Dubai Airports Company and China-based Huawei Technologies have awarded the local Alec an AED44m ($12m) contract for the construction of a modular data centre at the Dubai International airport.

The 3,600 square metre facility will be located near Terminal 2. It is expected to be completed in nine months.

The data centre is the first of two planned modular facilities that Huawei will build for Dubai Airports, which operates both Dubai International and Al-Maktoum International airports.

The location and the construction timelines of the second data centre have not been disclosed.

The project is being project managed by UK-based Atkins, with a team of UK-based Arup and Red Engineering providing design and consultancy

Upon completion, the two data centres will operate as a pair of mirrored Tier III data centres interconnected through a dedicated fibre optic link that will provide high-level resilience and availability to support the critical operations of Dubai Airports.

A tier-III data centre offers data availability of up to 99.82 per cent, or roughly 95 minutes of maximum annual downtime. Unlike a traditional data centre, a “modular” data centre infrastructure is one that is customisable or scalable based on the required application.

The planned facilities are part of the plan called Dubai Plus, which is targeting the introduction of operational enhancements to boost Dubai International airport’s capacity without having to physically expand the airport in order to accommodate rising passenger and cargo demand.