Data Centres & Critical Infrastructure
Fire stopping for rooms that cannot be powered down.
Overview
Server rooms, comms rooms, switch rooms, control rooms and network cupboards — in offices, hospitals, plants and mine sites — along with telecommunications exchanges and data facilities. More often than not this work is a single room, and what is in it is cable through a wall.
We seal it, tag it, record it and certify it, and we do it without the equipment being switched off. You get the room back working and a record you can hand to anyone who asks.
We get it sealed without the room going down
Almost none of these rooms can be powered off, so we plan the method around that: no hot works, dust controlled at the opening, and tools chosen for what can safely run next to live equipment. It is ordinary work for our crews rather than a special arrangement.
Access is usually booked ahead and limited to a window. We size the scope to the window and turn up able to finish it, instead of asking for the window to be widened once we are on site.
A lot of cable through a small opening — and the evidence to match
A transit carrying several hundred cables is not a bigger version of a transit carrying six. Fill ratios, bundling, the substrate and the tested system all become tightly constrained. We select the system against the opening actually in front of us, and where the arrangement is not covered by the evidence available we tell you before it is installed, not after.
That is the part worth paying for. A seal that looks right and is not supported by evidence is a problem you inherit at handover, or the next time someone audits the building.
Built so the next cable does not cost you a rectification
These rooms change more than any others. Every new circuit is another cable through the same opening. Where we have the choice we install transits that can be opened, added to and re-recorded, so the next contractor through can do it properly instead of cutting your seal out.
Every penetration we complete carries its location, system, installer and date — on the asset and in a cloud portal — so the record is still there when the tag is painted over, the room changes hands, or the person who knew about it has left.
What you get from us
- Cable transit systems through rated walls and floors, selected for the actual fill and the actual substrate.
- Penetration rectification where cabling has been added to an existing sealed opening.
- Fire doors to switch, battery and plant rooms, including hardware and closers.
- Fire-rated construction around risers, shafts and plant enclosures.
- Baseline surveys and asset registers, so a later change can be evidenced rather than argued about.
- Certification of our own work, and third-party certification of installations carried out by others.
- Handover records to whatever standard the building or the operator asks for.
The conditions we plan for
- The room stays on — Methods selected to suit live equipment, confirmed before we price.
- A fixed access window — Scope sized to the window so the work closes out in one visit where it can.
- No hot works — Common in these rooms, and allowed for from the outset.
- Cables added after handover — The most common reason we are called, and the reason we build for re-entry.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
- Can you work with the equipment still running?
- Yes, and that is how this work normally runs. Where a scope genuinely needs an isolation we say so up front, so you can plan it rather than discover it.
- Can cables be added to an existing sealed penetration?
- Sometimes, depending on the system and the fill. Send us a photograph and we will tell you — see the Technical Library on adding cables to an existing transit.
- Is this only for large data centres?
- No. A lot of it is a single comms or switch room inside an ordinary building, and we are asked for that as often as anything else.
- What do we get at the end of it?
- Sealed and tagged penetrations, an asset record you can search, and certification covering the work we carried out. Tell us what your compliance regime requires and we will confirm we can meet it before we start.
Drawings, photos or a defect report in front of you?
Send what you already have. We will tell you what else is needed before the work can be reviewed, priced or booked for site inspection.