At a planning committee meeting on 4 January, Bedford Borough Council gave its support to BlueChip Engineering’s plans to create a new data centre at the vacant Crayola building on Ampthill Road, Bedford.
Robinson and Hall have been working with BlueChip over the last six months to bring the business concept into reality. Stuart Brown, a Chartered Building Surveyor at Robinson & Hall commented “I am delighted that the Council has supported the company’s proposals, we have made every effort to ensure that the building is brought into a new high technology use that will benefit Bedford businesses without affecting neighbouring occupiers and residents.”
The data centre is set to provide facilities for local businesses to store and backup data and provide additional servers. It also will add to the growing number of facilities that are present in the area and will hopefully help attract other businesses to locate in the town.
Utilising Robinson and Hall’s varied expertise BlueChip will be able to complete the scheme using the same team of surveyors. Robinson and Hall are now project managing the conversion of the warehouse buildings into a data recovery room and associated offices, with an estimated building works value of £1 million. In view of client deadlines the whole construction work will be undertaken in a short timeframe of 6 months.
Andy Rounding from BlueChip remarked “using a local firm with extensive knowledge of planning requirements and project management skills we are pleased to leave the project in the capable hands of their dedicated team of professionals.”
The completion of works is scheduled for early April 2010 and the company hopes to provide a full IT backup service for not just local firms but large national companies also.
If you would like to discuss this project in more detail or if you have a development proposal of your own please do not hesitate to contact Stuart Brown on 01234 362923 (spb@robinsonandhall.co.uk).