DATA CENTRES ARE THE DIGITAL HEART OF SOCIETY AND THE INDUSTRY NEEDS TO ATTRACT PEOPLE WHO CAN REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE AT ALL LEVELS .
D E E P D I V E
WE ‘ DEEP DIVE ’ WITH
JOHN THOMPSON , MANAGING DIRECTOR , ADVANCED POWER TECHNOLOGY , WHO TELLS US ABOUT LIFE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE OFFICE . w
What would you describe as your most memorable achievement in the data centre industry ?
There have been so many and most I can ’ t talk about due to the confidentiality around the client and the NDAs . One of the most memorable was putting a square data centre into a round tower room for a well-known premiership club . The project was an interesting challenge and as you can imagine , the drawings are very distinctive .
We also had an amazing experience providing a prefabricated data centre module for an F1 customer during COVID-19 . The most memorable aspect was that we didn ’ t go to site until the night before the module arrived on the low loader . All the planning and preparation meetings were conducted on Microsoft Teams . This was done out of necessity , but it brought many advantages – mainly that most stakeholders
were present at every meeting , so items got resolved more quickly and we were able to hand it over 13 weeks after the initial order .
What first made you think of a career in technology / data centres ?
Necessity was the main driver . I needed a proper job and wanted to get married and have a family . After finishing an engineering apprenticeship , I trained as an actor and spent a year in the West End . I did an episode of Red Dwarf and The League of Gentlemen , a bit of Shakespeare and many other adventures including jousting for the Royal Armouries .
After deciding to come back to Yorkshire , I started at APT – an Elite Partner to Schneider Electric – in 2007 . The company was founded by my brother and based on supplying the most efficient UPS of its time . Eventually , I took ownership of the
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DATA CENTRES ARE THE DIGITAL HEART OF SOCIETY AND THE INDUSTRY NEEDS TO ATTRACT PEOPLE WHO CAN REALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE AT ALL LEVELS .
company in 2016 and we now provide turnkey data centre solutions including Schneider Electric ’ s EcoStruxure Row Data Centres and APC Uninterruptible Power Supplies ( UPS ).
What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position ?
I have come to recognise it as servant leadership . I love seeing others develop their potential and take ownership of what they are doing whilst I watch , learn and support their initiatives . I still
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