Data Centre Post Construction Cleaning

IT Cleaning Ltd Magazine Article published in Cleanroom Technology

Data Centre Post Construction Cleaning. After construction or refurbishment of your data centre, data room, server room, data hall, or comms room will be contaminated with submicron particles caused by the construction activities. Prior to accepting the data centre, data room or comms room you should ensure your contractor has the room cleaned. The current accepted (best practice) specification for this is “Room to be cleaned to ISO 14644-1 2015 Class 8 plus all accessible surfaces free from dust”. This specification will ensure that damaging dust is removed from the air and from all accessible surfaces, ensuring this settled dust can not be re-suspended in air by human activities. There are 9 Classes in ISO 14644-1 2015, class 9 through to class 1, class 8 is the most common specified for data rooms. Class 8 applies limits to particulate sizes at 0.5µm, 1.0µm and 5.0µm respectively.

The maximum levels for class 8 are as follows: 0.5µm 3,520,000 1.0µm 832,000 5.0µm 29,300. Cleaning to ISO 14644-1 2015 Class 8 plus all accessible surfaces free from dust, is currently best practice as indicated by DCA. See our SCOPE of Works.

If your data centre / data room has recently undergone expansion or is a new construction, then a complete data centre / data room post construction clean should be performed prior to the room being put back into operation.

“Contamination has been the indirect cause of more IT downtime than all the fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and disgruntled employees combined.” – Jon William Toigo, Disaster Recovery Planning, Third Edition. 

Dust caused by construction activity is very fine down to 0.3µm (micron) it is produced in large amounts can move vast distances from its source and is abrasive. Construction dust mainly consists of Plaster, Cement dust and other abrasive Silica particulate.

The main problem facing the Data Room manager is the removal of the dust so it cannot get into the equipment. Due to the fineness of the dust this is often difficult. Dust of this size 0.3µm and up is subject to many forces including static, Van De Waals force, air movement and Brownian motion.All of which work on these submicron particles indifferent ways. Indeed for particles of this size, Gravity is the last force which works on them.

“One has to remember that 1000µm = 1mm, therefore at 0.5µm (0.0005 of a mm) 2000 particles will pass through a hole 1mm in size, line abreast ! ” Stephen Yates MD.

IT Cleaning Ltd are able to offer a full post construction cleaning service of Data Centres, Server Rooms, Comms Rooms etc. This will includes the scrubbing of air to remove harmful particulate (dust) from the air and a full surface clean of the room. We will then validate the room to ISO 14644 Class 8 using a Solair 5100+ and issue certificates as required. These cleans are often called 5 micron cleans and clinical cleans. If required we are able to offer an IT Equipment Cleaning service. This involves the stripping down of the equipment so dust can be removed from fans, airways and all accessible parts of the equipment internally.

“Perhaps the most important step to take to control contamination, is to contract with a reputable computer room maintenance company, to perform routine cleaning”. John William Toigo, Disaster Recovery Planning Third Addition.

We only offer this service as a POST CONSTRUCTION CLEAN. If the site is still a construction site and the rooms require a Builders Clean we would like to recommend the following::

BSW Contractors LTD. This company has been trained by IT Cleaning Ltd in the cleaning of Data Rooms-Data Centres to ISO 14644-1 2015 Class 8. IT Cleaning Ltd often consult for them during the data room cleaning. BSW Contracts Ltd are experts at builders cleaning on construction sites having worked on many prestigious sites including 20 Fenchurch Street – Canary Wharf. We have worked with BSW Contractors Ltd at many sites including SKY and AMEX Brighton. “I have been very impressed with Terry and his team. The Clean of the data room at AMEX Brighton was executed very well, in very difficult circumstances and it achieved ISO 14644-1 Class 8” Stephen Yates.

IT Cleaning are also able to offer ITProtect this is a service to protect the IT equipment from the construction dust. The service utilises proven technology borrowed from the asbestos removal industry. For more information click here

For a free site survey and quotation or further information please contact Stephen Yates 0870 0052581 or stephen.yates@itcleaning.co.uk