Stop work order clouds Telstra's Clayton build

Work at the construction site for Telstra's new data centre has slowed to a halt after some 100 workers were told to stop work yesterday.

The telco has spent over four years refurbishing and expanding its Clayton, Victoria data centre to cater for the provision of cloud computing services.

A Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) spokesman told iTnews that the lockout began yesterday.

Union officials told Melbourne radio station 3AW and ABC News that the stop work order was given as a result of financing troubles for the project.

But a spokesman for Telstra insisted the data centre build - which has been underway for  over four years - will proceed. The spokesman said the issue related only to the sequencing of work on the site and said the delays affect only one unspecified part of the project.

"The project continues and has our full support," the spokesman said.

"We have slowed one part of the construction as we align various timings of the overall project build."

A spokesperson for the site's construction contractor Lend Lease referred all questions about the Clayton build to Telstra.

Less than a month ago, Telstra shone a light on the extensive work already undertaken as part of the data centre modernisation and expansion at Clayton.

The carrier's managed data centres general manager Jon Curry told the Australian Data Centre Strategy Summit that the telco took a "master plan approach to the site", which consisted of multiple buildings, several ageing or ripe for updating.

Curry said at the time that construction of a new facility at the site, which is to host cloud infrastructure, could not come fast enough for Telstra executives and other project stakeholders.

"I've probably got 40 or 50 senior executives who are begging to understand delivery timelines, quality, when they can get customers through," he said.

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