XYZ Project Controls Case Study

Real-time project controls: How a data center owner avoided a six-week delay

The scale and importance of modern data centers makes their construction a mammoth task. Their sheer complexity makes it easy for mistakes to occur and multiply, causing costly delays.

If the project slips behind schedule, it becomes increasingly difficult to meet the agreed delivery date. This leads to operational downtime and opportunity costs for the asset owner, which equates to huge sums of money.

Late handover of a data center simply isn’t an option. For project stakeholders, it’s essential to accurately monitor progress to ensure that the project remains on track. It’s the surest way to detect delay-inducing issues in real-time and prevent project setbacks that could span weeks or even months.

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The Project

Ireland

Location

July 2022

Project start date

9.6MW

Megawatts

Nov 2022

Deployment date

$120M

Project Value

12%

Scheduled project progress
in Nov 22

16%

General contractor project progress report

9%

Actual project progress
to date

Project handover: Aug 2023

Deadline

Projected Overrun: 6 Weeks

Delay

Sleepwalking towards disaster

This 9.6MW data center faced a strict handover deadline of August 2023. By November 2022, the asset owner believed that construction progress was ahead of schedule. In reality, they were sleepwalking towards a massive six-week delay.

It was at this stage that the asset owner introduced XYZ to the project to give themselves and the general contractor an objective and accurate reading of the situation. By deploying XYZ’s ground-breaking project control solutions, the asset owner soon discovered that the project was behind schedule and slipping further back with each passing week.

Thanks to the comprehensive real-time insights made possible by XYZ’s project controls, the project stakeholders identified the areas where insufficient progress had been made against the schedule. The data center owner collaborated with the general contractor to issue a new mitigation schedule and launch immediate remedying action to get back on track. Leveraging project controls embedded a culture shift within the construction teams that drove quality and precision.

By partnering with XYZ, the owner ensured that, come the deadline, the data center was ready to begin operating and generating revenue as planned.

”We have seen a huge impact on the culture of quality and delivery across the entire site”

Project Manager, Global Data Center Asset Owner

Working with XYZ meant
the owner was able to:

Stay ahead of the critical path

Deliver the project on time

Get objective insights on the status of the project

Implement a mitigation schedule

Achieve greater efficiency thanks to centralized real-time insights

Benefit from quality assurance checks

Allocate resources efficiently and optimize output

Generate a quality-driven culture shift

Leverage data to build better

The power of real-time project controls

Construction began in July 2022. The owner first welcomed XYZ to the project in November of that year to conduct objective analysis and deliver detailed reports on the data center’s true progress – with help from the Atom™.

The Atom, XYZ’s powerful custom-built engineering tool, combines a construction safety headset with augmented reality displays to enable construction teams to visualize hyper-precise 3D design models. It enables construction teams to compare plans with onsite progress in real time, empowering them to take fast corrective action if they identify any errors or discrepancies.

“The Atom enables teams to compare plans with progress in real-time, empowering fast corrective action.”

The Atom was utilized to create a series of 4D models which would compare the planned installations against the installations actually completed. By showcasing the planned and the completed installations side-by-side, the models highlighted the installations which were missing or out of tolerance.

The owner gained a clear overview of the progress made to compare it against the progress that should have been made according to the schedule.

All of the installations to-date were quickly verified, enabling the owner to identify a number of areas where installation had dropped behind schedule.

Crucially, the objective and indisputable data fostered trust and encouraged collaboration between all project stakeholders, driving efforts to close the progress gap. The 4D models showed that overall progress was at 9%, 5% behind where it was supposed to be. Armed with this data, the owner worked with the contractors to create a mitigation schedule and maximize resource allocation efficiency.

Project controls were utilized throughout the course of the project. XYZ conducted daily inspections and met regularly with the owner and general contractor to present real-time insights and findings essential to keeping the project on track, right up until its successful handover.

XYZ’s innovative modeling and regular meetings provided a consistent and easy-to-understand overview of project progress. The owner received the insights necessary to make informed decisions and ensure the project’s successful completion.

Over the course of the project timeline,
the owner benefitted from:

5,125

hours spent by XYZ Field Engineers
(FAEs) onsite

144,000m2

covered by Field Engineers
each week

95,856

model elements linked
to the schedule

95,616

installs verified throughout
the deployment

6.4gb

of models uploaded to the
model viewer

86 meetings

meetings held to report on progress
and key insights

On time delivery, zero dramas

XYZ’s project controls facilitated smooth delivery.

In partnership with the project stakeholders, XYZ supported the on-time delivery of this significant data center project. Real-time insights had swiftly identified discrepancies between scheduled and actual progress, providing the platform for onsite project teams to collaborate and accelerate to meet key milestones. At the project’s completion, the objective data gathered by XYZ’s dedicated team ensured that the owner had total confidence that they had fully completed the project.

The data center was ready to operate on day one. With delays and rework kept to a minimum, operational revenue started flowing in straight away and maximized profits for the owner.