When Black Box won a contract to supply Marks & Spencer with a new national network infrastructure, they asked us to design the first of six new communications rooms. The result, they said, was the best they had ever seen. We have now designed and installed all six, with the cost of the first one set as the average for all.

However, at another site (M&S’s biggest data centre of all) the existing room had to be refurbished – without interrupting its operations. We had to identify the faults with this centre and come up with plans to rectify them while managing the dust and other side-effects of the work. Among the problems we diagnosed was the fact that if the fire suppression system had been set off, the pressure of it would have smashed the glass partitions – with dangerous consequences for anyone in the data centre at the time. It is difficult to say whether it was lucky or not that the fire suppression system itself had been so badly installed that it could not have been set off.

These problems have now been solved, and the replacement of ceilings, floors, power systems, air-conditioning and lighting has been carried out without any interruption to service.