ANN ARBOR – Taking care of sick people is the job of medical staff at the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers.

Taking care of medical information related to those sick people will be the job of staff at the new U-M Hospitals and Health Data Center project, currently under construction on campus.

According to a 2007 University of Michigan’s Regents Communication justifying the new data center by Robert Keith, executive vice president for Medical Affairs, and Timothy Slottow, executive vice president and CFO for the U-M, space for the current U-M data center is inadequate. It occupies about 6,000 square feet in the Taubman Center, space it has held since 1986. “Since that time,” the Regents Communication said, “the information technology support required by the UMHHC has grown substantially. Because of this technology growth, the data center is at capacity with regards to space, power and cooling.”

They added: “Where there was once only a mainframe computer, a manual tape machine and a large printer, there are now hundreds of servers, paging equipment, automated backup equipment and file storage equipment.”

Enter the new $51 million data center, which will house an 11,000 square-foot data center, as well as 7,500 square-foot of support space, and 28,500 square-feet of space for power, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and data infrastructure support. The building will be among the safest in the region, built to withstand 200 mile-per-hour wind gusts. The building will also have redundant power and on-site backup generators, as well as redundant cooling and water storage to allow continuous operation if local utility supplies are interrupted.

Other sectors of the University of Michigan will also utilize the new data center, for storage or safe parallel backup of information. “With the new data center, we can store copies of our data at two separate locations several miles apart, said Bill Wrobleski, director of Technical Infrastructure Operations in the Michigan Administrative Information Services, to the University Record.

The trades are installing no less than 23 cooling units to chill the computer systems in the building. Batteries in two large rooms in the data center will be the last line of defense in the extremely unlikely event that all the power redundancies fail beforehand.

There were about 100 Hardhats constructing the data center last month, with a second shift expected to be added in short order.

“It’s an important building, and it’s all about providing cooling for their computers and secure space for their backup computer files,” said Project Manager Darryl Doneral of Granger Construction, which is overseeing the project. “Everything in this building is overkill, but it’s made to withstand a hurricane for a reason. If this facility goes down, the hospital goes down.”

INSTALLING A BOX for lighting in the packed ceiling of the U-M Data Center is Bruce Williams of IBEW Local 252, working for Huron Valley Electric.

SETTING UP A 10-INCH steel chilled water line for installation at the U-M Data Center project are Steve Cook, left, and Brian Rogers of Plumbers and Pipe Fitters Local 190, employed by Boone and Darr.