Leighton's kicks off $100m data centre rollout program

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 24 May 2011 14:52

Leighton Contractors' data centre subsidiary, Metronode has commenced construction of the first two data centres, in Deer Park in Melbourne and Shenton Park in Perth, under its $100m data centre expansion program announced in January. They will offer respectively 7000 and 1140 square metres of technical space.

The new centres are being built using technology from UK based BladeRoom Group under a distribution agreement between Metronode and BladeRoom signed in June 2010.

According to Metronode: "BladeRoom is a highly energy efficient modular data centre system'¦[which] provides a scalable method of quickly developing data centres with an extremely low, proven power usage effectiveness (PUE). Metronode general manager, Malcolm Roe, said the BladeRoom technology would reduce energy usage for the facility's cooling by up to 80 percent compared with most current generation data centres.

He told ExchangeDaily that the BladeRoom's modular system combined with Leighton's modular off-site construction for the buildings would greatly reduce the time taken to bring the new data centres into service: the Melbourne data centre is due to come on line at the end of September and Perth at the end of October.

Metronode said: "The BladeRooms are fully engineered, factory-built and tested modules that are delivered to site fully fitted and ICT-ready. Support areas and plant rooms will also be built in factory to allow site works to be completed in parallel with off-site construction. In real terms, this means that construction time is more than halved, allowing Metronode to meet customers increased demands for quick turn around times."

Roe said that Metronode had already secured two tenants for each centre. In Perth, one of these is Leighton subsidiary Australia-Singapore Cable (International), which announced earlier this month plans for a new cable between Perth and Singapore.

Leighton announced in January that it had "committed approximately $100m to the first phase of its Australian expansion program to meet growing demand for sustainable energy efficient data centre facilities," saying: "The capital works program is currently underway with construction due to commence shortly in Perth and Melbourne, and a site secured for development in Canberra. A further three sites will be confirmed over the next six months in Sydney, Wollongong and Adelaide."

Roe told ExchangeDaily today: "the $100m covers Melbourne, Perth and either Sydney or Canberra. We have yet to announce which it will be." He said that the process of seeking development approval for the Canberra site had commenced and while sites have been selected in Sydney and Wollongong, the process of seeking planning approval has yet to start. To date no site has been selected in Adelaide.