Advisory & Feasibility

A site and an indicative power figure open a feasibility case. Before a design team can be briefed, five things have to be settled in order, because each constrains the next. They are the capacity the business case needs by phase, the resilience objective in terms a certifier would recognise, the power that is actually available and when, the heat rejection strategy the climate and the water supply will allow, and whether the plot can hold the final phase with its yards, setbacks and expansion.

UBIK’s studies settle those five with the client, in that order, and record which answers rest on evidence and which rest on assumption. A study that reports a capacity without stating whether the utility has committed to it, and for which year, leaves the main risk of the project unresolved.

In most of the markets UBIK works in, the utility programme is the critical path. An indicative capacity in an early letter is not a connection offer. The offer fixes the point of connection, the capacity by date, the works on each side of the boundary, the operating restrictions and the tariff structure. Each of those can move the design: a connection at medium voltage instead of high voltage changes the substation, the land take and the standby strategy.

UBIK treats the utility as a technical workstream with its own register: what has been requested, what has been confirmed in writing, what the utility’s own reinforcement programme depends on, and what the client would do if the date slipped by a year. Standby generation is sized against that position and the capacity the utility has confirmed for each phase.

Plot capacity is tested by drawing the facility at its final phase on the plot: the data halls, the generator yard with its fuel storage and exhaust separation, the substation and package transformers, the chiller row with the airflow clearances the hottest week demands, the logistics route, the security setbacks and the space the next phase will need. The test-fit is drawn to scale because the constraints interact: a chiller row moved to clear a setback can end up downwind of the generator exhausts.

If the plot cannot hold the final phase, the study says so before the land is bought. The same drawing gives the concept design its first layout and the cost estimate its first quantities, and it carries forward into the design when the project proceeds.

For an acquisition or a refinancing, the questions change but the method does not. The design is reviewed against the resilience objective the asset is sold on, the condition of the plant is surveyed, and the maintenance records, incident history and capacity headroom are read for the single points of failure that creep into a facility over ten years of growth. The report ranks the findings by what they would cost to put right and by what they would cost if they were ignored.

The client receives a decision document: findings ranked by consequence, an assumptions register with owners, and the next investigations, with who performs them and which decision each one unlocks. Where the answer is that the site, the asset or the design should not proceed as proposed, the report says so and says what would have to change.