Trading Technology - Air conditioning design

The design of building air conditioning requires the services of a skilled Mechanical and Electrical Engineer who specialises in air conditioning. We work alongside such skilled engineers to translate the needs of the trading floor and technology rooms into specifications for the engineer.

The first task is to create a heat load analysis. We undertake a full inventory of equipment, people, lighting to establish what heat will be generated during normal business operations. We work with the business and the IT Department Data Centre team to confirm the projected growth and the requirements for air conditioning resilience. Where appropriate we will identify special needs for air flow to support equipment cooling.

In some trading floor situations special cooling facilities may be required under the trading desks or in the locality. We will provide advice on this, including such issues as leak proof connectors, local drip trays and drainage.

We will also undertake a data centre analysis to identify the cooling needs for the equipment racks for present and future equipment needs. The operational requirements, including resiliency issues, for the data centre will be documented. There may be special requirements for direct water chilling of equipment cabinets and/or server processors. It is not unknown for a single cabinet containing Blade Servers to generate over 10KW heat output. We will establish the air flow requirements at the front and rear of equipment racks and advise on the cabinet layout implications.

When the heat load and air flow requirements have been established we work with the Air Conditioning engineer to develop suitable air conditioning systems for the technology rooms, the trading floor and other office areas. We pay particular attention to resiliency in the design so that operations can continue if a single unit fails.

We help to specify air conditioning testing and maintenance scheduling. We also can establish dynamic heat maps for normal operation and failure conditions.