Mission-Critical & Telecom
Telecom and mission-critical sites carry the data-center obsession with uptime — redundant power, dedicated cooling, battery backup — into a smaller, distributed, often DC-powered footprint. We deliver MEP design, prepared for your engineer of record’s review, for the resilient power, precise cooling, and battery infrastructure that central offices and network nodes depend on to ride through a utility outage.
Continuity-Grade Power and Cooling, Distributed Footprint.
Telecom MEP is its own discipline: -48VDC power plants with rectifiers and battery strings, hydrogen ventilation designed to hold the battery-room atmosphere at or below 1% by volume (a quarter of hydrogen’s 4% lower flammable limit), and cooling sized to Telcordia GR-3028 rather than a generic comfort spec. Sites balance AC standby, DC continuity, and tight cooling across a footprint where a single point of failure can take the network down — coordinated with your team and documented behind the seal of the licensed engineer of record on your project.
Resilient AC & DC Power
Dual-source power designed to keep a network energized for the specified outage duration and maintenance scenarios.
- Utility sources and transfer architecture coordinated, with standby generation and automatic transfer designed to applicable NFPA 110 requirements
- -48VDC power plant requirements — rectifiers, battery strings, and DC distribution — coordinated with the telecom specialist
- UPS topology for AC critical loads, with concurrent maintainability where the site demands it
- Selective coordination, short-circuit, and arc-flash studies built into the documents — IEEE 1584 on the AC side, with DC-plant values from the plant vendor
- Critical-load metering and monitoring for capacity and reserve-time tracking
Grounding, Bonding & Surge
The reference and protection scheme sensitive electronics live or die by.
- Common bonding network and isolated/integrated ground arrangements per Telcordia GR-1089 at the equipment interface, with site bonding and grounding designed to ANSI/TIA-607 and Motorola R56
- DC return vs. telecom ground electrode vs. AC equipment ground — resolved by design
- Surge protective devices coordinated from service entrance to the rack
- Lightning protection and ground-ring coordination for tower and rooftop sites
- Equipotential bonding at cable entrance for overhead and underground facilities
Precise Cooling & Thermal
Dedicated cooling designed to the equipment envelope on a footprint with little thermal margin.
- CRAC/CRAH and in-row cooling sized to equipment heat release, per Telcordia GR-3028
- Line-up airflow matched to the equipment — front-to-rear, front-to-top, or front-to-rear-and-top, consistent with Telcordia GR-3028-CORE and ASHRAE TC 9.9 airflow conventions — with aisle containment where the layout uses it
- Redundancy (N+1 / dual-unit) matched to the criticality of the site
- ASHRAE TC 9.9 thermal envelopes evaluated across normal and economizer modes
- Equipment-room humidity control and condensate management for electronics protection
Battery Rooms & Energy Storage
Ventilation and protection sized to the chemistry, not assumed.
- Hydrogen ventilation holding the room atmosphere below 1% H₂ by volume — 25% of hydrogen’s lower flammable limit — or 1 cfm/ft² of floor area continuously, per the IFC
- Spill containment and acid-neutralization for flooded lead-acid strings
- Thermal-runaway detection and ventilation interlocks for VRLA systems
- Lithium-ion ESS ventilation, detection, and clearances per NFPA 855 where applicable
- Battery-room temperature control to protect string life and capacity
Fire Detection & Coordination
Telecom-specific fire protection coordinated with the suppression and network vendors.
- Air-sampling (VESDA-type) smoke detection for early warning in equipment spaces
- NFPA 76 fire-protection strategy for telecommunications facilities, coordinated with the fire-protection engineer
- Clean-agent suppression coordination where the equipment value justifies it
- Leak detection under raised floor and near cooling units
- Cable-tray, riser, and equipment-line-up coordination with network and OEM vendors
We design the AC side — service, standby generator, and ATS — and the building connections to the DC plant. The telecom specialist sizes the -48VDC rectifiers, battery strings, and DC distribution; at DC-powered sites continuity rides on the DC bus, so we coordinate rectifier capacity and battery autonomy against the equipment load and the reserve time the site requires, then resolve the DC return and grounding reference — GR-1089 at the equipment interface, TIA-607 and R56 for the site bonding and grounding network.
By the chemistry. For VRLA strings we design ventilation to hold the room atmosphere below 1% hydrogen by volume — or a continuous 1 cfm per square foot of floor — with thermal-runaway detection and interlocks per the IFC. Flooded lead-acid adds spill containment and acid-neutralization; lithium-ion ESS brings NFPA 855 detection, ventilation, and clearance requirements. The ventilation is sized to the actual battery system, not a generic allowance.
Yes. Central-office and telecom cooling follows Telcordia GR-3028 thermal management and the front-intake, top-/rear-exhaust line-up convention — not a generic comfort spec or a copied data-center layout. We size dedicated, redundant cooling to the equipment heat release and hold ASHRAE TC 9.9 envelopes across operating modes, because these footprints have almost no thermal margin when a unit drops offline.
Same uptime obsession, different footprint and power architecture. Telecom sites are smaller and distributed, frequently DC-powered, and subject to Telcordia GR-63/GR-3028/GR-1089 and NFPA 76 where the owner specifies or the code requires them, rather than only the data-center stack. Redundancy targets and cooling scale to how critical each node is.