IBM Leadership Data Center Facility
Tier 4 Data Center
Location: Raleigh, NC
Size: 120,000 sf
Cost: $100 million (approximately)
Completion Date: September 2009
Engineer of Record: IDC
Project Description and Scope:
Facility consists of approximately 60,000 sq. ft of raised floor white space at 125 watts per sq. ft. The electrical / mechanical space consists of approximately 48,000 sq. ft and approximately 12,000 sq. ft of support space. This facility is a Tier IV facility with "2N" design philosophy and configuration. Facility designed to create system redundancies that respond to improved reliability, ease of operation and human error tolerance while eliminating single points of failure. Critical systems are supported by UPS and Emergency Power systems with complimentary redundancies built and integrated into all aspects of the infrastructure including architectural, mechanical and electrical components.
As the 3rd Party Commissioning Agent, Primary Integration performed a detailed review of system design and sequence of operations for this project. This included the project drawings and specs and submittals for critical equipment. PI Solutions will attend factory witness testing of critical infrastructure systems, including UPS systems, Static Switches, Generators and Paralleling Switchgear, Chillers and Building Automation Systems. PI will perform site arrival inspections of the critical MEP equipment and perform periodic site inspections for installation QA/QC during the equipment installation by the contractors. PI reviewed and commented on the manufactures pre-functional checklists and performed manufactures startup oversight. PI Solutions prepared the Functional and Integrated Systems Test Scripts. PI performed the testing of critical equipment and systems (Level 3, 4 and 5) and prepared Integrated Systems Test (IST) procedures and IST Plan with participation of the project team. PI executed the IST testing and prepared and submitted a final commissioning report for the client. PI developed site specific operational procedures for normal, maintenance and failure modes of operation for critical electrical and mechanical systems. PI created a customer training program and performed oversight of the contractors and vendors training.
The Commissioning process was provided in the following 5 Phases and 5 Levels of Commissioning:
- Programming Phase Level 1 – Factory Witness Test
- Design Phase   Level 2 – Component Start-Up
- Construction Phase Level 3 – System Interface Level
- Acceptance Phase Level 4 – Functional Testing
- Post Acceptance   Level 5 – Integrated Systems Testing