Data center documentation: white space, measured.
Rack and row geometry, containment, clearances and structural context for data center planning, expansion and audit — captured under NDA with no imagery leaving your control.
Why the drawings are always behind
White space changes continuously. Rows get added, containment gets reconfigured, a customer takes a cage and the layout shifts. The facility drawing set is a snapshot of a moment that has already passed.
What we produce
- Measured floor plans with rack and row positions
- Clearance and aisle geometry for capacity planning
- Measured wall geometry for containment and routing analysis
- Structural context — clear height, floor loading geometry, penetrations
- Private delivery with no hosted tour
Quoted per facility. Typically $8,000–$25,000 for a single hall depending on white space and access constraints.
Security and confidentiality?
NDAs signed as standard, escorted access assumed, and delivery can be private files with no hosted walkthrough and no cloud copy.
Can you work in a live facility?
Yes. Capture is tripod-based, fast, and does not require anything to be powered down or moved.
Do you capture customer cages?
Only with that customer's consent. Tell us the boundaries at scope and we will honor them.
What data center documentation actually measures
A data center floor is the most-changed room in any building and the least-documented. Every deployment moves something, and the drawing on the wall was accurate on the day of commissioning and not since.
- White space and rack positions — cabinet footprints as installed, aisle widths, and the gaps that got absorbed by a deployment nobody drew.
- Containment — hot and cold aisle enclosures, blanking, where the containment actually terminates versus where the design said it would.
- Mechanical — CRAC and CRAH footprints and service clearances, floor grille positions, plenum depth where it can be measured without lifting live tile.
- Overhead — cable tray and busway routing, structural clearance, and the real height available above the cabinets.
- Electrical distribution — PDU and RPP positions and their required working clearances, as they exist rather than as they were laid out.
Why the drawing is always wrong
Not from negligence. A colocation floor changes when a tenant expands, a cabinet is retired, a containment panel comes out for a service call and goes back slightly differently. None of those generate a drawing revision, and after four years of them the plan and the room have quietly diverged. The moment that matters is the one where somebody sizes a deployment off the plan and discovers on install day that the clearance is not there.
Working in a live facility
We assume escorted access, a badge process with lead time, and a photography policy that may exclude specific areas. Tell us what is off limits at scoping, and we capture around it — the drawings simply carry a marked exclusion rather than a guess. Capture is tripod-based and non-contact: nothing is opened, nothing is powered down, nothing is touched. NDAs are signed before we quote, not after.
We do not perform electrical work, lift live floor tile, open panels, or produce anything requiring a PE stamp. We do not do infrared thermography or capacity analysis. We measure the room and hand you drawings; the engineering judgment stays with your engineer.
How long does a floor take?
A 10,000 ft² white space is typically a half day on site including escort and walkthrough. Deliverables follow in 48–72 hours. Multi-hall facilities are usually scheduled across consecutive days so one badge cycle covers the whole engagement.
Can you measure to the tolerance we need for a cabinet fit?
About one centimeter on wall distances, roughly 1% on area. That is right for aisle widths, clearances and layout planning. If you are fitting custom containment to millimeter tolerance, you want a terrestrial laser scan instead and we will say so.
What does a typical engagement cost?
Most single-hall engagements land between $8,000 and $25,000 depending on area, floor count and which deliverables you need. Heavy MEP density carries a 50% complexity uplift, which is published rather than discovered. Price it yourself.
What we actually deliver here
The services this work is usually scoped as: point cloud scanning, as-built drawings and scan to BIM. Everything comes off one capture of the building, and all of it is priced publicly — you can price your own project without talking to us first.
Related: industrial and manufacturing facilities.