Thurrock may be best known for the Lakeside shopping complex, but it’s also an area whose council has gone all-in on digital transformation. In fact, Thurrock Council has enlisted the help of Secure I.T Environments to build a 234m2 modular data centre to house the council’s IT infrastructure.
The council’s more than 170,000 residents are already used to interacting with council services online, whether it’s paying their council tax bill or booking appointments with the registry office. Unfortunately, the council’s existing IT systems had reached the end of their life, and rather than letting things grind to a halt, the council decided to invest in a new data centre.
The timing of the new data centre was critical, as the council simply couldn’t afford to use its old infrastructure any longer. That meant Secure I.T Environments had a strict brief, it had to deliver on-time and on-budget.
The project was split into two phases, the first comprising the design, build and testing (including acceptance testing) of the new data centre, the evaluation of existing critical and essential power, and decommissioning of the existing ICT infrastructure. Phase two is an on-going five-year programme of planned preventative and reactive maintenance, including emergency call-out services.
The new data centre room includes Resilient Data Centre energy efficient air conditioning in N+1 configuration, Riello MPW UPS, a built-in 65KVA generator, 840U of server space, raised access flooring, environmental monitoring, biometric access control, CCTV and Novec fire suppression. The project also included all ground works and connection to existing electricity supplies and back-up generators located on other parts of the site.
Chris Wellfair, projects director at Secure I.T. Environments, noted, “We have worked hard for over a decade to ensure that customers can trust our name when it comes to the delivery and maintenance of their data centres. For the public sector in particular, where people rely hourly on access to council services, we take great pride in being a part of councils achieving their digital vision.”
