How partnerships strengthen delivery Steve is emphatic that none of this works without a deep integration between manufacturing and supply chain partners, a dynamic that evolved alongside the business. As an example, Compu Dynamics has been a Schneider Electric partner for twenty years, and the relationship has moved well beyond a standard reseller arrangement.“ It’ s been a really interesting and evolving partnership,” Steve says.“ We started just by being a value-added reseller, and over time we became a service provider to Schneider Electric. We were buying from them, and they were buying from us.”
Similarly, Compu Dynamics and CDM’ s relationships with many other OEMs are structured uniquely. In some cases, CDM’ s own design skills complement the OEM’ s manufacturing scale, and the companies are able to work seamlessly in both directions.
Steve is clear that this kind of collaboration is no longer optional in an industry expanding as quickly as data centre construction is.“ Any company that doesn’ t partner with others today
is going to be a small company,” he says, pointing to the impossibility of recruiting fast enough to match demand on any single company’ s own resources.
Long-term support defines the client relationship Delivery, according to steve, does not end at commissioning. Compu Dynamics runs two service organisations, one regional and one national, providing preventive maintenance, liquid cooling support and UPS commissioning long after a facility goes live. He contrasts that model with contractors who disappear once a project is finished.“ We try very hard to maintain relationships over the long term,” Steve says, describing an earlier career experience with a large contractor that built a project, left for five years, then returned only when there was another project to build.
Compu Dynamics has set out to do the opposite:“ We try to stay in their parking lot all the time, in their lobby. We want to be there – present when they need us.”
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