Scranton Information Service Center (SISC), Scranton, PA

The Scranton Information Service Center (SISC), a 200,000-square-foot flex building/data center, serves as a major insurance company.

This site functions as a centralized publication-printing operation and supports back-office information technology activities. MetLife needed to add 12,000 square feet of raised-floor space to provide technological support to its business units and increase capacity. It also needed a redundant data center to support the company’s overall operations. The project required major upgrades to the building’s infrastructure, as original building systems were inefficient and inadequate.

Special Design Feature
The SISC was designed to comply with Tier IV Data Center Infrastructure standards, which dictate multiple active power and cooling distribution paths, redundant components, and fault tolerance resulting in 99.995-percent availability of technology systems. It is concurrently maintainable. A total shut-down is rarely required, even for planned preventive-maintenance service calls.

Design/Construction Challenge
The center remained operational during the infrastructure upgrade. Lead times of equipment and delivery schedules had to coincide with the installation and scheduled weekend work so that it didn’t interfere with business operations. The planned procurement delivery storage and installation of equipment and material was monitored and managed daily due to space requirements and costly downtime.