How Is BIM Revolutionizing the Future of Data Center Construction?

Data centers are among the most complex building types, which require a significant amount of coordination among design and construction teams. Data center construction often has tight project schedules and tight spaces in planning. Technically, no project benefits more from coordination using building information modeling and virtual design construction than data centers.

Key takeaways:

• How do data center construction projects benefit from the BIM process during the space planning phase?

• Prefabrication coordination needs BIM to deliver uber-fast-track projects.

• Data center construction phasing management in BIM

• Raised floor/false floor coordination with MEP systems using BIM

• Coordinating services inside BIM models before actual construction

• Enabling commissioning and O&M record keeping in 3D BIM Revit models

• Air Flow Analysis & Simulation (CFD) using BIM

Generally, everyone talks about the benefits of BIM for coordination and clash detection on projects, but when you talk about all the complex electrical conduit lines that you are running through tight spaces, it's a much more complex environment with tight spaces.

The more coordination becomes important, the more application of BIM in data center construction becomes useful.

We reached out to many professionals specializing in data center projects to identify the areas of planning, design & construction, and how they are getting the most value out of BIM/VDC coordination.

Space Planning

Typically, data centers have huge mechanical and electrical capacities compared to their built-up area. More than 25 times the typical commercial buildings. The equipment is typically placed near server rooms to reduce the risk to IT equipment. Together, these factors create incredibly dense equipment spaces, and major ducts, pipes, and conduits are required.

Application of BIM in data centers helps designers to confirm that equipment and services distribution can fit into these tight spaces, allowing maintenance and service area clearances to be achieved. Furthermore, it allows us to analyze voltage drops and pressure drops with actual routing. Similarly, underground electrical feeders can become so dense that they could overheat (eddy current loss appears in the form of heat) and melt if not designed properly. BIM allows precise routing, which enables electrical engineers to model the heat dissipation and adjust the electrical ducts/bus bars configuration accordingly.

Prefabrication Coordination

Clients, including wholesale operators, technology companies, and financial institutions, are pushing the speed of new construction and retrofitting projects. Fast track is past; ultra-fast-track projects are the new standards that are looked to by clients to get their data centers up and running sooner.

To help speed up the construction of data center projects, contracting companies are prefabricating many of the building systems and components, from enclosure to mechanical and electrical systems. BIM/VDC is critical for designing and testing prefabrication concepts with respect to logistics such as material handling, path of travel, and installation sequence.

We have delivered logistics planning visualization to several prefabrication contracting companies. The majority of such project requests come from the Middle East and South Asian countries, including India and Singapore.

says Marketing Manager from oneclickbim

To keep up with the speed, several prefabrication contractors are constantly pushing the amount and types of items they fabricate at their facilities. This allows them to minimize the amount of fit-up and welding in field environment and allows to maintain excellent quality assurance due to the majority of their work being built in a controlled, workshop environment.

A recent example of a completed data center project required 500 welds for the piping system, out of which only 30 was needed to be performed on site. The reduction of onsite welding required only one welding machine onsite. It also decreased field installation time from about 30 working days to only 8 working days.

Tip: Ensure to include system hangers in BIM models which helps to fabricate all piping supports and hangers in bulk, deliver early to site and have installation completed prior to piping and ductwork material deliverables.

Project Phasing Management

Generally Data Center construction is phased to avoid building out expensive capacity which is not required on day one. Often, the initial capacity target shifts during design development and construction activity due to leasing activity and the difficulty of projecting the need for computing power.

By utilizing phasing feature that BIM offers, teams can analyze the cost, schedule and energy consumption at different phases. BIM supports phasing of projects by quickly allowing the team to modify the design drawings and documents by adding or subtracting modules of power and cooling. After day one construction is complete, BIM helps in future development with an accurate record of the as-built condition allowing teams to plan further deployments with confidence.

Integrating raised access floor layouts / false floor layouts

False floors or raised floors can be tricky, especially because most of the floor installers do not model their installations or adjustments for structural bridging and supports are typically planned onsite. By developing the BIM model of the raised flooring allows the installation teams to understand where MEP systems are located in conjunction to pedestal support system.

By coordinating and integrating this into 3D modeling process, flooring contractors can see where they need to modify their support framing early in the process and fabricate the necessary bridging and support components which spans across the MEP systems wherever required. This helps in eliminating time and efforts it would take to do this in field once MEP systems are installed thereby decreasing the field installation time.

Conflict free routings

The capacity transmission from densely packed equipments requires multiple layers of stacked conduits, ducts and piping. Using the BIM model, the detailers can pick up where the designers left off adding more information to each elements.

Tight construction schedules don’t allow field routings to solve conflicts, therefore the routing must be solved during the detailed design stage allowing for 99 percent conflict free installations.

Commissioning and O&M tasks

To ensure performance and reliability, robust commissioning processes are required for data centers. Commissioning information such as tags for each equipments and feeder are added to 3D BIM models for keeping a live database of commissioning process status.

For greenfield data centers or newly built data centers, the information is must valuable to operation staffs. Mainly submittals, O&M manuals, as-built plans and sections, balancing reports, commissioning reports which are generally never transferred to them and are often lost over the years as personnel are changed during the lifecycle of projects.

When this type of information is present in 3D BIM models, these information can be retained and viewed for each piece of equipment rather than separate volumes. Whether they are facing problem or trying to improve energy efficiency, data center operators are benefitting from such comprehensive set of information.

Air Flow analysis

Analyses such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations inside BIM models allowsengineers to fine tune the server layouts based on thermal modeling approach. By incorporating that process in Revit models, clients are able to visualize how the air flows are forming inside the data center and temperature variations are happening based on air flow movements.

It is essentially helpful in being able to see how servers in a computer room receive cold air and how hot air is removed.

CFD modeling and analysis is more as a design verification of engineering calculations than as a design tool. It is really a fine tuning process.

Common Barriers to Adoption

Some hesitate to adopt BIM due to cost or fear of changing how they work. Others lack staff with BIM skills. Resistance from teams and high initial investment are common hurdles. But these barriers can be tackled by showing clear benefits and providing proper training.

Best Practices for Successful BIM Integration

Start small with pilot projects to see how BIM works. Create clear workflows for how team members share and update data. Invest in training so everyone understands the tools. Collaborating early and consistently makes BIM adoption smoother.

Future Trends and Innovations in BIM for Data Centers

Technology keeps evolving. AI and machine learning will make BIM models smarter, predicting issues before they happen. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will help visualize projects and train staff more effectively. IoT sensors will feed real-time data into BIM, giving insights into operations after day one. Industry experts believe these innovations will make future data center construction faster, cheaper, and more efficient.

We develop 3D models using BIM process for design and construction phases of data center projects. If you are looking to implement 3D BIM Revit models into your delivery of data center projects, get in touch with us at contact@oneclickbim.global