Facebook will plonk more than S$1.4 billion to construct its first data centre in Singapore and the first in Asia, the social media giant announced on Sept. 6.

Western part of Singapore

The new facility will be located at Tanjong Kling, formerly known as Data Centre Park, in the west of Singapore.

At 170,000m², the project is expected to create "thousands of construction jobs".

When completed, the facility will require "hundreds of operators", ranging from network maintenance to logistics staff.

Details right now are still sparse and staffing needs will be worked out moving forward, Thomas Furlong, vice president for Infrastructure Data Centers at Facebook, told reporters at the new project's launch event.

The data centre is estimated to start operations in 2022.

But that would just be the first phase and more construction is expected to continue after that.

Efficient facility

Facebook has touted the facility as “hyper-efficient”.

The 11-storey building’s facade is made out of a perforated lightweight material that allows air flow.

It will also incorporate a liquid cooling technology that will minimise water and power consumption.

According to its testing, the amount of groundwater used can be reduced by 20 percent in climates like Singapore’s, but Singapore does not use groundwater.

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To conserve land use, the data centre is built upwards instead of outwards.

Facebook has selected Fortis Construction to act as its general contractor due to their joint experience building efficient data centres.

Top photo via Facebook