DCN May 2017 | Page 20

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.