Coordinating Architects, MEP Consultants and IT Vendors for a New Enterprise Data Center

A financial services enterprise building a new head office had already engaged architects and MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) consultants to design the building, including a dedicated data center floor. The architectural drawings were well advanced before anyone on the IT side had reviewed them in detail against the actual power, cooling, and access-control requirements the data center would need to operate.

The Challenge

Architects and MEP consultants design to a brief, and the brief they had been given specified floor area and general power/cooling capacity, but not the specifics that matter to an IT operations team: redundant power paths, raised-floor and cable-routing requirements, rack layout and weight loading, or the physical access-control zoning a data center needs for compliance. Discovering a mismatch after construction begins is enormously expensive to fix; discovering it after the building is complete can be nearly impossible.

Our Approach

• Requirement translation: Converted the enterprise's IT and compliance requirements (redundant power, cooling capacity, access zoning, cable pathways) into specifications the architects and MEP consultants could design directly against.
• Design review at each stage: Reviewed architectural and MEP drawings at successive design stages specifically for IT-relevant conflicts, rather than waiting for a single final sign-off.
• Vendor-neutral coordination: Sat between the architects, MEP consultants, and prospective IT infrastructure vendors so that physical design decisions and equipment specifications were made with full visibility of each other, not in isolation.
• Independent verification: Confirmed the as-built data center floor matched the agreed IT specification before any server or network equipment was installed.

The cost of an architect and an IT consultant disagreeing on a drawing is a meeting. The cost of them disagreeing after the concrete is poured is a rebuild.

The Outcome

Several design-stage conflicts — inadequate cable pathway allowance, a cooling layout that would have created hot spots at planned rack density, and an access-control zoning gap around the generator room — were identified and corrected before construction, avoiding costly rework. The data center went live matching its original IT specification, and the enterprise now has a documented design-review checklist for any future facility build.