Engineering changes to improve the governance in data center project management

Timing is critical to engineering changes for data center project management (DCPM). The intent is to enable data center project (DCP) to deal with change proactively, not reactively. Design freeze is one of the project management techniques applied for governing the systems engineering part of DCP. The role of design freeze in DCPM is to reduce uncertainty in business requirements, technical specs and design, and technological changes. This paper proposes the engineering change process to improve the governance in DCPM which combines the procedural handling of design problems with substantial resolution of issues arising from internal and external uncertainties. The major benefits are the ability to structure the data center design process based on freeze stages and to govern engineering changes as a part of project management life cycle from initiation, feasibility study, conceptual and detail design, implementation, operation, and renovation phase.