Hyperscale Investment at WS1

Anord Mardix Updates Operations at WS1 Manufacturing Site.

At Anord Mardix, we are used to hyperscale projects. In fact, it is becoming one of our most frequent types of projects to work on as a business.

In recent years we have had the privilege to work with a number of big brands, producing the products and services that enable our clients to grow within their own sectors.

We take pride in being able to facilitate the supply for data centres and other industries worldwide.

But, in order to keep up with project deadlines, we have had to make significant investments to our production line – and one of these investments is installing a colossal crane at our WS1 (UK) manufacturing site, which was completed in 2021.

After a full 12 months of utilising this key piece of equipment within our production process, we want to see how much impact the crane has really had on our production capabilities.

The basics of hyperscale production

A key part of assembling our products for hyperscale projects is the ability to mount our LV and HV switchgear on Power Skids, which elevate the products off the floor and allow the switchgear to be air-conditioned underneath.

Being mounted upon a Power Skid gives our hyperscale products modularity. Our modular designs, such as the modular Power Pods you can see here, allow us to fulfil the project brief in stages: assembling, completing, testing and shipping each section as it’s ready.

When the modular Power Pod arrives on site, engineers will connect it and test it for a final time. This process significantly reduces project lead times, making it much quicker than a full install ‘from-scratch’, onsite, at the project location.

Modular plantrooms ultimately provide the following benefits for a project:

• Allows modular pre-fabrication and pre-testing offsite.
• Rapid deployment to site
• Faster final commissioning of the pods onsite

If you are interested in finding out more about our Modular Design products, why not check out this blog here, where we go into more detail.

Modular plantrooms would not be possible if it weren’t for the Power Skids at the base of each power pod.

Power Skid Fabrication

A Skid mounted solution is crucial to the assembly and shipping of our HV and LV switchgear on a hyperscale project. Check out this time-lapse video of our electrical fitters installing our switchgear onto Skids – you can get a real sense of the scale of our projects here!

But how are SKID’s made?

SKID’s are fabricated from sections of structural grade steel, welded together. The dimensions of a fully fabricated SKID average at around 5m width and 1m depth, although this can vary depending on project specification. To date, since installing the crane in 2021, our biggest skid that we have fabricated has been 12m x 3.5m and weighing almost 5 tonnes!

The fabrication process has a total of 4 stages to complete one SKID. The final stage will see the drilling and tapping of chequer plating, ready for use in the electrical fitting stage and beyond.

The New Crane: Before and After

The newly installed crane has become instrumental to the fabrication process.

A single girder 15m span with a 7.4m lift height, this dual hoist crane has a total lift capacity of 10 tonnes. The crane girder is connected to A-frame leg fabrications which operate on floor rails of 47m in length, providing coverage across the complete Skid manufacturing area at our WS1 site.

The crane is fitted with a pair of powered turnover units, allowing us to rotate the Skid when required, which takes on average around 10 minutes to do.

The crane is operated by a remote Radio Control System and we can operate either hoist independently or in tandem, including sections of either turnover unit. When not in use, the turning units can be quickly disconnected from the crane via plugs and sockets mounted on the crane hook block and finally stored on independent stands.

The business and our staff have already reaped substantial rewards from installing the new crane and we’re excited for this to continue in the future.

Before installing the crane

• We used a telehandler to move the skids form one stage of welding to the next
• Because we have a total of 4 stages per Skid, and every section of weld had to stop to allow the telehandler through the Skid area, our production team would lose around 2 and ¼ hours per Skid in waiting for the Skid to be accessible again!
• All production would have to stop for safety reasons until the telehandler had finished.
• With 6 welders working on a Skid at once, each stopping for 2 ¼ hours each day, we would lose up to 13.5 hours of production in total.
• Even at full capacity we could produce two to three Skids maximum, causing us to fall be with the schedule.

After the crane installation

• With the crane installed, we do not have to stop two out of the three weld stages and work can continue without interruption.
• Only on the fourth stage of completing the Skid, where it needs to be moved or rotated, does work need to stop. Each move or rotation takes, on average, 10 minutes.
• This means that only 2 out of the total 6 welders need to stop while the Skid is rotating, saving the team over 12 hours in total.

Moving away from a telehandler and replacing it with a crane which is big enough to flip the Skids within 10 minutes, with minimal disruption to the welders, is a significant improvement to the production line.

With an overall saving of 12 hours per Skid, we can now comfortably produce four per week, enabling us to meet project demands and deadlines.

The crane also helps massively with the production of smaller Skids, not just big ones. In August 2021 we managed to produce 20 Skids across 6 days. And in January 2022 we were able to weld, paint and transport a total of 12 Skids over to Ireland within only 3 days – unthinkable when using a telehandler.  It’s clear to see just how much of an impact this crane has had to our business.

A year on from the installation, we’ve successfully boosted production rates for this hyperscale product and made things much easier for our production team, which we love to see!