How Edged Is Scaling Sustainable Data Center Infrastructure Edged is a global provider of sustainable data centers and a subsidiary of Endeavour, a company revolutionizing infrastructure technology. Edged specializes in designing, developing, and operating carbon-neutral, waterless IT and energy infrastructure. The company is managing a gigawatt-scale project pipeline, with their first European data centers going live in Spain in late 2023, and more than a dozen North American data centers currently under construction or in development.

With so many operating assets, Edged wanted to standardize data capture across the project lifecycle from design to operations to unlock capital planning and management efficiencies. In 2021, Edged selected Autodesk Build, an Autodesk Construction Cloud solution, as its project management system to connect, control, and centralize asset data.

With Build, Edged developed data standards and digital project delivery workflows to create real-time KPI dashboards to feed their global digital twin database. In less than a year, Edged scaled the use of Build from three users to several hundred across three countries.

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Customer Snapshot

Standardizing Data Capture to Create a Digital Twin Program From the start, Edged’s vision was to use digital twins to streamline the design, construction, and operations process. However, traditional methods for developing digital twins happen post-construction.

With Edged’s rapid development schedule, they needed to organically produce the digital twin in parallel throughout the design, construction, and commissioning phases to be ready for operations on day one.

But building a digital twin program from scratch can be challenging. Edged took a three-pronged approach:

• First, identify the necessary operational requirements and capture the right data points during design

• Next, develop a playbook to capture consistent data across its international portfolio

• Finally, identify a solution to track and leverage insights to improve delivery, operations, and maintenance

This last element led the team to adopt Build as its unified construction management solution to connect stakeholders across the project lifecycle to maintain data fidelity.

“A big part of the issue in construction is that everyone is defining assets and information differently. As the owner, it’s our responsibility to set up codification standards for the assets we’re interested in collecting,” says Claire Romaine, Platform Manager, Digital Program Delivery at Edged.

“We need everyone to speak the same language across all project phases, from design through construction, commissioning, and operations. And we need a consistent process to collect the necessary data for operations.”

PHASE:

DESIGN PLAN BUILD OPERATE

CAPABILITIES:

• Project Management • Quality Management • Field Collaboration • Cost Management • Project Closeout

FIRM SIZE: FIRM TYPE: REVENUE: FOCUS AREA: HQ:

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Schedule

OUTCOMES:

Cost

Quality

Automating the Data Migration Process Across a Project For Edged, building its digital twin starts long before the shovel hits the ground. It starts in design.

Using its playbook as a guide, Edged created standardized design templates in Autodesk Revit, with asset and location metadata embedded into the model. These models are then shared with the construction and commissioning teams to contribute as-built data and documents as part of their turnover process in Build, which integrates with Edged’s computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).

“With structured data flowing freely between systems, we can then aggregate data across projects to create a library of parts that can be cross-referenced during design and operations,” says Jonathan Rodriguez, Director, Technology & Operations. “This process supports our goal of moving into fleet management rather than starting from scratch regarding material procurement for each new site.”

In addition, it allows Edged’s operational teams to use this asset data—which is organized by manufacturer and model number—to maintain operation manuals for ongoing facility management.

“By using Autodesk Build, we can create templatized project management and turnover workflows across our portfolio for effective contractor data management. It streamlines data transfer among stakeholders and allows us to collect rich, valuable insights while centralizing and unifying information,” says Claire.

Monitoring and Operating Key Assets with Digital Twins Archaic paper-based processes are now replaced with digitized workflows that streamline design, data capture, and communication between project stakeholders.

“There was a cultural shift in understanding why we were changing our processes,” says Jonathan. “A lightbulb goes off when we can show our teams what we can produce based on the data they’re inputting into the system. We can get real-time updates on a project’s health, and these little wins change perception and drive acceptance.”

Build is critical in Edged’s ability to create a digital twin portfolio. With Build, Edged has improved:

• Design and execution: Edged has optimized design and execution based on past data and current operating conditions, resulting in more efficient project iterations.

• Operational efficiencies: Edged can launch revenue-generating services earlier by enforcing data standards and reusing material from previous projects.

• Operational processes: Edged’s operations team can monitor all assets digitally and oversee preventative maintenance tasks, according to metadata and historical performance, to learn from their assets and change equipment as needed.

• Communication: Edged customers can access the same real-time asset data as Edged operations and communicate directly with Edged operations personnel.

Edged has seen several benefits in standardizing Build across projects to support its digital twin portfolio, including:

• Training nearly 200 project stakeholders in Autodesk Build within 15 months

• Saving two hours per week per project manager using Build workflows and automated dashboards, rather than communicating through emails and static owner reports

• Saving an estimated 15 hours on each critical piece of equipment commissioned and brought online in Edged’s telemetry platform, since components and procedures from past projects are reused

As Edged continues to build out its asset database, they predict that the turnover process will be complete before construction. And according to its turnover schedule, they’re on track to turn over a project six months ahead of the typical turnover process.

The Future of Sustainable Infrastructure Edged is scaling the use of Build across all projects globally, beginning with Spain, the United States, and Canada. Their goal is to get to a predictive state where they can look at the make and model of specific equipment, and then the lead time, to get ahead of supply chain issues as they arise.

“With everything going digital, there is a need for more IT infrastructure; but how do you do it sustainably? This is where the idea for Edged Data

By using Autodesk Build, we can create templatized project

management and turnover workflows across our portfolio

for effective contractor data management. It streamlines data transfer among stakeholders and allows us to collect rich, valuable

insights while centralizing and unifying information.”

-Claire Romaine Platform Manager, Digital Program Delivery

Edged

Centers came from and what drew me to join the company,” says Jonathan.

“We’re passionate about doing more with less, and that’s the promise of Autodesk Build. By not having to worry about the handoff from design to construction to operations, we can focus on scaling our business and delivering sustainable solutions to our customers. We’re seeing that become a reality across our projects.”