Data center grating installation above a live data hall
Equinix’s FR11x stands at Friesstraße 7, on the operator’s northeast Frankfurt campus. Equinix lists it as one of two xScale facilities there, built for hyperscale deployments and operational since 2022. It was also Metal KLS’s first project in Frankfurt. FR10, on the plot next door, followed.
On a building like this, the plant that cools the halls does not sit at ground level. It sits on a three-level steel technical platform above the roof. That platform carries the coolers, the pipework feeding them, and the walkways technicians use to reach both. Another subcontractor erected the structure. Metal KLS laid the walkway grating on all three of its levels.
The package
Between September and November 2022, a foreman-led steel erection crew worked the northern half of the FR11x roof. They installed approximately 7,300 m² of galvanised perforated plank grating across three fully grated levels, each 53 m by 46 m. The lowest sat about 1.5 m above the roof slab. Winthrop Technologies ran the project.
- Approximately 150 tonnes of grating panels, with Metal KLS slinging every lift and providing the banksman
- Three fully grated levels, each one waiting on the trade working above or below it
- Panels cut and adjusted in position where they did not match the issued drawings
- Work from a MEWP beneath the deck wherever the level above had already closed
The crew also worked under a hot works permit, so a panel that did not fit could be cut and rewelded in position rather than going back to the fabricator. On a roof beside an operating data hall that permission is not automatic.
The crew was five for the first five weeks, while the lowest deck went in as one continuous pass. It then dropped to three for the remaining eight. Thirteen weeks on site, without a break.
So the labour tracked the rate at which the platform came available. That is the practical difference a supervised installation team makes. The men you do not need this month are not on the invoice.
Following three trades up the building
The crew could not grate the platform in one pass. Each level only came available once someone else had finished with it.
The lowest deck went in first, on structure sitting about a metre and a half above the roof slab.
The middle level followed once the other subcontractor erected the frame above it.
The top level waited until the mechanical trades finished setting the pipework and the HVAC plant. Only then did the deck close around them.
In practice that puts a grating crew permanently behind two trades and permanently in front of a third. The deck they lay is also the working platform and the MEWP access route for everyone who follows. So a level finished late does not delay one package. It delays the mechanical installation above it, and the commissioning behind that.
All material came over the top by tower crane. The crew ran its own lifting duties — slinging the bundles, banksman to the crane. Then they broke each bundle out in the order the crane could reach. On a roof where other trades wait on your surface, that control matters. A delivery either lands where you need it, or you move it twice.
Alongside an operating data hall
The southern half of FR11x was already live when Metal KLS mobilised. The site induction included an instruction not to enter it.
That is what separates a hyperscale campus from a construction site. Half the building is a customer’s operating facility, and the steel package works around it. Access, deliveries, noise, hot works and lifting all answer to the plant next door carrying live load.
Outcome
- Three grated levels, handed over in sequence, with no hold on the mechanical installation above
- Thirteen weeks alongside an operating data hall, no lost-time incidents
- A working deck and MEWP access for the following trades on every level, as each came available
FR11x led directly to Metal KLS’s work on Equinix FR10, on the neighbouring plot. Further data center packages followed in Raunheim, Dietzenbach and west of Frankfurt am Main.
