MCC2, Manassas Data Center, Manassas, Virginia

The new Manassas Data Center, known as MCC2 as part of the CloudHQ series of massive data centers springing up across Northern Virginia, is more than a quarter-million square feet of high throughput data servers.

The Anderson Company was tasked with implementing one of its standard site development packages at an extremely aggressive schedule – something that is all too typical of data centers, said Jochen Dunville, the project manager on the job.

“These data centers move very, very fast simply because of the nature of the industries they serve,” he said. “The moment the owner says ‘go’ we’re on a very tight schedule.”

Among other things, Anderson moved more than 350,000 cubic yards of soil, including 100,000 cubic yards of blasted rock. The job site was partly situated on a hill, so Anderson was required to make huge cuts to flatten out the space that is required for a modern server farm.

Where a normal excavation and removal job might see 2,000 cubic yards removed per day, the MCC2 job saw Anderson moving between 5,000 and 7,000 cubic yards per day.

Anderson also managed soil erosion controls, mass earthworks, surface improvements for streets and parking lots, and utilities.