Context
The programme combined a cross-border acquisition with the establishment of a new operational hub in Colombia. Its strategic objective was broader than acquiring a property or building a facility: it was to establish regional data-sovereignty capability and turn the site into an independently operable business and technology environment.
That meant bringing together data-centre infrastructure, office space, legal and regulatory readiness, recruitment and an operating model that could transition into business-as-usual ownership.
Scale and complexity
The programme was approximately £25m across acquisition and establishment activities. It covered property, a 263-rack data-centre environment, power and cooling, network and server infrastructure, a 100+ seat office fit-out, legal-entity creation, regulatory coordination, recruitment and operational transition.
Delivery required coordination across Legal, Finance, Procurement, HR, Workplace, Technology, Infrastructure and external advisers and suppliers, alongside local stakeholders in Colombia.
My role
I led the programme end to end, coordinating the acquisition and the work required to turn the acquired site into a functioning operational and technology capability.
My role included programme governance, critical-path management, supplier and commercial coordination, readiness tracking, risk and decision control, and executive reporting across the different business and technical workstreams.
How I structured delivery
The programme was organised around a common readiness model rather than separate functional plans. Property completion, infrastructure, office readiness, legal setup, recruitment and operational handover were connected through milestones and dependencies so that leadership could see what genuinely determined the go-live date.
I also introduced stronger acceptance and evidence controls around third-party deliverables and linked financial approvals to delivery progress rather than treating budget and schedule as separate conversations.
Key delivery judgement
During delivery, a structural issue was identified in an annex to the acquired property. Independent technical review established that the annex did not meet the required seismic standard and needed to be demolished and rebuilt.
Rather than allow that issue to stop the wider programme, the dependencies were re-baselined. Critical infrastructure was moved into the compliant main building, the annex scope was reduced, and the seller carried the cost of demolition and reconstruction.
The important decision was to protect the programme outcome rather than preserve the original baseline.
Outcome
The programme established regional data-sovereignty capability through a 263-rack data-centre environment, together with a 100+ seat operational hub and the legal, technical and organisational foundations required to operate independently.
The structural issue was contained without allowing it to derail the wider establishment programme, and the strengthened acceptance controls reduced the risk of similar hidden assumptions affecting later delivery.