As data centre capacity spreads across the UK and Ireland, a new white paper from RS and The DCA - Data Centre Alliance - Trade Association to the data centre sector finds MRO supply chains, and the strategic thinking behind them, have some catching up to do.
For most of its history, the UK data centre market has clustered around London and the southeast, where power infrastructure and connectivity were already in place. MRO supply chains were built to serve that concentration. That is no longer where the growth is happening.
New capacity is increasingly coming online in Manchester, Newport, Glasgow and Ireland, drawn by available land, grid capacity and more competitive operating costs. "The expansion of data centre investment across the UK is genuinely exciting," says Luisa Cardani, Head of the Data Centres Programme at techUK. "This is not just a London story anymore. If the UK’s geographic distribution of data centre capacity were proportional to its regional GVA, we would have an additional 3,600MW of capacity outside London today. Closing that gap is a major opportunity for regional economic growth."
The facilities might be moving, but according to a new white paper from RS and The DCA, surveying UK and Ireland data centre professionals, that combines original research with expert commentary, the supply chains, in most cases, have not followed. As many as 62 per cent feel at least slightly exposed to downtime risk because of their suppliers’ regional footprint limitations.
Phil Broughton, Special Projects Manager at the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS), argues the traditional model which is based around a linear chain connecting one operator to one primary supplier, was never built for a geographically distributed sector. What mature multi-site operators need instead, he says, is a "supply web": regional stocking hubs, consolidated suppliers, and failure data pooled across sites to improve forecasting of where regional stock actually needs to sit.
Richard Graham, Industry Sector Manager at RS UK & Ireland, points to how the business has structured itself around this shift. "RS globally ships one product every two seconds. We have facilities in Corby and Nuneaton, distributing product to every corner of the country, often on a next-day basis, and we are supported by our extensive UK branch network. We have RS Local teams in 17 locations, including South Wales, the Northwest, Scotland and Dublin. We have a presence in the regions where data centres are likely to be present."
The rise of edge data centres, which are smaller facilities built deliberately close to end users to reduce latency, makes this a permanent feature of the landscape rather than a transitional one. As Graham puts it, these facilities "will continue to be built in locations where traditional MRO supply infrastructure is thin. As edge proliferates, the regional blind spot does not shrink. It multiplies."
Building for the long term
The white paper’s final section looks at where data centre MRO needs to go next. Predictive maintenance is already playing a significant role with seven in ten respondents (70%) agreeing it is becoming a standard part of the sector’s operations. Supplier relationships are shifting from transactional to genuinely operational, with demand signals generated by condition monitoring rather than a failed component.
That shift depends on two things the white paper flags as still in short supply: skills and power. Broughton warns of a "worst-case scenario" where organisations invest in predictive tools without the people to interpret them: "The concern is organisations will invest in the tools without recruiting the people who can make those tools work." Meanwhile, 67 per cent of respondents say power and grid constraints will limit growth over the next five years, adding further pressure on operational efficiency across the board.
“Meaningful change only happens if it is written into the contracts.” Phil Broughton, Special Projects Manager, Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply
Sustainability is on a similar trajectory. It’s seen as directionally important, but not yet embedded in day-to-day decisions. Half of respondents (50%) say sustainability regulations are somewhat or very likely to influence which MRO suppliers they use by 2030, yet only 20 per cent say sustainability considerations currently influence MRO decisions often. Broughton is clear about what needs to happen to close that gap: "Meaningful change only happens if it is written into the contracts."
Perhaps the white paper’s biggest structural argument is that MRO deserves board-level visibility. As Broughton puts it: "You can have the most amazing sales team and the best equipment, but if your assets are not working, you are in trouble."
To read the full white paper download A spotlight on Data Centres: How MRO is central to their future.