Inter-city rail service Amtrak has selected a construction company for its Unified Operations Center (UOC) Facility Project, which will include a data center, in Wilmington, Delaware.
The company selected is local firm Wohlsen Construction Company, following a procurement process that began in 2023.
Wohlsen will be partnering with Amtrak to develop the UOC at the Renaissance Centre, which will include a Tier-3 data center, workspaces, conference rooms, an operations center, and mechanical and electrical system upgrades. The UOC is currently expected to be completed in 2027.
“One of our primary goals for the Renaissance Centre building is to create a new Amtrak Unified Operations Center to serve our nationwide rail network, which will drive enhanced reliability, efficiency, safety, and customer service,” said Amtrak executive vice president, service delivery & operations, Gery Williams. “The new UOC is part of Amtrak’s transformation from legacy systems and practices to a modern, sustainable control center capable of supporting Amtrak’s long-term strategy to double ridership by 2040.”
Amtrak is investing a total of $53 million in the UOC, which will include an integrated 24/7 operations center to monitor and manage national operations and dispatch the mid-Atlantic Division covering all train movements along the Washington-Philadelphia-Harrisburg corridor.
The Renaissance Centre facility spans 164,789 sq ft (15,309 sqm), what portion of this will be dedicated to a data center has not been shared. The premises were acquired in May 2020 for $41.1m after the location of Amtrak's current NOC suffered "several flooding incidents" and the ongoing effects of climate change have increased the urgency of migrating. Plans for the move have been ongoing since December 2018.
Delays in the process have been caused by the original business case including "key assumptions that were not validated or correct," according to the Amtrak Office of Inspector General.
Those assumptions included that the building was purchased before it was validated as able to accommodate the program requirements. The scope of the project was thus reduced, and in May 2021, Amtrak announced that it was only planning to house 40 dispatchers from outside Wilmington in the new facility, down from initial plans for 250. Around 25 to 35 IT positions will be relocated to the new site.
In addition, the $50m in savings Amtrak had hoped to make as a result of the project was inaccurate.
“The most significant anticipated cost reductions were those associated with reducing IT-leased office space in Washington DC, and Atlanta, which the Real Estate department projected would save close to $50 million,” according to OIG. “Early in the planning process, it became clear that the projected lease savings from relocating personnel were unrealistic when the company determined that moving or replacing so many IT staff would have caused significant operational disruption.”
The new building will also be home to the Amtrak Police Department’s National Communications Center, and the Amtrak Test Kitchen with associated offices, and will include moving Digital Technology personnel from their current temporary office space at the Wilmington Station.
Amtrak was previously a known IBM customer, having used the provider since 1998 and signing a 10-year deal in 2002, valued at the time at $229m, to outsource its IT. The rail service then signed a second five-year contract with IBM in 2009. In 2007, DCD reported that the majority of Amtrak's servers were housed in a mainframe facility in Manassas, Virginia, and suffered an outage.
