27 October 2020
Secure I.T. Environments, a design and build company for modular, containerised and micro data centres, has completed a new data centre for Opus Trust Communications in Leicestershire, the omnichannel communication specialist working in heavily regulated industries.
The new modular data centre, which further increases the security rating of Opus Trust’s operations, began construction in April 2020, during the UK Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. The nature of Opus’ operations gave the project key worker status, and despite the many challenges created in the supply chain, logistics and onsite management of the project, it was fully delivered in just 15 weeks. Opus operates in sectors such as telecoms, utilities, financial services providers, as well as the NHS.
The new data centre was being built in a fully operational area, which meant particular care had to be taken to develop new processes and timelines to ensure the project complied with Covid-19 requirements, minimising risks for all involved and still delivering the project on time. These included: split working procedures to ensure only two engineers in the room at any time, close liaison with manufacturing partners to ensure key deliveries, agile timeline management to deal with fluid and rapidly changing variables that affected plans and remote project and on-site management meetings over video conferencing.
“As a company that delivers intelligent omnichannel communication solutions for a range of clients, data security and regulatory compliance is fundamental," said chief operating officer at Opus Trust Communications, Hayden Savage. “As we manage the business-critical communications for an increasing number of customers, the investment in our new Data Security Centre is further commitment to the robustness of the processes and procedures we have in place."
Chris Wellfair, Projects Director at Secure I.T. Environments added, “This was one of our most challenging projects ever, starting just at the moment when life in the UK, was thrown into disarray for everyone and every business. Our dedicated project and installation team always work very closely with our clients and this has been more important than ever as we all worked to navigate and design new ways of working. The success of this project has proven the value of all the time invested to get processes right and some of these are being taken forward into all our new projects.”
Secure I.T. Environments designed and built the new modular data centre, which included 19” cabinets, a new UPS located in a separate UPS secure compound, LED and emergency lighting and in-row air conditioning units in N+1 configuration. SITE also installed a dual power supply infrastructure, switchgear, structured cabling, raised access floor, an external AHU condenser compound and environmental management systems.
