F E A T U R E change and hopefully presenting themselves as role models to entice even more people into the sector.

One of the biggest challenges within the data centre operational space currently is scaling while maintaining sustainability and renewable solutions, particularly within a more decentralised model. Could you share your thoughts on that?

industry. Certainly on the engineering side of things, there are a lot coming through the ranks and many are also making career changes into that sector.

In terms of how I ' ve personally found it being a woman, when I started in the industry over 10 years ago, it was quite

NOT ONLY ARE THERE MORE WOMEN IN THE INDUSTRY, BUT WE’ RE SEEING WOMEN HOLDING SENIOR LEADERSHIP POSITIONS, REALLY DRIVING CHANGE AND HOPEFULLY PRESENTING THEMSELVES AS ROLE MODELS TO ENTICE EVEN MORE PEOPLE INTO THE SECTOR.

set in its ways. It would be very common for you to be the only woman in the room. What genuinely empowers me is to witness the change now. Not only are there more women in the industry, but we ' re seeing women holding senior leadership positions, really driving

At the moment, the absolute key focus within the industry sector is power. That literally is the question: where are we going to get power from? How are we going to energise these sites? And also, critically, at what pace and speed do they need that energy? There are a lot of headlines at the moment talking about building 500-megawatt data centres, even gigawatt data centres. In the UK, our actual physical infrastructure, our grid infrastructure, was simply not built for that; it was never designed for that scale.

So, the challenges we ' re facing are how we innovate to support that demand. That’ s where, for example, our solution at Xela Energy comes in; it ' s about providing that additionality to the grid, which adds vital security. The challenges also involve changing the status quo of how people think they should be working within a data centre environment.

Sustainability has always been a topic, something that people felt they had to be seen to be doing. But in the last three or

Amy Young, Director of Data Centres at the newly rebranded Xela Energy four years, you ' ve seen a definitive shift, certainly from a hyperscaler perspective. They now have full ESG( Environmental, Social and Governance) teams. It ' s no longer something someone can just wear as a hat for one day before returning to their main job; it has to be an allencompassing commitment – you have to be completely ' all in ' on it.

One challenge that I think the industry is very much starting to overcome is that, before, in terms of recruiting the right talent, we always looked at very particular pockets – specific educational backgrounds, particular experiences. Whereas now, because of the rapid development, we ' re having to look outside of that. Engineering is a prime example: there are many people now who don ' t come from a strict M & E( mechanical and electrical) technical background, but they possess phenomenal engineering skills that translate and transfer beautifully into a data centre environment. So, we ' re bringing in those diverse skill sets, which is certainly driving change.

In terms of the skills gap, your background as a recruiter must be quite helpful in seeing the larger picture.

When I was at Custodian, for instance, security – nobody thought about having manned security 24 / 7. And that ' s the other thing: the ' softer ' side, the ' fluffier ' side of data centres, like your sales and marketing, they tend to operate more traditional working hours. However, when you look at anything from security to engineering, they ' re 24 / 7, 365 days a year.

That’ s a very different workforce to manage compared to a nine-to-five

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