design &
facilities Management
BEST LAID (FLOOR) PLANS
Ralph Mannion, managing director of Kingspan Access Floors, gives some
points to consider when specifying a raised flooring system in a data centre.
W
ith the ever
increasing access
to social and digital
media and the
emerging Internet
of Things in everything from
household appliances to industrial
applications, the demands on
data storage, be it the servers that
house the data or the data centres
20 | May 2017
that house the servers, have
increased dramatically.
Whilst the design and
construction of these data centres
continues to evolve significantly,
whether it is a hyperscale owner-
occupied facility or a developer led
colocation space, the fundamental
requirements remain the same;
namely superior structural
performance for housing the
equipment and maximum energy
efficiency in cooling it.
In terms of design concepts that
have stood the test of time with
respect to equipment loading and
cooling as well as acceleration of
schedule through the construction
phase it is hard to look beyond
raised access flooring systems.