Lead Design and MEP for New Data Centre Project in Milan

Black & White Engineering served as Lead Design Consultant and MEP designer for a new-build data centre in Milan, taking the project from initial Test Fit through Stage 3 design and Employer’s Requirements. The facility forms one half of a two-building campus, with each building designed to operate independently for separate customers.

The Brief

The project called for a single-storey facility that could maximise IT yield on a constrained site while meeting stringent local building height regulations. With two independent tenants to serve from a shared campus, the design also needed to ensure that neither tenant’s infrastructure, resilience or service continuity would be affected by activity in the adjacent building.

Our Approach

Early-Stage Planning for Design Certainty

Working within the height constraints demanded careful planning at Test Fit stage to confirm the site could accommodate the required IT capacity before any design commitment was made. That early investment in certainty shaped every subsequent decision.

Dual-Tenant Operational Independence

Each building on the campus was designed to operate in full isolation from the other — ensuring complete separation of infrastructure, power and resilience between tenants.

Liquid Cooling and Concurrent Maintainability

The facility is designed for liquid-to-liquid cooling, combined with a concurrently maintainable infrastructure topology that allows the campus to sustain full operations under a single point of failure or during planned maintenance with no reduction in service to either tenant.

The Result

• Maximum IT yield achieved within a single-storey envelope and strict local height restrictions
• Full dual-tenant operational independence. Each building serving a separate customer with no shared risk
• Liquid-to-liquid cooling design, ready for high-density compute workloads
• Concurrently maintainable infrastructure supporting continued operation under failure or planned maintenance
• Design certainty established at Test Fit stage, carried through to Stage 3 and Employer’s Requirements