The Building as Host to Machines

Machines convert electricity into work and heat. A rack of modern computing equipment can draw as much power as a whole floor of office workers once did, and all of it ends up as heat that must be removed. An automated warehouse runs conveyors, shuttles and chargers continuously. A fleet depot may need more power at night than the building uses all day.

The building’s supply, switchboards, distribution and cooling plant were sized for a different load profile. Adding machines often means adding capacity, and as Energy Becomes a Building Function sets out, capacity is now one of the hardest things to add.

The pace of change is easiest to see in computing racks, the clearest case of a machine asking more of a building than people ever did.

For a building that was never designed as a data hall, the lesson is that a single AI rack can draw what an entire floor of offices once did, and reject the same heat into one small room. Hosting that is a question of supply capacity, cooling plant, structure and, increasingly, water for liquid cooling, not of floor area.

The fire question has its own standards, and they differ. In the United States, NFPA 855 governs the installation of stationary energy storage systems. In Australia, AS/NZS 5139 covers battery systems connected through inverters, mainly at smaller scale, with larger installations relying on fire engineering and insurer requirements. In Britain, PAS 63100 sets out fire protection for domestic battery storage, and commercial installations rely on fire engineering and insurer guidance. For an owner, the consistent points are separation, ventilation, detection and access for firefighters, and an insurer who has been told before the system is installed, not after.

Automated handling systems ask for slab flatness and load capacity that older industrial floors may not meet. Very narrow aisle and high-bay racking concentrates loads at the feet of tall structures. Robots tolerate far less unevenness than forklifts and people. Heavy batteries and equipment cabinets put point loads on suspended floors in offices and mixed-use buildings.

A slab that has served for twenty years can become the reason a building cannot host the next occupier. Floor capacity is rarely on a marketing sheet, and it is expensive to change.

Lithium-ion batteries are the clearest example. Battery storage, e-bike and scooter charging, forklift fleets and vehicle chargers bring a fire hazard that behaves differently from the fires most building fire strategies were designed around. Fire authorities and insurers in all three of our markets have been issuing guidance and tightening expectations on where batteries sit, how they are separated and how fires would be fought.

For an existing building, this can mean new compartmentation, detection, suppression, ventilation or simply a different location for the equipment. It can also mean that an insurer prices the building differently once the machines arrive.

Owners who expect machine-heavy occupiers benefit from preparing a short hosting capacity statement for each building, drawn from the register. Spare electrical capacity at the main switchboard and the supply, and what increasing it would involve. Cooling headroom in the base-building plant and space for supplementary cooling. Floor loading and, for industrial space, slab flatness and joint condition. Riser and cable path capacity. And the fire strategy’s position on batteries, charging and high-value equipment.

A statement like this answers a prospective occupier’s first questions quickly and honestly. It also tells the owner which buildings to market to which kind of occupier, and which upgrades would widen the field.

An owner does not control what occupiers bring, but does control what the base building can support. The useful work is to know the limits before the enquiry arrives: spare electrical capacity, cooling headroom, slab capacity and flatness where relevant, riser space for cabling, and what the fire strategy would need to accept batteries or charging.

Those limits belong in the Capital Strategy as facts and as decisions. Some buildings will host machines easily. Some can with targeted works. Some cannot, and knowing that early is as valuable as knowing the opposite. How much of this reaches ordinary commercial stock, rather than purpose-built facilities, is the open question we are watching.