Critical Power - The Journey So Far

What is Critical Power?

When people first hear the words’ critical power’, they typically associate it with power generation-type equipment, but critical power has a slightly different role. In short, critical power ensures that critically categorised power systems remain operational so that sites don’t face unexpected downtime or unplanned interruptions. This is vital across all sectors but especially important for data centres, healthcare settings, and financial institutions, given their need for 24/7/365 uptime.

Building the division

When Sunbelt Rentals first acquired OPS, it became apparent to me that important steps needed to be taken to properly curate the offering to complement the wider Energy business.

In the first instance, we invested significant time and resources into achieving operational excellence internally, which has produced new quality processes across all areas of critical power and enabled us to refine our operations and work in line with standardised workflows. We have also provided our teams with the opportunity to undertake technical and product-oriented training to close any skill or knowledge gaps. Each team member is given a structured development plan that supports their individual growth and development.

This team that I reference has been carefully constructed since the acquisition, bringing in industry-leading experts from around the world, from Texas, USA, to Cape Town, South Africa. This has had a major impact on our success, given that each team member brings truly unique perspectives. This means that our brainstorming sessions are much more fruitful and generate excellent outcomes, which in turn enable us to provide the best solutions for our customers’ unique scenarios.

These team members are also helping to collectively drive our new sales plan in the UK and Europe, with tremendous milestones already reached. We have also rethought our procurement strategy to ensure the most appropriate high-quality products are being brought into our fleet, with a huge emphasis on key asset maintenance and repair programmes. This means our customers always receive the best and most reliable critical power equipment on the market.

What does the future hold?

As a result of the departmental reinforcement and process standardisation, we have since been able to make significant strides forward, but the journey is only just beginning. With solid foundations now in place, a fantastic team, and a congruent plan, I believe the future of this division can be captured in a single word – growth.

We have been expanding OPS’ portfolio of deliveries to support a much wider sector set with high-value, complex projects delivering full-suite critical power setups. From energy farms that provide the biggest construction, infrastructure and rail projects across the UK with an almost zero harmful exhaust emission rate to LV and HV packages for financial institutions, hospitals and facilities management clients, we are continuing to set ourselves apart as the leading critical power supplier throughout the UK and Europe. And with our wider Energy team working closely with us, we are a true one-stop shop for all energy needs a customer may have, and this interoperability of services is helping us to deliver comprehensive solutions at a moment’s notice, regardless of the location.

However, with all that considered, we are seeing exponential growth in one area in particular – data centres.

Data Centres – A Key Area of Opportunity

Considering that technology, in general, is accelerating at a rate of terminal velocity, data centres that ensure the critical data supporting its functionality are also growing at a parallel rate. There are already many data centres across the UK, with plans for hyperscale data centres to be introduced in the UK, Europe, and the Nordics, demonstrating the massive investment from organisations like Microsoft, Google, and so forth.

We see this as a huge opportunity for critical power, especially considering that we already provide multiple data centres with the means to remain operational 24/7/365. Therefore, data centres are a huge focus for us, and as a division, I see our critical power presence growing alongside their emergence with inevitable expansion across key strategic locations so that we can continue to provide full-suite solutions for the most complex data centres yet to come.

In line with our ambitions in the data centre space, we recently exhibited at Data Centre World in the ExCel, London. With more than 10,000 visitors across the two-day exhibition, we spoke with key stakeholders and leaders in the data centre space, expressing how the wider Energy team here at Sunbelt Rentals can offer a full suite of products and services. It was great to see so many like-minded organisations and individuals together as one, discussing how we can continue supporting the inevitable growth of data centres in the UK and overseas.

If you would like to learn more about critical power at Sunbelt Rentals and our work in the data centre world, visit our website: Critical Power | Sunbelt Rentals.