We have built a data centre campus on our website and taken it from an empty plot to a live building. This is what it shows, and the case for using the record a modern site already keeps.
A data centre is not really a large building. It is a large amount of equipment that needs a building around it, and sometimes the first hall is running while the next is still being built.
The values have moved fast. One major insurer reports its average project value rising many times over in five years. Equipment is now often worth more than the core and shell around it, and delay in start-up values have grown to a fifth or more of hard cost, often running to billions. Programmes have not lengthened to match. More value now passes through a site in roughly the same time.
Risk engineering has responded. One insurer reports a sharp rise in the hours its engineers spend on data centre reviews. With programmes this compressed and values this high, more of that work happens at the desk, before and around placement. Desktop review matters more than it used to, and it is only as good as what reaches it.
That is the setting for our data centre page. Every issue described here is taken from what insurers, brokers and others have published this year, and each source is listed on the page beneath the scene.
What a modern site can already record
Not every project runs reality capture, but more do each year, and data centres are increasingly among them. Where a site runs it, there is a record of the site that can be put to work for risk engineering. Where it does not, the project is probably missing out on benefits it would have had anyway.
Three things matter most.
Reality capture. Fixed cameras, 360 walk-throughs, drone flights and environmental sensors. Reality-Driven Intelligence, the public framework published by Evercam, puts reality capture at the bottom of a five-layer stack, read from the bottom up: Reality Capture, Ground Truth, Interpretation, Action, Command. Our reading is that everything above inherits the limits of what is below. Capture that is time-stamped and traceable to its source becomes ground truth: what was on site, where, and when. Documents describe intent. Capture records fact.
IFC/BIM. Where a project issues a model, it holds the clearest statement of intent the project has, version by version. On a data centre the design keeps moving after construction starts, which makes each version more useful, not less. Holding each one alongside what was captured on site, with dates, lets an engineer see what was intended at any point and what was there.
Progress tracking. Progress against the programme, by area, system and date. With delay in start-up running as high as it now does, the question after any event is not only what was damaged but where the programme stood. Some of the plant on a data centre takes a year or more to replace, and then the delay can dwarf the damage.
Each of these is bought by the project for its own reasons. Together, where a project runs them, they are a continuous account of the site. The page follows a campus through seven stages of the build to show where that account matters.
Delivery and laydown
This is where a data centre stops looking like other construction. Owner-furnished equipment makes up a large share of the build, and lead times on transformers, generators and cooling plant are measured in years, not months. Across construction, more than half of firms take delivery earlier than they need to.
So high-value plant arrives early and waits, on site or off, sometimes for months, and in one reported case at many times a typical off-site storage limit. In storage it can degrade through corrosion or contamination.
A risk engineer wants to know what arrived, when, in what condition, where it went and what it has been exposed to since. A camera at the gate, a sensor in the store and a delivery log against the programme record much of it, by the day.
Structure and envelope
Until the building is closed in, weather reaches everything inside. One insurer reports severe weather, tornado, straight-line wind and hail, as the leading cause of loss on its US data centre construction book, and water damage is the most frequent cause of data centre claims by number. Cameras, drone flights and environmental readings either side of an event show what was exposed before it and what the site looked like after.
Fit-out, testing and commissioning
The value accumulates at the end. Fire protection goes in against a rising combustible load, batteries arrive, temporary power runs the works and systems are energised in sequence. Fire is a small share of data centre claims by number and well over half of their value. In a clean environment even a small fire can mean an expensive clean, and a single AI rack can now be worth millions, installed alongside many others in a short space of time.
The questions are about pace and sequence. Is fire protection keeping up with the fit-out? Which systems are live, and as of which date? How much rack value is in one hall today? Progress tracking holds commissioning milestones by system and rack installation by hall, and walk-throughs show sprinkler and detection installation area by area. Pikt records what is installed and when. It does not judge whether a standard is met.
Live operation and the next phase
The first hall runs while the next is still a construction site. Care of the works can be split between the building contractor and separate installers, and handovers in phases can leave gaps between policies. Some insurers now offer cover designed to bridge them.
The boundary between live building and live works is rarely fixed on any drawing for long. It can be recorded every week.
What this adds up to
On a data centre, the value arrives early, waits, moves into the building and is switched on. A risk engineering fee buys a finite amount of an expert's attention, spread across the visits and reviews a project needs. Between visits, what reaches the engineer is second-hand and after the fact.
Where a project already runs reality capture, IFC/BIM and progress tracking for its own purposes, the record of those days exists. Putting it in front of the engineer, at the desk as well as on site, means their attention can follow the value as it moves. More risk engineering from the same fee.
The campus on the page is illustrative. The issues are not, and every source behind them is listed there. If you build, finance, insure or engineer data centres, take the fly-through and tell us what we have missed.
Pikt connects to the technology already running on site and gives the risk function continuous visibility of the project. What a site shows is recorded, not assessed: what a source said, and when.
Pikt - continuous site visibility for construction risk engineering. Pikt is an independent technology company. It is not an insurer, broker or MGA, and gives no insurance advice.