Most talk about AI in construction is about software
Most talk about AI in construction is about software. The bigger effect may be the buildings AI itself needs.
Dezeen asked this week whether data centres can ever be well designed. "Data centers are, in general, an example of poor design," the academic Marina Otero Verzier told them. A data centre investor said architects were sidelined because the buildings were treated as engineering projects. Architects interviewed said building tall makes little sense, partly because of the need for easy maintenance and the speed of building.
The article is about appearance and place. Reading it as a Principal Designer, I also see a CDM question. A hyperscale data centre is mostly plant: power, cooling, batteries, cable routes. It is built against the clock, and once running it is a workplace maintained while it stays live.
CDM 2015 regulation 9(2) asks designers to eliminate, so far as is reasonably practicable, foreseeable risks to people carrying out construction work, maintaining or cleaning the structure, and using it as a workplace. Regulation 11(2) asks the principal designer to apply the general principles of prevention when the time needed for the work is being estimated. On a programme fixed by a power connection date, that is where the pressure sits.
A hyperscale data centre is mostly plant: power, cooling, batteries, cable routes.
The questions I would bring to an early design review:
- Can every item of plant be replaced without working at height over live equipment, or taking something else apart first?
- Where is the battery and electrical fire risk, and does the layout separate it and give firefighters a route in?
- Which decisions are being made to save weeks, and what do they cost the people who install and maintain?
- Will the health and safety file still make sense to whoever replaces equipment in ten years?
None of these is about facades. The first layouts settle them.
In the UK, data centres have been designated Critical National Infrastructure since September 2024. As more of them reach UK design teams, I think the Principal Designer has as much to add as the facade designer.
If you have worked on a data centre, which risk did the design settle first?
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