DATA CENTER SPECIAL WORKSHOP MEETING, 01-08-2025
GEORGE STEVENSON …technical areas, so the plant rooms, importantly the power areas. And what we want to do is not look at this as being this particular project because it’s more about understanding what’s in a generator room, what’s in a transformer room, what’s in an air conditioning room. And obviously by understanding the sort of kit that’s in there, when you see what we’re looking at here it’s considerable, isn’t it Barry?
BARRY BASSNETT It is, it’s like a little mini factory. Data centres, if not already, are going to become a standard piece of construction. In order to meet the demands of AI and other things, there are two big things. One, you need the data centre, but the other is energy production because they all consume vast amounts of electricity for all sorts of reasons. And quite often the data centre is built in an area of energy security, places like Sheffield and Nottingham Valley, a lot of data centres were built there originally because of the local power station infrastructure. But what we do have is a mixture of data centres which are now 20 years old or older, and in this particular case this one was built 38 years ago.
It’s the old Lloyd’s Bank or Halifax Building Society and then Lloyd’s Bank building. And now its been refurbished and brought up to date with different surfaces that are required for the data centre mechanics that are needed today. Things change: different blades, different cooling systems, different ventilation. And also to do things with fire security and things that like that. Things that were built 20 years ago, there’s now different regulations to do with compartmentalisation and things like that that are impacting.
So, this is a really useful example because it takes us, it mixes new construction, old construction, asset management. And I think what’s going to happen with this data centre is some bits are going to be kept and some are going to have to be replaced. Because some of the kit is obsolete and they can’t get spare parts for it.
And this is the whole point of asset management is if you’re doing asset management you’re trying to prolong the life of the asset and maximise it’s use and revenue capability for as long as possible. And sometimes there are decisions to be made like we can’t find the spare parts for this particular machine. Is it worth us cannibalising stuff or what are we going to do? And it’s like well, we need to take this out and replace it with something newer. Particularly to do with energy conservation. If you’ve got a generator or something that consumes less electricity, then obviously that’s going to be hugely important.
So, this is a really interesting exercise to look at asset management historical and then assessment of the capabilities of a system. Which means you’re going to have to have product descriptions, you’re going to have to be able to identify the machine in the first place. Because quite often the new owner doesn’t know exactly what that manufacturer was. And that manufacturer may not even exist now if it’s 30 years old. So, it’s a great exercise for getting data so that you can make good decisions in the future.
Because it’s in this transition there are certain areas that the security isn’t an issue, because they’re going to rip everything out and put new things in. What we probably won’t be able to do is share it when it’s new because data centres are like Fort Knox. They are absolutely obsessed with security, for obvious reasons. So, this gives us an interesting opportunity to look at how asset management can be used for brown field sites and also new build. And it’s another example of a project that’s real and live and we can look and share about.
GEORGE STEVENSON One of the interesting things with this is that the team that are actually doing the maintenance there, some of them have been there for over 30 years. So the knowledge that’s in those people’s heads is amazingly valuable. And because they’re moving the operation, those people may well take retirement or whatever. So, all of that knowledge is going to get lost. So, what we’re doing is using this to be able to allow them to transfer that knowledge onto maybe some colleagues or new people.
BARRY BASSNETT One of the things that I’ve been doing for a number of years now is working in the nuclear industry where we’ve been using 360 imagery to map what they call the tacit knowledge that’s held in an organisation. So, tacit knowledge is all of the stuff that’s not documented. Who is the best person to get this purchase order sorted? Simple things like that that are all about the efficiency. And what we’ve done in the nuclear industry is the average age of a worker in the nuclear industry is 58. So, there’s a whole generation of people who will be looking after nuclear power stations, and that includes the decommissioning of them, who are brand new and don’t know the stories and literally where the bodies are buried, probably. So, what we’ve done in the nuclear industry is use 360 as a way of harvesting that knowledge.
If I said to someone who is retiring, for example, tell me all of the things that you know about this panel or that? Then they would look blankly. But using a 360 tour like this, it reminds people, it’s a trigger. And what we can do with this is we can attach notes, drawings, stories, videos to this sort of 360. Can you all see a blue panel on here? I’ve just got two images to share with you, just so you can see what is in a data centre and how this all works. There are two types of 360 imagery you can get. You can get the fast one or you can get the more detailed one, and these are more detailed ones. Because when we’re doing asset inspection, you have to have a pretty good camera so that you can actually use it for asset inspection.
I’ve got a blue cabinet here, I don’t know what that is. But if you take the right image what I can do is zoom in, keep going. You can do this on a website and stuff as well, but I’ve got it on my hard drive at the moment. I can zoom in and I can actually start reading instructions. So, what this type of 360 image allows us to do is…I can zoom in and read labels, I can read barcodes, I can read all sorts of things. Now, for somebody coming in and doing an asset inspection or buying something or taking over something, which is what happens an awful lot of times, just simple things like being able to read a dial or read a label, so you can see who made the machine and things like that, is really important. And this image takes about 30 seconds to capture onsite.
But you can see the level of complexity that we’ve got. And this is the plant room for the data centre I’m going to show you in a minute. This plant room is about 80 metres long, it’s on 3 floors. This is a mezzanine floor, it’s on 3 levels. And it’s quite complicated obviously because you’ve got 3 major types of supply that they need. First off is the electricity and distribution, taking things in from the grid, transforming them into a voltage that is useable and then distributing that out. You’ve also got the emergency power supplies which is a whole set of generators, in this particular thing. I think we’ve go 6 gen sets which will kick in if there’s a power outage or whatever. So, it’s got an uninterruptible power supply.
The emergency power supply is really important to maintain that because that’s critical to data centres’ uptime. Data centres are normally categorised by their uptime and downtime. So, they’re looking at 99.98 uptime, that’s how they sell the services. But the other services that they need is because there’s so many, well if you’ve ever sat with a laptop on your knee, you know just how much heat can be generated with them. So, there’s a massive chilling system, so that uses cooling towers on the roof, chilled water pumped right throughout the place. And the chiller units, and this is a chiller unit actually, this blue thing. There’s about 12 of them in this plant room.
And then there’s the AC, just the heating and stuff. And then of course there’s the cable infrastructure that links all of the data centre bits and paraphernalia, all of the blades assemblies and different things. And people look at a data centre and they think it’s just a lot of things spinning around, but actually in this case you’ve got a very substantial plant room associated with maintaining it and keeping it going 24/7. They have a maintenance site, even though it’s not being used at the moment they’ve got a full time 24-hour maintenance team. They’re doing a great job in keeping everything spic and span and clean and stuff, a lot of it looks like it was put in yesterday. But a lot of this kit is 35 years old. The issue really is for the new owner is what’s there.
You can see, for example, I’ll zoom in here. If you use the right camera and the right 360 image, here’s a list of all of the valves, made by a company called Rotary…this is all extremely valuable information that you can use to do your asset list and compile the assets and then make decisions about it. I’ll open up another one.
GEORGE STEVENSON They’re upgrading the power from, it’s 8 megawatts at the moment, but the plan is to go to 200 megawatts, which is a significant increase. And what they’re also doing is they’re looking to bring in new types of cooling. They’re going to be bringing in liquid immersive cooling as a way of addressing that cooling side of things.
BARRY BASSNETT This is what a data centre hall looks like. Normally it’s full of these racks and stuff like this and it doesn’t look very exciting. But of course there’s lots and lots of assets in here that need to be inspected as well. And most of them are in the roofs in the structures over here because this is where the power supplies come in and this is where all of the cables connect all of these things. It’s just a rat’s nest of stuff. If you have trouble with your cables at the back of your computer right now, you have no idea, just managing the cables in this place is just incredibly difficult. Now, what they’re going to do with this I really don’t know. Are they going to take it all out and put something new in?
The problem is is that they need to make decisions like that. And that’s what an asset information or a 360 tour like this will do. And again, what I’ve done here is I’ve taken about 10 images inside this. And of course I can zoom in again and you can see the level of detail that you can get. But over here it starts getting a bit blurry, so you have to go a bit closer to get the level of definition. But this is something you can put on a website and you can tour around. And then you can populate it and obviously there are softwares out there which will allow you to use the 360 as a way of putting that assets in to context. I’ve probably taken over 300 photographs inside the data centre, inside the warehouse, outside the building as well, so it’s a complete visual tour.
I haven’t used point clouds or scanned it because they don’t tell you anything. They tell you the shape, but they don’t show you, you can’t zoom in to this level of detail with that. But what we’ve now got is a way of sharing information that can be shared through people that are not CAD pilots. They don’t have to be a Revit modeller, they don’t have to import things, anyone can do this. And also one of the interesting things that people are starting to use this for is sharing this with supply chains. Putting this sort of thing into a tender document so potential suppliers can look and see what is the condition of things and make more suggestions.
The problem with data centres is they don’t like people going in them from the outside. And they really want to control the information. So, you can put little, you can give people access to a limited part of it. And they don’t have to walk through the building and see where all of the security cameras are. Security is a really big issue, and just another story about the nuclear industry. I’ve done this for several nuclear plants.One of the funniest things I had was when the security people came to me and said look, this is great, we love it, but it’s showing all of the CCTV cameras. And we don’t want anyone in the business to see CCTV cameras.
So they asked me to blur out all of the CCTV cameras, which is great because all that happened is well, what’s behind that blurred image? It’s got to be a CCTV. But the funniest part of it is in the nuclear industry they normally have duplicates of everything that’s critical, if something fails they need a back up. But sometimes they can’t have that and so they only have one, and that’s called criticality plans. so, if you were a terrorist or something and you wanted to put a bomb in a nuclear power station, what you’re going to do is go for the criticality plans. So, what they do there is they paint them all bright pink so everyone knows that they’re critical.
So when you’re looking at a 360 tour, if you’re a ne’er-do-well you just look for anything that’s pink and put your bomb against that. So, I had to go in and recolour everything in photoshop and make all of the stuff that was pink not pink. That’s the sort of issue that you get when you start mixing this sort of stuff in to other disciplines, this is the sort of weird stuff that comes back to you. I loved it because they got to pay me more money for photoshopping all of the pink stuff. It points out that sometimes these things can be counterintuitive. You get many benefits but at some point someone is going to go is this too much information.
What we’ve got here is a tour, we can make buts available for people if they want to practice, if they want to see, if they want to use this as a test bed as well. We can’t give you access to all of the data centre obviously because of security reasons, but we can do little bits with the permission of the client. Because in most cases he’s going to be ripping things out. But we still need to know what he’s ripping out, so they can make decisions.
GEORGE STEVENSON I’m just going to cover something shortly on the asset types because that’s an important area. But I’d like to just step back, are there any questions that people have?
BERNARD HORNUNG I just put one in the chat. If data centres are seldom occupied, could the oxygen levels be reduced to below 15% when the data centre is unoccupied? This would help to prevent fire.
GEORGE STEVENSON That’s a really good point. I don’t know the answer to that, but we can certainly raise that.
TIM AIKIN That then implies that a level of fabric cohesion. You’d have to make sure that the fabric wasn’t leaking. But that brings into question lots of other things.
PIERRE VENTER Just something that I’ve got here, it’s like lithium batteries. Is that if there is no oxygen that’s one issue, but some of those things don’t require oxygen to carry on burning. The other point is sometimes how do you get oxygen back in there? Unless there is an oxygen headset for the emergency crew to run in. Because it would take time for the oxygen levels to be raised so that people can be functionally operating in that area. So I think sometimes there’s a bit of a pragmatic part behind that, Bernard. It’s a good idea, but it may be there’s other reasons it might mitigate against it.
BARRY BASSNETT One of the things I was surprised about when I was walking round is the huge fire suppression systems that are built in around this using halogen and whatever. There’s tanks and tanks of everything and they’re paranoid about setting these things off. So, fire is not so much an issue because the fire suppression systems they’ve got are just instantaneous. There’s banks of tanks out there. So, talking to the guys and the maintenance engineers, the main drive for them is reducing electricity consumption. Because this is just a huge, huge driver and the cost of electricity is phenomenal. I’m sure there are lots of interesting design elements to it. And things are changing. Do you put everything in a hermetically sealed room and not touch it?
There’s all sorts of things that have changed. And one of the issues here is this is a 38 year old building. Some of the maintenance people have bene there for all 38 years, but they’re now having to migrate and change to a completely different set of IT paraphernalia and apparatus and equipment. But most of it is designed about reducing the energy footprint of it and I think that’s going to be an interesting thing. Because as well as doing that, this building was designed 38 years ago. It's a beautiful building, but is it suitable for purpose for energy consumption? And that’s another decision about the fabric of the building, not just about the kit that’s going in it, that the new owners are going to have to take into account.
So, it’s a great story and project to look at how do you repurpose brown field buildings. This isn’t an old Victorian mill that you’re changing into apartments. This is going to be a rally important huge consumer of electricity in the Colne Valley.
PIERRE VENTER A question, I made a note there that are these buildings not a potential source of energy for district heating cooling systems?
GEORGE STEVENSON Oh definitely, that’s already absolutely on the radar. And in fact actually the operator that we’re working for is actually doing this in cities. So what they’re doing is they’re identifying sites where they can bring data centres close to the user. It’s called edge computing, so it’s to bring together the access to the internet much closer to the operators. And in fact, they’ve also been looking at, we’ve introduced them to a couple of residential landlords about putting a data centre in a container or small unit on the roof, that can then service a big development. Because as people are using, certainly more gaming, but the other thing is driverless cars. But certainly gaming, you need a very fast reaction. So yes, Pierre, that’s an important area.
Just to pick up on what Barry was saying there, obviously what they’re doing and they have been doing, Lloyd’s have been upgrading the facility over that 38 years. So, there’s a lot been going on and there’s a lot of relatively new stuff gone in. For example, in the data halls data centres used to use halon, and in fact some have still got halon. But my understanding, halon apparently is being replaced by other gases that are suppressants which can do a similar job, but they’re not as dangerous. So, that’s something that’s already been done there. And it’s very interesting how that’s all evolving. Mighty are doing the maintenance and they’ve been there, I think some of them were TUPE'd over from Lloyd’s. So, if you’re interested in getting involved in it, we may well need to get some sort of security clearance for people that are actually actively be involved. And part of the challenge is how do we do this in such a way that the information is protected?
The beauty of the way in which we do this with Active Plan is that those 360s will be in Active Plan. They won’t be just on an open website or anything like that, obviously. And we control who can access what and who can see what. So, the client will have the opportunity to switch on or off levels of detail for different people.
BARRY BASSNETT The thing that I find particularly fascinating about this is coming up with a taxonomy for classification. Because different buildings have different taxonomies and different ways of tagging things. Obviously you’ve got the asset information, but you also have local taxonomies which are suitable as well. And I think one of the things I’m particularly interested in this is how you develop that process and use this as a template for guidance. So, you can have, when we’re talking about taxonomies and classification ,obviously you have things to do with plant’s different assets. But then there’s a local taxonomy as well which is specific room numbers.
Who’s responsible for that piece of plants 25 mins 55 secs? Which department runs it? Now, that’s going to vary for every operation and operator. But there is going to be a standard taxonomy which is to do with what is a typical kit that you get. So we can use that for tagging, but then there's also this local taxonomy as well which will make things run up, you run alongside the basic one. And for me personally, I have to do this quite a lot.So, doing this on this and documenting how we do that is going to be important to people when they’re coming to do it themselves. This is the method we use, these are the things that we did wrong.
If you don’t start off with a local taxonomy there’s no point having a taxonomy, a classification system on the plant because it’s going to be meaningless. So, that’s one of the things that I particularly want to try and do on this and share in this particular project. Because it’s not the worst case scenario, but it’s a typical scenario of what we’re having to do when you’ve got an asset transferring ownership or you’re doing remedial work or improving the performance. Whether that’s energy consumption or efficiency, PC ratings, all of those sort of things. So, it’s about developing two taxonomies. I think you can probably see what I mean. it’s about that’s great, but which department’s responsible for that.
PIERRE VENTER Something that I saw on other projects that I had in the Middle East was that the operations, maintenance and emergency response. You talk about the local taxonomy, was in fact things were numbered in a way that the sequence of events. So, you close down this, you shut down that, you shut down that. And that’s then built in, basically not just where the plant is because it might be on different sides, but it’s that sequence.
BARRY BASSNETT Well, essentially what we’re doing here is we’re moving from BIM into that whole range of an interactive digital twin. This idea of then having what you’re talking about, Pierre, is exactly what a digital twin is, which is asking the what if questions. A digital twin is about an interactive 3D model, well, it doesn’t have to be a 3D model, it’s a simulation of events. And really what it’s about is well, if we did this what would happen? If this happens, what should we do to react to it? And you can’t do a digital twin without an asset register.
TIM AIKIN It’s a bit like playing war games, isn’t it? You need to know where all of your assets are, where they’re deployed, and then start running the scenario and react to it as it goes.
BARRY BASSNETT Yeah, just as a simple story, I was helping somebody with the digital twin of a mine in Australia the year before last. And the problem they had was mines are not, the critical thing for mines is conveyors. If the conveyor breaks down, the mine can’t produce, And what they had is a guy who was about 60 years old who’d been doing this for ages and ages. But because of Covid he was prevented from coming to work. But he was the guy who knew the sound, he knew where to hit that motor with the right hammer to stop the noise. Essentially that’s it. So, what we did with him is we used this 360 knowledge map. So if someone heard that noise, he got alerted and he would listen to it and say that’s fine, don’t worry about it. Or hit it with the 14 pound hammer on this bit, It was that basic.
YIM AIKIN It’s funny you should mention about noise because people are actually putting listeners into plant rooms to then look for anomalies. It’s a bit like a doctor and a stethoscope, or ECG or whatever.
BARRY BASSNETT It’s a whole science, vibration analysis is what it is.
TIM AIKIN But what was interesting when I was looking at that 360, Barry, is all the colour coding. So, there’s a standard for pipes and things like that. A gas main is always a sort of pale green. And if you look in hospitals they different gasses, they’ve all got wraps round them.And if you look at any plant room, I notice that the power sockets in the overhead trunking, there was blue and there were red. Which obviously to me sort of indicated possibly one is the power and one is data. Because it looked like from looking at all of the vents that were in the ceiling and in the floor, because if you looked it was a raised floor and there were vents in the floor. Is that air is being moved around, so it’s taking the air rather than individual units having their own cooling systems and things like that.
The other thing that was interesting, that George was mentioning, is that when data centres first started they were servicing anything. You had banks using the same data centre that somebody who was running their hobby website off. But now it looks like, from what George was saying, is that some of them are being actually specialising. So they’re saying we will put this, for instance, on this backbone. It’s going to cost us more, but we’re only going to focus on share price trading. Because we need that fast connection, we need instantaneous. And in fact there is a thing about quantum computing being used for trading as well which is a bit mind boggling, but that’s a different thing.
But it’s the evolution of the data centres. So, we’re always in a process of sort of catch up, but the underlying essence of the way that they are structured will always be similar and the technology will move. But their then emphasis will sometimes be on different levels and a different criticality aspects as well.
BARRY BASSNETT Ana’s raised an interesting point about people not being ready to use digital twins as well.And that’s interesting, I agree. But the really interesting thing is that companies like EDF, for years and years and years they refused to use cloud based software. And then suddenly they actually use software now for all of their maintenance from Siemens PML PLM, which is a cloud based solution. And what they found out was that exactly by putting things in the cloud it’s a lot more security, it’s safer, than having one server which can be targeted by ne’er-do-wells. By disseminating the information to the cloud, it’s actually safer than having all of your information in one server.
But you’re absolutely right, security people. I've done some work in one of the Category 3 centres which is used by the police and the Home Office. You can’t get in there, unless you’ve slept with the manager I don’t now how you get in there. You just can’t get in there to do anything. But the same time, if you’ve got a secure 360 environment you can share that with and that means that you can at least look at things in a limited way. You’re not going to see the security cameras, you’re not going to see where the cables come in. Because the major security issue for data centres is where do the BT cables come in to the building.
And I know data centres where they’ve got 3 different dummy ones, which aren’t working. And one of them is actually bringing stuff in. Because the data centres live or breath by the cables that are coming in, they’re taking the data in and the data out. So, you’re absolutely right, it’s something that we are moving towards. The idea of a digital twin, it might be used in the design phase, it might be used later on when they’re saying well, if we put this new rack in how is that going to impact our energy consumption? And it’s this what if question. What if we did something? That’s what a digital twin is really about, I figured out. It’s not about a pretty picture, it’s about what if.
And also managing this tacit knowledge that any building has. You’ve got guys that have been there for 38 years and they know every system. They’re probably as valuable as the building itself, in many ways. And harnessing that using asset information and attaching knowledge and this tacit knowledge or stories or videos, here’s a video of how you take that filter and replace it. Asset information isn’t just about a point and a tag, it’s what you do with that information. I think that’s one of the interesting things about where this journey is going.
GEORGE STEVENSON So let’s talk about what the next steps are. Because we’ve shown the 360s but basically there’s some plumbing to be done as well. So, what we’re looking for is people that have got some interest and experience of getting involved in this. I’ll just share my screen. We’ve got an asset list from them, but one of the challenges is the fact that a lot of this information that comes in isn’t connected. So, typically we’ve got the O&M manuals, which I don’t think we’ve seen those in a digital format yet, I think they said that they’ve been scanned. But let’s say on a typical project we’ve got CAD data, we might have COBie if it’s a new building. But even if not, that’s a good basis on which to work.
And then we’ve got the 360 photos which Barry was talking about. And one of the challenges is that they’re not connected. So, that’s really where what we’ve been doing within Active Plan, we’ve been bringing these together so that we can then integrate these things. I’m showing this really as this is actually how we’re going to run this project, and Watney Market. And the important thing about it is that we’re not reliant on the information that comes in from BIM models. Thankfully that’s the case here because obviously there isn’t a BIM model. So, we can take drawings, schedules and then importantly, we can then use the 360s to actually operate it, to fill in the gaps as it were.
But it’s also absolutely critical that we do that using a proper database of information. So, what we’re doing is we’re using Uniclass, NRM and the other classification systems, but these are the standards that we’re trying to work around. These are government standards, down to the level of detail of saying what each attribute needs to be, so a property has space as a reference. And we can put all of that into the asset information management databases which we’re now able to glue things together. I see that we’ve got some colleagues from SFG20 on which is a tremendous resource for tying together the maintenance requirements.
But what’s absolutely critical from the asset management point of view is that the data itself is structured in the right way so that the location of assets and systems is actually consistent. So, this is the way Sodexo are doing it where they’re using the 360s as a way of capturing information about existing buildings. And then they’ve got teams anywhere really, who are experts. And this is what we’d be hoping that you might be able to do if you’ve got the right expertise. Certainly Bernard is an engineer, maybe you could help with that. And what that does, it creates intelligent asset data which then is then related to the 360s.
So, the information that Barry was showing you earlier, that plant room, we could have experts actually going through tagging those assets. And I’ll show you in a minute the asset list that we’ve been given. And therefore that means that you’ve got a record of machine-readable data which can then also be connected back into SFG20. So, you’ve got the maintenance requirements actually tied into the asset information, so that you’ve got that proper workflow. And the principle there is we need to be able to make the 360 photographs smart, so that they are machine-addressable.
So, what we’re doing here, we’ve got the 360 photo, we then connect it with the asset library and therefore we’ve then got more findable information. And it can then be related back to systems. So, we’ve got a range of different data sets then and the O&M information, product libraries etc, which are all tied back to the asset library. And the beauty of that is that in many cases you only need to do this once. And then it then can be connected back into information that’s maybe being collected from a construction perspective using a vast range of new platforms. But you can then use that for asset capture. That’s the main thing that we’re going to be doing on this project.
But there’s also validating. Validating is where you’re actually comparing it with a library of asset information that you know is in that space. Condition assessment, we’re just about to start a project where the 360s are going to be used by a condition survey company to avoid them having to send their experts to site. And this particular project has got about 700 sites, so it’s going to be a massive saving for them because it’s 6 to 8 times faster than sending people to site. It means that the procurement can be more accurate because it means that whoever is going to be maintaining those plant rooms have got a much better idea of all of the assets that they are going to be maintaining. And also to be able to tie that back to product libraries for replacement.
We’re also looking at this from a safety perspective, making sure that disabled access works. So, there’s a whole fantastic range of things that those 360 photos that Barry was showing can actually benefit from. This is the asset list that we’ve been given which I think is probably an output from Maximo. We’ve got here the basics there, but the challenge is that we’ve got 2,237 asset types and assets. Now, I’m saying that in a considered way, in fact it’s fewer than that, but there’s still a lot of asset types there that could be rationalised back. And this is really quite important because you need to be able to map, for example, SFG20, to a type of asset which is then related to the individual instances of that asset.
We’ve also got all of the spaces, but again, there’s a lot of different spaces and some of them aren’t probably that well defined. So, there’s some cleaning up to be done here. But the point is when we end up with an asset list that reflects what’s in a particular area. So, for example, in the battery room. So, if we know that these are the assets that are supposed to be in that room there, we can use the 360s to basically tag those assets and which one is boiler 1, 2 and 3. And it may well be that it needs to be far more granular than that, but that’s something that can then be added progressively.
So, if you’re interested in getting involved in the asset tagging side of things, even if it’s just to learn or experiment, please let us know. Maybe put something in the chat to say interested in learning about tagging. I think we’re also going to be having some subject matter experts who are M&E specialists. I was talking to a company, a specialist last week and he’s getting involved with power distribution. And this has got some power distribution facilities as well. So, if you’re interested in getting involved in that, write something in the chat.
BARRY BASSNETT Basically what I’m fascinated about is this idea of using visual documentation to help show the context of things. I don’t know if anybody is interested, but I’ll put the link in the chat.Next Monday, Tuesday I’m running a 360 bootcamp which shows you how to capture these things as well. I'm going to give access to all of the members a recording of this anyway because I think it’s really important that people understand what’s involved and what we can do later on. But for us it’s a really interesting project to work on, especially if we can get collaboration and come up with best practice.
We’re doing this to try and improve the whole industry, as much as anything else. Because if we can use this as a tool to educate our clients, because our clients don’t know what we can do. They don’t know what they don’t know. And the whole point about this is in asset information quite often you don’t know what you don’t know about your asset. That’s all that I wanted to say, it’s just a really exciting group of people who can contribute. And we’ll try our best to share the information and the best practices. And also the things that we did wrong because quite often it’s the stuff that we get wrong that you learn most from.
So, as we go through this. We’ve got a couple of projects, yesterday we were talking about Watney Market and the relationship to housing and things like this. And this is to do more with manufacturing, asset information. But plant rooms in general, in every building you can think of, whether it’s a school boiler room or the gas pump for a hospital. Mechanical engineering is such an intrinsic part of the operation of this building. It’s not just about designing a lovely looking building that’s cost effective on energy, it’s about how does this work. And asset management is probably the most important part that we often miss in the design. At the handover, how is it going to work?
GEORGE STEVENSON Part of the issue with this is that within the data centre we’ve got a whole range of disciplines that we can bring together. And part of that is what’s important to the data centre operator, as opposed to the people that have got servers in there. Because the data centre operator, their major interest isn’t in the air conditioning, which surprised me, it’s the power. Because without the power they’re dead. And that was quite important for me to understand. And also it depends on how the data centre, whether it’s a co-located data centre or dedicated or whatever. The other thing I’d say to build on what Barry was saying, is that we’ve got a session later on on schools, which we’re trying to look at how we can make schools more effective from an asset management perspective.
But we’ve also got a healthcare estate. One of our members has brought their healthcare estate to the group and we’re starting that, there’s going to be some work, it’s community hospitals and things like that. So, that’s going to be operating hopefully over the next week or so. I think the key thing here isn’t what type of building it is, it’s what are the assets and how the systems work. I think if we can build the relationship between asset types, assets and systems, that is absolutely critical. Because we can gain that knowledge and then make that across all of the projects. And that’s clearly what SFG20 are doing. And I think we need to be working together to start thinking in that way.
Because all too often the information that comes out of BIM models, it’s not at an asset type level, it’s individual assets. And people think that’s fantastic. It’s not fantastic if you’ve got 20,000 assets coming from a building and you’ve got no classification, you’ve got no categorisation. Because it’s unmanageable from an individual asset type perspective. And also systems, we need to have better connections between assets and systems. In particular from an M&E perspective. So, if you’re interested in schools you could join us later.
And if you’re interested in healthcare put ‘healthcare’ in the chat and we can involve you in that one as well. If you like what you’ve seen today and this level of collaboration, please tell everybody else that you’re working with. To get in touch with Richard and you can then join, because what we need to do is grow the exposure of this. Any other observations? Do people find that it’s bee useful? Mo, has it been useful this morning?
MO SHANA’A Yeah, I think the idea around collaborating together so that we do this things is really, really good, because then we can stop duplicating that. And I didn’t actually realise, I’m joining a range of the sessions, I think what’s great is that we have the range of project typologies. I think then taking it down to the asset level will be really interesting. It’s just been really, really good to hear about everything that’s happening.
GEORGE STEVENSON If anybody knows of projects that you could bring to the table then please do so because, as Mo was saying, the variety of projects makes a bit difference.
MARGARET SACKEY I’m absolutely enjoying this session, the inputs coming in…I put something in the chat in terms of research projects and some retrofit. And if there’s anyone that can help us, they only have a set timeline with the funding they’ve got from Europe in UCL. So, if anyone can help with that repurposing project utilising an AI tool to reduce carbon and so on and so forth. But the main thing is the experiences that Barry has been raising in terms of somebody with a hammer that hit the pipe at the right place, that happens, it’s what happens.
And of course, the joining of the dots. It’s no use just having a BIM model and pretty pictures, it’s got to work for us, it’s got to be used. As I said the day before, we’re doing Dagenham on our pearl project which is a net zero building. But the main thing is, Tim, you were raising there, Pierre, all that you were saying, it’s so important. It’s not just about buildings. Buildings have kit in them which are useful for the life of the building, for the running of the building. And we have a 60 strong DLO in UCL, you all work with DLOs and term contractors, and they need this information from day one.
So, this is so, so helpful, this discussion. I’m a health & safety professional, a civil engineer by background. But what we do with the information is vital and going forward with the Golden Thread that’s exactly what we need to be doing, for non-HRBs as well as HRBs.
BARRY BASSNETT I was talking to a guy in Canada late last night and trying to explain what this whole thing was. And the metaphor I use is you can have all of this information and it’s like having a beautiful atlas on your coffee table, But it’s only useful if you’ve got an index at the back so that you can find it. And that is really what we’re trying to do, is make things findable so the Golden Thread is findability. That’s the core of everything. And that’s what we’re trying to do, this word findability should run like the name through a stick of rock in everything we do.
MARGARET SACKEY Absolutely, it’s not just about getting a CDE, an empty box. Where’s the intelligent decisioning that goes with it.
BARRY BASSNETT Well, I don’t know many facility managers who actually know what COBie is. And we talk in this language and a lot of the things that we’ve got do is try and demystify a lot of what we do and have the story, See, you’re going to remember the story about the main hitting with a hammer. Ok, you’re not going to remember the story about the Excel spreadsheet and not an asset list, that’s not what you’re going to tell your boss. You’re going to tell people the story about the man hitting something with a hammer and that’s part digital twin.
GEORGE STEVENSON I think the other thing that really brings in home to me in that complex plant room that Barry was showing earlier is that no matter what level of detail the client is willing to pay for in the BIM model, it’s never going to replace the 360 photo. Because the 360 photo will always have more information than is in the BIM model. Now, that doesn’t mean the BIM model isn’t important because it definitely is, if there is a BIM model then that’s great. But the important thing is that the 360 is having a level of detail that it would be literally impractical let’s say, nothing’s impossible, but it would be impractical to go to that level of detail.
So, that’s the beauty of the 360s and the thing that we’re doing in being able to add data to the database through the 360 makes a huge difference. And that’s a game changer that we’re going to be covering this afternoon. We’re doing one on digital asset capture, or the as-builts as digital asset capture. And what we’re also doing is we’re making it so that we can have a schematic, which I think is also going to be important to this data centre project, Barry. That we can have an interactive schematic which is connecting, the schematic will connect back to the 360, can connect back to the asset data.
And also, if there is any BIM model, back to that as well. So, that type of coordination, and all of the documentation. As you said earlier Barry, being able to navigate the O&M manual through the 360. Because that’s a much easier way of getting to stuff.
TIM AIKIN If you want an easy way to remember a schematic, it’s your London tube map, that’s what it is. If anybody has ever tried to go around London without a tube map, it’s impossible.
CHAT
Pierre Venter (External)… George, is this not a potential for district heating systems off the heat loading, also able to be used for cooling externally?
bernard hornung (External)… If data centres are seldom occupied by humans, could the oxygen levels be reduced to below 15%, when the data centre is unoccupied? This might prevent fire?
Sackey, Margaret (External)… Hi. George. I meant to send through to you a UCL Research Project. Retrofit or Repurposing Buildings.
Can anyone help ? Details are below.
We are reaching out regarding a potential collaboration opportunity as part of the
ZEBAI project – Zero-Emission and cost-effective Buildings enhanced by Artificial Intelligence.
This Horizon Europe-funded research project (2024–2028) is focused on transforming how we design zero-emission buildings by developing a comprehensive, AI-driven design optimisation framework. The project brings together leading researchers and practitioners across Europe to integrate early-stage design analysis, material selection, and carbon performance evaluation.
We are currently in the tool development phase, building an AI-powered design tools to support low-carbon material selection and holistic design optimisation. This tool is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2026, and we are now actively seeking real-world demonstrator projects that could apply and benefit from our tools in practice.
We are looking for suitable projects that meet the following criteria:
Design phase (especially material selection): Between January and April 2026 (ideally extending to June 2026).
Project delivery: By 31 December 2027.
Flexibility of design: To offer for free design optimisation using our AI tool and support a 12-month post-delivery data collection period (January–December 2028) to evaluate performance and outcomes. The data collection involves on-site sensors, energy and indoor climate monitoring systems, and integration with digital building management systems for data sharing and evaluation.
We would be very grateful if you could let us know whether you have a project in your pipeline—or are aware of one in your network—that fits this scope and timeline.
Ravi Kiran (External)… We are working on a Data Centre retrofit at University (Tennessee, USA) to improve their Power Usage Effectiveness. The Idea is to build a replica of current systems and simulate how new changes will effect PUE. This should help us with planning the retrofit and validate the performance of new design.
read.ai meeting notes (Unverified)… Mahima added read.ai meeting notes to the meeting (recording enabled). View Privacy Policy: https://www.read.ai/pp. To opt out and delete this recording, click here: https://app.read.ai/analytics/opt-out/01K1JE556QMNW7Z381PC5SP6XM
Ana Matic (External).. Currently, most of DC developers we work with are not ready to turn to Digital Twin due to security concerns. Agree with Barry , we are on a journey.
Modupe Sobowale (External)… Interested in tagging.
Kirsty Cogan (External)… I think we can help with the asset mapping to SFG20 as we have a new product that groups assets into types at speed. Please let me know if you would like a conversation with our technology lead to see if there is anything we can support on.
Pierre Venter (External)…. That process would be interesting, especially building types and populating data in empty models/data source
Ravi Kiran (External)… We can help with an app that can extract Asset data from photos (using OCR) and automatically map it to database fields. Please let me know if you think it can decrease some of manual activity
Ana Matic (External)…. Healthcare Pls include me
Ana Matic (External).. I have a bit of knowledge of the naming strategies and how different they are btw developers and owners of data centres.
I.e how taxonomies are formed during design …Happy to share in slightly annonimised form