Seizing the opportunity
JUSTIN JENKINS, CEO
Situated between Cardiff and Newport in South Wales, UK, the NGD facility currently stands at a monumental 750,000 square feet, large enough to freely rotate nine jumbo jets simultaneously across its three floors.
Renowned as Europe’s largest data centre, NGD has invested millions of pounds and expanded rapidly in the 12 years since its inception, when founders and serial entrepreneurs Nick Razey and Simon Taylor identified a major gap in the market.
Realising the struggles of many enterprise organisations, government departments and research establishments when it came to justifying the cost of operating their own servers, combined with the rapidly falling price of fibre networks, the duo decided to redevelop an unused site and create a revolutionary data centre.
About SPIE UK
SPIE UK is a smart engineering and technology- driven solutions provider for the built environment. We engineer, manage and optimise smart spaces and places leveraging emerging technologies for our customers that improve where people work, learn and live.
With specialist expertise across all technical aspects of the built environment from concept and design through to operation, we deliver best value for our customers. SPIE provides smart city and smart workspace solutions that consider economics, wellbeing, asset life span, energy efficiency and maintainability.
Data Centre Excellence
The digital age is making our world smarter, with growth in data centre demand increasing to meet our needs. At SPIE UK, we provide innovative and energy-efficient solutions to our customers, supporting their needs for criticality and business continuity in the ever-evolving data centre sector.
Our complete range of services means we design, install and maintain data centre engineering installations to the highest standard through our project teams and Uk-wide network of highly-skilled mobile engineers. Combined with our whole-life capability, we create solutions for improving building performance and sustainability.
NGD Partnership
SPIE has been NGD’S Principal Designer and Contractor for the 10 years that they have been operating at the Newport site, providing design, installation and commissioning services on all phases of the data centre development. Delivering everything from HVAC, HV/MV/LV power, life safety and security systems, building fabric and civil engineering works, SPIE is proud to be NGD’S engineering partner.
To date, SPIE has been responsible for the design and construction of 30 plus data halls and associated facilities. From the first build in 2009, SPIE continues to demonstrate high quality performance through the delivery of end-user focused solutions for critical power and cooling, white space fit-out including partitions, raised access floors and suspended ceilings, all incoming building services and containment, corridors, security space and storage areas.
SPIE’S collaborative approach has created a unique customer relationship, enabling us to work closely, to plan, design and construct data halls and resilient infrastructure to suit NGD’S evolving facility and increasing blue chip customer base. Our on-site team provides feasibility models, cost planning and technical consultancy; a fundamental part of developing and delivering bespoke solutions for NGD and their end clients. An established and fully integrated supply chain ensures that we deliver projects within industry-leading timescales – vital in this fast-moving sector.
To ensure site security, our team worked with NGD to design and install a complete security solution; from the gatehouse and perimeter camera systems to the high security fencing and turnstiles, with biometric entry systems on the data halls and a bespoke control room to ensure surveillance around the clock.
Currently delivering the design and installation of three new data-halls with associated power trains, SPIE is committed to supporting NGD to grow and develop secure, flexible data centre solutions for their end user customers, taking their leading facility to the next level.
Appointed CEO of NGD in 2018, Jenkins brings a wealth of IT and data centre industry experience to his role. He has been part of the senior management team at the company for the past 10 years, previously serving as Data Centre Director, Chief Technology Officer and latterly Chief Operating Officer. Prior to joining NGD, Jenkins held posts with a number of entrepreneurial technology businesses, and previous to this was with Sony Computer Entertainment for several years in a variety of IT and infrastructure roles.