Centring around data
blu-3 is leveraging its 20 years of experience to dominate the data centre sector
“As the youngest of four children,” Danny Chaney, Founder and CEO, opens, “I always strived to give my mum the best life I could. However, her passing in 2007 didn’t diminish my work ethic in any way, and as a result, I’ve continued to work incredibly hard to build blu-3 ever since – some may even call me a workaholic! I listen to people and learn whatever I can from them, while my family keeps me balanced, settled, and humble.”
Established in 2004, in Kent, blu-3 is an award-winning expert in infrastructure. The organisation carries the core values of employing the best, being the best, and delivering excellence in all its operations, sustainably connecting communities around the world.
“We specialise in civil engineering, utilities, construction, and data centre projects, and we pride ourselves on delivering professional, high-quality, and cost-effective solutions wherever we operate. Our track record of long-term relationships with our clients is testament to our passion for people, innovation, and excellence.
“Until around 2010,” Danny continues, “we were predominantly known as a utilities company, before we broke into the London market and established ourselves as a full turnkey supplier. In 2012, we won major contracts to work on both The Shard and Battersea Power Station. Our experts provided a number of services at the former, including site enabling works, utilities design and installation, highways improvements, and landscaping services. At the latter, we delivered extensive and complex enabling works such as site clearance, demolition, and diversions of existing services, as well as new surface drainage, services, and ducts.
“The following year, we began work on our first data centre project in the Netherlands, which proved to be a turning point for the company. We’re quickly becoming a leading supplier within this sector, and will be looking to expand within the EMEA and Americas in the future.
“Our ongoing work in the Netherlands is a superb example of blu-3’s capabilities,” he adds. “This large-scale project has involved the pre-works required before the creation of a series of data centres that comprise networked computers, storage, and computing systems. It has of course come with some challenges, such as difficult ground conditions, programme constraints, and a heavily congested underground infrastructure. However, blu-3, as always, has been unfazed, implementing our methods to keep carbon emissions to a minimum through alternative fuels and power sources.”
blu-3’s capabilities extend across a wide array of requirements, from small-scale neighbourhood projects to large and complex multi-million-pound schemes. In leveraging its experience and knowledge of the public, private, residential, and commercial sectors, the company is a Tier 1 and 2 contractor that offers civil engineering, utilities and construction services, alongside project and design management, MMC, and pre-construction expertise.
“We’ve been working alongside a number of businesses that deliver solar and battery power,” Danny explains. “This enables blu-3 to invest in communities around the world to bring these alternative power sources to people, to sustainably heat their water and keep their homes warm during the winter. Sustainability is crucial to both our mission and our CSR initiatives, and we’re doing whatever we can to prioritise environmentally friendly solutions.
“To deliver world-class infrastructure, there’s a fine balance to strike between environmental protection, social progress, and economic growth, in order to ensure stability for future generations. We have integrated sustainability-driven decisions into our operations to make positive contributions towards not only the environment, but also the communities that we serve, our employees, and our clients and end users.
“Right now, we’re working towards carbon neutrality by 2030,” he states. “To bolster this commitment, we have introduced an environmental accident frequency
rate, to better monitor and raise the profile of environmental incidents. We are also heavily focusing on the efficiency with which we utilise resources across the business and manage our waste. By pursuing our value of continuous improvement, we are able to reduce our overall impact, whilst generating economic benefits for ourselves and our clients.”
Employee wellbeing is also very high on blu-3’s ESG agenda. The company takes a proactive stance on prioritising care and respect for its people through its health and safety policies, development programmes, and inherent focus upon personal integrity, responsibility, authenticity, and dignity.
“I consider the mental health of my team to be paramount,” Danny elaborates. “We want to provide the necessary tools and platforms for our people that educate everyone in looking after one another and provide any extra support that might be needed. Ownminder is a great example of this; it’s a mental health app that has been launched across multiple sites throughout London and is the first of its kind. It solely services the needs of the construction industry. It motivates our workforce to manage their mental wellbeing effectively and reinforces the efforts of blu-3’s 25 mental health first aiders.
“Our success is the result of hard work, excellent service offerings, and strong client relationships,” Danny shares. “Besides looking after our people, to ensure that they’re a highly motivated team who deliver fantastic outcomes for our clients, we believe in continually moving forwards and opening doors to new opportunities. This is partially why we’ve thrived despite the issues caused by Brexit and the pandemic.
“Looking to the future, we’re set on our vision for world domination; continuing to be a successful, profitable, and healthy business around the globe, which supports the people and communities it works alongside, in a truly sustainable way. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the entire team at blu-3 for all their hard work. Every individual makes a crucial difference and has enabled us to become the leading business that we are today,” he concludes.