Critical Facilities Engineering Design

ENR has ranked Syska Hennessy Group as one of the world’s top five in data-center engineering design for the last ten years. We design the essential mission critical facilities of companies with a strict need for confidentiality, meeting their risk tolerance to the business profile in the most cost efficient manner. As consulting engineers, we provide engineering design, facility management, structured cabling, audiovisual and security design, and commissioning performance verification for critical facilities across all sectors. Our clients range from collocation markets and managed service providers to global financial services and leading cloud-based technology companies.

With client relationships spanning decades, such as with the United Parcel Service and Duke Energy, we transition them through generations of technology, maintaining data-center reliability and uptime.

Designing for Energy Efficiency and Improved Total Cost of Ownership

To optimize the operating costs of data centers, Syska uses tools such as gap analysis, life-cycle cost modeling and critical performance balance assessment tools to design the MEP/FP and information and communication technology (ICT) systems. Tailored to the client’s mission, budget and resources, our modeling analysis calculates upfront costs and the long-term investment to maintain operations.

We model the total cost of ownership (TCO) via energy modeling tools that simulate energy consumption; additionally, the design is adjusted via the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to adjust air flows, placement of equipment, etc. All these adjusted factors are fed back into the TCO analysis to select the most cost-effective and efficient cooling-system solutions for our clients. For General Electric, Syska designed the first-ever LEED Platinum data center based on close design-team collaboration and performance modeling.

Future-Proofing Data Centers

Maintaining data centers over the long term requires modular and scalable design. We are adept at designing scalable centers and upgrading existing facilities while they continue to perform at full capacity.

Best Practices and New Technologies

As a designer of hundreds of critical facilities, we track key metrics of each center against best practices to inform clients’ build and operating decisions. Similarly, we continually track developments with potential application for our clients—from free cooling options in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region to alternate cooling methods.

Post-Incident Review and Resolution

When data centers fail, the consequences can be devastating, with financial losses up to $30 million per hour and customer loyalty taking a hit. We work with companies after an event to determine the root cause of issues as well as to conduct gap analyses and propose solutions to eliminate the risk of reoccurrence.

When Downtime is Not an Option

We save you money and keep you up and running. Syska consults with clients such as BB&T, Verizon and multiple cloud and collocation providers, identifying essential functions with no tolerance for downtime. We strategize about hardening data centers to withstand extreme weather events, strengthening operations with backup power and creating essential redundancy. Syska travels across the globe, consulting for on-site selection, assessing a locality’s potential for natural disasters, and calculating for energy costs and real estate market factors. These investigations help clients make informed decisions about location and available resources. For existing facility evaluations, our gap-analysis studies weigh existing conditions, system topologies and equipment age and condition against Uptime Tier-level requirements.