An Edinburgh-based property developer is hoping to create scores of jobs in Fife after revealing plans to build a £40 million state-of-the-art data centre in the kingdom.
Alan O’Connor yesterday told Courier Business his AOC Group was on the cusp of making a formal application for planning consents for the proposed facility in Glenrothes.
The development site is within the extensive grounds of historic Fife papermaker Tullis Russell, but access will be via a new road cut through from the existing Queensway Business Park.
AOC plans to get electricity for what it described as the “UK’s first 100% green data centre” from the new biomass-powered combined heat and power plant being commissioned by RWE npower renewables on a separate part of the site.
The proposed new facility will house more than 1,500 computer racks and have the capacity to handle massive data sets for the financial services, oil and gas and renewables industries among others.
Mr O’Connor, who is working with unnamed overseas investors on securing funding for the project, said the centre had been designed with the highest levels of disaster resilience and data security in mind.
The centre will work in tandem with other remote facilities to ensure data held on behalf of third-party clients would not be compromised even in the event of a devastating fire.
If AOC’s plans are approved by Fife Council, the build phase of the project is expected to take 13 months and provide approximately 250 construction jobs.
Around 50 permanent technology, engineering, administration and ancillary posts will also be created once the centre is fully operational.
Mr O’Connor, whose property career has spanned the residential and commercial sectors and included high-profile developments such as the Radisson Blu hotel in Glasgow, said the Fife project was among the most exciting he had been involved in. He said he had no specific prior experience of the data security sector and had been on a huge learning curve as plans for Queensway were progressed.
“It has been a long time coming as I have had to educate myself in this industry,” Mr O’Connor said. “I have literally been all over Europe and the States at conferences, exhibitions and workshops, and that has helped me to build a team around me who are specialists.”
Mr O’Connor said the new centre would be significant not just for the economy of Fife but for the country as a whole. He was confident there was enough demand for data storage facilities, and said the Queensway site was big enough to accommodate a second centre if required.
“Scotland is seen as one of the safest places globally to have a data centre because of the pretty robust grid network,” Mr O’Connor said.
It has taken approximately 18 months to get the project to the current stage, with input from both the Invest in Fife team and Scottish Development International, an agency dedicated to supporting overseas investment in Scotland.