By Damon Trench, Project Manager, ST1 Group
The UK’s data centre sector is expanding fast. Capacity stood at around 1.6GW in 2024, and government analysis puts that figure at somewhere between 3.3GW and 6.3GW by 2030, depending on how planning and energy policy develop. The sector is now valued at over £15bn, and demand is being pulled upward by AI workloads, cloud migration, and the sheer volume of data modern businesses generate.
For operators, that growth brings a practical challenge. Ageing infrastructure has to keep pace with rising demand, and that means capital investment programmes that are planned properly, costed accurately, and delivered without disrupting live operations. It’s a challenge I’ve been working through first-hand this year.
Planning a capital works programme across a live estate
I’m currently leading project management and quantity surveying support for a major UK banking client, developing an investment plan across its data centre estate. The programme covers four sites and spans a full year of capital works, ranging from smaller replacement items to larger scheme upgrades.
The scope is significant. My team and I have budget costed thousands of assets within multiple data centres across the UK. This includes parent asset items and their associated components. The work is heavily weighted toward mechanical and electrical systems, alongside a smaller proportion of fabric and civils items.
The asset list spans generators, HVAC and humidity control, electrical resilience systems, and water treatment, alongside general fit-out and ground works. This is the infrastructure that keeps a data centre running reliably day to day, and it needs a proper plan behind it, not a hurried replacement when something fails.
Getting the detail right before the budget is set
Before we could put a figure to any of the works, we carried out a detailed data-finding exercise to understand exactly what was on the asset register and what condition it was in. That groundwork made it possible to build accurate budget costs covering the full picture, including buy-work-in-connection items, associated enabling works, prelims, design, and overheads and profit.
“An estate this size never has a perfectly clean asset register, so the real work was building a true picture of what was out there before we could cost a single item. Getting that right up front is what makes the rest of the plan reliable.”
It’s the kind of exercise that rewards patience. A diverse and complex estate rarely has a clean, up-to-date asset list, and getting that foundation right is what allows a client to plan capital spend with confidence rather than reacting to failures as they happen.
Investment planning as a resilience strategy
As demand on UK data centre capacity climbs, I think resilience becomes less about any single system and more about how well an estate’s ageing infrastructure is understood and managed over time. A structured investment plan, built on solid asset data, gives an operator the ability to prioritise spend where it matters most and avoid the kind of reactive, costly failures that disrupt service.
This phase is targeted for completion by the end of 2026, with the wider investment plan running through to FY30. It’s a useful example, from where I’m sitting, of what capital planning looks like at scale: methodical, data-led, and built around keeping critical infrastructure running while it’s upgraded.
What this means for other operators
Data centres aren’t the only live, high-stakes environments where I and the wider ST1 Group project management and quantity surveying team work. The same discipline, understanding what’s really on the ground before committing to a budget, applies wherever capital works have to be delivered on a site that can’t afford disruption.
If your organisation is facing a similar challenge, an ageing or poorly documented estate, a capital programme that needs accurate costing before the board will sign off, or works that have to happen around live operations, my team and I can help you build a plan you can rely on and organise and manage the works.
Get in touch with ST1 Group to talk through your next capital works programme.