McLaren International, a division of the McLaren Construction Group Plc and JV Partner ECC, has been appointed as the main civils sub-contractor for the construction of the Gulf Data Hub Centre, in Silicon Oasis, Dubai by Design & Build construction managers, NOVA Corp.

The project includes the construction of two, two-storey data centre buildings with a built up floor area of 6500 sq. m each. Each building will be constructed using a hot rolled steel frame, on reinforced pad foundations, with architectural finished PCC wall cladding panels, with an aluminium composite roof cladding panel.

The buildings will have a kW rating of 1.2kW per m2 and will be fully functional with infrastructure, generators, LV switchgear, static UPS systems, EPMS systems and offices on the ground floor and data halls on the 1st floor, (3 data halls per building, 1000m2). The data hall will have 1.2MW of critical IT load cooled with computer room air handling units (CRAH’s).

The project also consists of an exterior utility and infrastructure yard which will house the air cooled chillers and pumps, MV transformers and switchgear, water & fuel storage tanks. All systems will have n+1 redundancy.

Objectives are to achieve LEED Silver accreditation, under the United States Green Building Council. This will complement the GOLD Award which McLaren and their JV partner have been awarded on the CEVA Project, which is officially the 1st project in the UAE to be certified under LEED NC Version 3.

Phil Pringle, Managing Director, McLaren Construction & UAE said: “This is an exciting win for McLaren International. Data centres are growing in demand across the world, and McLaren’s experience in industrial and data storage makes this a strong partnership for NOVA Corp and future data centre projects”.