Summary
- RS UK and Ireland’s white paper warns that MRO planning is often underdeveloped as new data centres move from handover into live operations.
- Research with 74 UK and Ireland professionals found gaps around formal MRO strategy, critical spares, supplier responsiveness, and regional coverage.
- Maintenance supply chains are becoming a resilience issue as capacity expands beyond established hubs and into regional locations.
RS UK and Ireland has warned that rapid data centre growth is leaving some operators exposed to a “commissioning cliff”, where new facilities move from construction handover into live operation without mature maintenance, repair, and operations planning.
The company’s new white paper, developed with the Data Centre Alliance, draws on survey responses from 74 data centre professionals across the UK and Ireland, alongside commentary on procurement, operations, and supply resilience. The report is available from the RS data centres white paper page.
The central risk is that MRO strategy is pushed behind planning, construction, and energisation. RS argues that spare parts planning, supplier relationships, procurement processes, and asset-specific spares frameworks often lag the pace at which new facilities are being built.
The handover gap is operational
The commissioning cliff describes the point where a completed facility is transferred into live service and the operational team inherits the full burden of uptime. In a mature handover, that transition is supported by critical spares lists, supplier escalation routes, regional stock access, asset data, procurement workflows, and maintenance procedures.
When those elements are missing, problems become visible only after the site is live. Engineers may not know whether a critical part is held on site, which supplier can provide it, how quickly it can arrive, or whether the replacement is correctly matched to the installed asset. Procurement then becomes reactive at the exact point when speed and accuracy carry the highest operational value.
The survey findings show uneven maturity. Nearly half of operators either have no formal MRO strategy or are unsure whether one exists. Seventy-seven percent said they feel at least slightly exposed when a critical spare is not held on site. Speed of delivery was rated very important by 82 percent of respondents, supplier responsiveness by 80 percent, and product availability by 71 percent. Price ranked lowest among the measured criteria, with just over half rating it very important.
That ordering is commercially rational in a critical facility. A lower component price has little value if the delay affects redundancy, service-level commitments, maintenance windows, or customer confidence. The cost of a poor MRO strategy appears in operational exposure rather than the purchase order.
Regional capacity needs regional supply
RS also found that 62 percent of respondents believe their operations are exposed by limitations in regional supplier coverage. That will become more pressing as UK and Ireland capacity expands beyond established clusters into regional locations where local stock, specialist labour, and supplier density may be thinner.
The white paper argues for supply “webs” rather than linear supply chains. In practice, that means regional stocking hubs, connected supplier networks, shared inventory data, and better visibility of where parts are held across multi-site estates. A spare that exists somewhere in the network is only useful if the operator knows where it is and how quickly it can reach the affected facility.
The discoverability problem is just as important. Data centres contain highly specific switchgear, UPS, cooling, pump, valve, control, sensor, filter, and electrical protection components. A generic catalogue will not solve a live-site issue if the operations team cannot rapidly identify the exact replacement aligned to the installed asset and its criticality.
The report points towards facility-specific critical spares frameworks built around installed equipment, failure profiles, lead times, manufacturer requirements, and operational risk. That work has to start before the facility enters service, not after the first urgent procurement problem.
Data centre investment is often described through megawatts, campuses, and AI demand. Once a site is live, resilience is kept by less visible systems: spares, supplier governance, repair routes, asset data, engineer access, and disciplined maintenance planning.
A facility is not fully delivered at practical completion. It is delivered when the operations team can keep it running through component failure, maintenance windows, supply disruption, and the ordinary friction of critical infrastructure.
