The construction cost of Innopolis data centre goes 1,2 billion up

A bit more than a year given for works

As Realnoe Vremya found out, nearly 5,4 billion rubles will be spent on the first stage of the construction of the Data Processing and Storage Centre of Tatarstan — Innopolis Data Processing Centre. At the same time, as early as September 2020, the investments in the facility and the creation of engineering infrastructure of the first stage was assessed just at a bit more 3 billion. This April, the press said the tender would cost 4,2 billion.

Atomdata-Innopolis JSC is looking for a contractor. This February, the company announced a tender for a complex of works on vertical layout of the territory of Innopolis DPC with the opening price of 26,5 million rubles. The same purchase for the same sum was placed in March too. More than 195,000 rubles were allocated for engineering and survey works on the construction site of Innopolis DPC.

The contractor must complete the works no later than in 15 months since the signing of a contract with Atomdata-Innopolis JSC. The works must be done uninterruptedly, every day. Project design documentation and results of engineering surveys were approved by a state inspection in early December 2021.

A parcel of 39,731 square metres in Innopolis is used for the construction of the Data Processing and Storage Centre. According to a public cadastre map, the parcel was added to the Unified State Register of Immovable Property in October 2020, that’s to say, after the project’s opening ceremony.

The building of Innopolis DPC will have three storeys consisting of two functional parts different in height: an administrative part and built-in technical part. Its total area is 11,587,41 square metres. The project also envisages a checkpoint, a maintenance section, two underground fuel storage areas. There will be quick charging stations at the parking for e-cars of employees and clients of Innopolis DPC.

Realnoe Vremya wrote that more than 26 million rubles will be spent to prepare the territory for the construction of the DPC. Trees will be removed, bushes on an area of 8,000 square metres will be cut down. All the wood is going to be taken to a landfill or disposed of. Then a vegetative layer will be removed on an area of 9,500 square metres to use it for land remediation later. Then land works will be done on the site of the DPC to level it to the design level. As authors of the technical documentation think, the excess soil will be about 66,900 tonnes.

Tender announced two years after the project’s opening ceremony

It should be reminded that the construction project of Innopolis DPC is implemented by Rosenergoatom concern, which is a part of the electrical energy division of Rosatom state corporation, within a memorandum of understanding with the government of Tatarstan and geographically distributed and disaster-proof network development programme of Rosatom DPC. The solemn opening ceremony was on 10 September 2020 on the construction site of the future Data Processing and Storage Centre.

Besides 3 million in the construction and creation of engineering infrastructure of the first stage of the DPC, it was planned to invest several billion rubles in servers and a virtual environment and commercial cloud of Rosatom. The accurate number wasn’t named.

“At a meeting of the Supervisory Board of Innopolis SEZ on 24 August, we considered the project of creation of the Data Processing and Storage Centre and decided to grant the company Atomdata-Innopolis the status of resident, and today we are already starting to build the biggest data centre in the Volga Federal District,” said Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhnov on 10 September 2020.

It was intended to launch the first stage of Innopolis DPC in late 2022. The works were going to start last year. However, in January 2022, Tatarstan Minister of Digitalisation Ayrat Khayrullin said that the construction hadn’t started yet, therefore the delivery of the facility was postponed into 2023.

“We hope that our partners will start the construction of the first stage of the Data Processing Centre this year. The design is being created now. It will be a big new building with big capacities, it will be the biggest in the Volga area... I think Rosatom will manage to build in a year. They have a plant,” said Khayrullin.

The DPC will become the second centre. Innopolis already has the biggest data processing centre in Tatarstan, which was built in 2009. As Tatarstan Minister of Digitalisation Ayrat Khayrullin said, it is 100% used.

The data centre is planned to accommodate 500-1,000 frames for IT equipment with the possibility of further expansion to 2,000 frames with a total capacity of 16 MW. This will allow it to become the biggest data centre in the Volga Federal District.

Realnoe Vremya sent a request to Innopolis SEZ. A commentary wasn’t received at the time of the publication of the piece.