The UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is getting a new data center facility.

The NPL has put out a pipeline notice for an upcoming tender related to a data center project.

As per the notice, the contract has an estimated value of £9.6 million ($12.9m) and covers the delivery of a “fully operational, sovereign, high-assurance secure data center environment.”

The contract’s CPV classification is for building installation work, suggesting the data center will be within an existing shell.

The contract will run from 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2026.

Details about the size and capacity of the data center have not been provided.

The National Physical Laboratory is located in Teddington, southwest London. It is responsible for setting and maintaining physical standards for British Industry, and is one of the oldest metrology institutes in the world. Areas of research also include quantum technologies, such as quantum computing.

NPL is responsible for the UK’s national time scale, UTC(NPL), which it has been operating for the past 30 years, and has been disseminating NPLTime, an end-to-end fiber-based timing service that has been supporting the finance sector with regulatory compliance, for the past eight years. Telehouse has a time-as-a-service offering with NPL at its London data centers.

DCD previously talked to NPL about its timing service. Read it here