Almost every decision in a data centre can be revised. Cooling can change, capacity can be phased, and hardware turns over several times across the life of the building. You cannot move the building.

The assessment is a short list of questions, and a site either answers them or it does not.

Can power reach the site, and how soon?

This moved to the top of every list in the past five years, and the question shifted from price to timing. What matters is whether transmission already exists at the boundary.

At Arrow Partners. Two substations on the national 230 kV transmission system already adjoin the site, giving two independent points of connection across four consumer circuits, on a system with generation capacity well above national demand. Any two of those circuits carry the entire load. Behind the connection sits 300 MW / 300 MWh of energy storage.

Can heat be rejected across the whole year?

Every watt that enters a data centre leaves as heat, and a site that forces mechanical refrigeration year-round carries that cost permanently.

At Arrow Partners. Heat rejection runs on a closed dry loop in free cooling every hour of the year, with no fresh water consumed. Design dry bulb is 30.0 °C against an all-time site peak of 32.7 °C, and the loop rejects heat without a mechanical stage up to 34.3 °C ambient. The climate sits comfortably inside what the design was built for.

Is the connectivity real and diverse?

Fibre routes matter less than whether they are genuinely separate. Two circuits sharing one trench are one circuit on the day it is cut.

At Arrow Partners. Panama is the only point in the Americas where Atlantic and Pacific submarine cable systems converge. The campus takes entry through two separate meet-me rooms on two building entries and two physically diverse duct routes, with no fewer than three carriers and full spare capacity on every route.

Can the ground carry the building?

Dense liquid-cooled halls impose loads ordinary ground-bearing construction cannot support, and the answer comes from investigation rather than assumption.

At Arrow Partners. Floors are suspended structural slabs with no ground-bearing support under any loaded area, and heavy structures are founded on rock. Equipment anchorage is qualified against site-specific data rather than generic values.

Will the specification survive the environment?

This is the criterion most often underestimated, and coastal sites are where it matters most. Salt-laden marine air acts continuously on outdoor mechanical and electrical equipment: switchgear enclosures, heat exchanger surfaces, generator radiators, structural steel, fixings. The effect is gradual rather than dramatic, which is exactly why it has to be answered at design stage. Specification set at the outset determines service life fifteen years later.

At Arrow Partners. Corrosion protection is specified at ISO 9223 category C5-M across the entire site, rising to class CX within fifty metres of open water, which is the most severe category the standard defines. That applies to every external enclosure, fastener, coating and heat exchanger surface, with protective coatings to ISO 12944, exposed fixings in 316-grade stainless, ingress protection at IP55 or NEMA 4X, and gas-phase filtration protecting electronics inside the halls.

Can equipment get in, and back out again?

Transformers, switchgear and heat rejection units are heavy and awkward. They matter during construction and again every time major plant is replaced across a twenty-year life.

At Arrow Partners. The site has both ground and water access, with roads rated for oversized and heavy loads and two separate site access points. Every electrical, battery and generation room and every heat-rejection unit has a continuous removal route to the exterior, sized on the largest item it contains.

A site is not chosen for what it offers. It is chosen for what it makes possible that capital cannot buy later.