Delivery for Iceland, please sign here

Well here we are in 2013 and in less than two years we are doing it all over again!  Further to the announcement we made a couple of months ago I’m delighted to tell you, that our second Colt Ftec data centre for Verne Global has been successfully deployed in Iceland!  Despite having done this before, we knew that meticulous planning was going to be key to a smooth execution and this began six months ago.

Back in February my team and I travelled to Iceland and resurveyed the route we knew the data centre would take, double-checking that no new obstacles had appeared since our 2011 delivery. This logistics trip was a reminder of Iceland’s climate - we contended with snow and ice and the temperature dropped to minus 6 degrees! Thankfully coffee and hot chocolate was in no short supply from our friendly hosts.

Confident in the knowledge that we would deliver the data centre in summer we were still worried when our Icelandic shipping agents told us that the weather can get a little chilly in winter months and they ‘didn’t bother with seasons any longer’. Despite this we continued to plan rapidly in deep sea.

Everything went swimmingly, until days before our ship was due to leave England. Our ship was held up – in South America! So we had to secure a new one, and fast. The MV Abis Dublin was selected for the job, docked at the Tees estuary we began our two day long loading task. Stevedores, cranes, extended trailers and reach stackers were all employed to ensure that the operation went as smoothly as possible. Our ship was then loaded with 370 tonnes of data centre modules.

On May 21st our ship set sail into the Tees Estuary and beyond the North sea. Using GPS tracking we we were able to accurately track the ship’s progress until it reached its destination in Iceland. It was a journey off over 1,000 nautical miles and even during summer months, the crew dealt with erratic weather conditions. One particular night the ship, there were Gale force 8 winds, forcing the Captain to make the decision to slow down. Once the worse had passed we picked-up pace to keep us on track for delivery. On arrival in Iceland we were met with high winds and heavy rainfall. However, thanks to the harbour crew the data centre cargo was brought ashore safely. Throughout the delivery we worked extremely closely with our customer to ensure that the site was ready to receive the data centre, building on the trust that they have in us to deliver an impartial service as standard.

Weeks of methodical assembly meant that zero snags were reported by the customer, demonstrating the credentials of a high quality product, combined with service excellence. We even provided Verne Global support with configuring its equipment. The data centre was then powered up and tested before finally being handed over to a very happy client.

Another job well done.