IN Brief:
- Corscale has appointed McLaren Construction and Phoenix ME under a pre-construction services agreement for a 140MW data centre campus in Iver.
- The scheme includes two data centre buildings, a dedicated 140MVA substation, enabling works, utility diversions, and remediation.
- The project adds to growing construction demand from AI, cloud, and high-capacity digital infrastructure.
Corscale has appointed McLaren Construction and Phoenix ME to begin predevelopment works on a 140MW hyperscale data centre campus at Court Lane in Iver, Buckinghamshire.
The 14-acre site sits north of Heathrow Airport and close to the M25, placing it within one of the UK’s most active data centre corridors. The campus will include two data centre buildings and a dedicated 140MVA substation, with Gensler leading the design, Cundall providing MEP design, and L&P Group supporting engineering services.
Predevelopment activity is scheduled to start on 1 July 2026. Early works will include site clearance, enabling works, utility diversions, environmental remediation, and the relocation of two 36-inch Affinity Water mains crossing the site. McLaren Construction will act as main contractor, while Phoenix ME will provide MEP delivery capability for the mission-critical scheme.
Currently occupied by a mix of vehicle storage, waste transfer, recycling, concrete, aggregate, and tyre distribution businesses, the Court Lane site requires a substantial enabling phase before the main data centre structures can advance. Clearance, services diversion, contamination management, and infrastructure coordination will shape the early programme.
Data centre delivery has become one of the most technically demanding areas of UK construction. The building envelope is only one part of the programme, with grid capacity, substation delivery, cooling strategy, water management, backup power, fibre connectivity, commissioning, and operational resilience all moving into the earliest stages of design and procurement.
Similar pressures were visible when the 15MW Redhill data centre cleared planning in Surrey, where heat reuse, cooling, grid connection, and specialist M&E design shaped the scheme well before construction. Court Lane operates at a larger scale, although the delivery challenge remains familiar: power, systems resilience, and technical coordination now sit at the centre of the build.
London’s western fringe continues to attract data centre investment because of its fibre routes, established digital ecosystem, and proximity to major enterprise demand. Those advantages come with planning, utilities, environmental, and community constraints, particularly where former industrial land must be reworked for high-power digital infrastructure.
The supply chain will be expected to deliver with limited tolerance for weak coordination. Hyperscale projects depend on the integration of civil works, structural construction, MEP installation, commissioning, controls, grid infrastructure, fire strategy, and security systems. Programme risk can quickly spread between packages when design information, long-lead equipment, or utility access moves out of sequence.
Demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence workloads, enterprise digitalisation, and secure high-density infrastructure is keeping the UK data centre pipeline active. That demand is also creating pressure on contractors, designers, equipment suppliers, and commissioning teams already competing across energy, logistics, life sciences, and advanced manufacturing projects.
With practical completion targeted for late 2029, the Iver campus will be watched as a test of how quickly a constrained industrial site can be converted into high-power digital infrastructure. The early works package will be less visible than the completed campus, but it will set the conditions for the entire programme.
