visual of new steel access gantries (shown in red) within the existing plant area, with flooring removed for clarity Holding a live N+2 system together while replacing everything inside it is what our integrated AEC capability is built for.
Julian Rimmer, Director at M Moser
The asbestos-cement roof was non-compliant, deteriorating and thermally poor. Removing it required conditions the live facility could not support, so the team ruled out a replacement early in the project.
Instead, we designed an over-roofing solution and assessed it as a complete system, which meant the upgrade could proceed without touching the existing structure or affecting operations below.
The roof assembly type had no existing performance data, so independent specialists tested our designs against fire, moisture, durability and thermal requirements before work started on site.
All structural fixings and penetrations were then made under continuous environmental monitoring, with no effect on live operations below.
Existing asbestos-cement roof and legacy plant prior to engineering upgrades 
The works brought wall U-values to 0.18 W/m²K and roof U-values to 0.15 W/m²K, cutting thermal load on cooling systems and adding up to 20 years to the life of the asset.
In addition, the structure now carries the load path for future renewable plant, so the operator can integrate solar or other systems without further structural works.
The plant is renewed, the envelope meets compliance and performs well, and the resilience architecture that governed every decision on this programme remains unchanged.
Completed on time within the 28-week programme, the facility can now move into its next operational phase, including low-carbon energy integration, without further disruption.
Completed
2026
UK
12,449 sq m / 134,000 sq ft
Liam Kurt Smith (drone)
