Data Center Capital Projects Forum
KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
Christie Obiaya, Principal Vice President, Bechtel Manufacturing and Technology.
Hear from a leading voice in capital project execution on the industry-wide forces reshaping how data centers get planned and delivered.
CASE STUDIES:
Risk and Safety Case Study: T5 Data Centers and Zurich co-present on construction risk, safety, and project delivery performance in data center programs
Adam Board, Senior Vice President EHS, T5 Data Centers
Bill Ingram, Vice President Technical Operations, Zurich Resilience Solutions
Jon Tate, Head of Core Risk Engineering, Zurich Resilience Solutions
The Deliverability Gap: What It Actually Takes to Build a Data Center — research-informed interactive session
David Chapman, Manager of R&D, Compass / Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas
Oracle Case Study: Owner/operator perspective on delivering bigger data centers safer, faster, and on budget
NAME, Oracle
PANELS:
Regulatory Panel Description:
This panel session will examine how community acceptance and regulatory pressure have become critical path issues in data center project delivery, and how owners and project teams can treat them as front-end planning and risk management disciplines. The conversation draws on data center campaign experience, research-based community insights, and technical infrastructure expertise to help attendees understand what is driving opposition, how it is reshaping site selection and feasibility decisions, and what proactive engagement looks like in practice.
Key topics include (note: these will be explored through the lens of community acceptance and external pressure, rather than technical design or operational performance)
- How community opposition, NIMBYism, and moratorium risk are becoming critical path issues in data center project delivery
- How owners are rethinking site feasibility as community sentiment, power availability, and infrastructure constraints become gating factors alongside land availability
- How sustainability considerations, climate hazards, and energy resilience are influencing where data centers can viably be built and how communities respond to them
- What it looks like when community acceptance is treated as a front-end planning and project risk issue rather than a communications problem
- Which CII front-end planning and stakeholder alignment practices are most applicable to data center delivery under community and regulatory pressure
Session Speakers:
- FTI Consulting Data Center Campaign Lead Erin McPike (Moderator)
- Bureau of Economic Geology COMPASS Expert Economist, Ning Lin
- Thornton Tomasetti Head of Sustainability & Resilience, Julie Pietrzak
- Data Center Owner (TBD)
Panel Discussion on Resilience at Scale: Designing & Delivering Data Centers for a New Risk Reality
As data centers evolve from commercial facilities into vital infrastructure networks, resilience can no longer be measured solely by redundancy or uptime. A resilient data center is one that can reliably deliver its intended function through changing conditions, infrastructure constraints, and disruptive events while balancing security, power, environmental, operational, and supply chain risks across its entire lifecycle. This panel session will discuss how data center resilience is evolving into a multi-dimensional challenge spanning climate, infrastructure, and community constraints to expand the discussion on why multi-discipline risk integration is becoming a requirement for future ready data centers.
- Key topics include:
- Common causes of resilience failure across facilities, infrastructure systems, and project execution
- Why resilience challenges often emerge at the intersection of multiple systems rather than within a single discipline
- How resilience requirements shape power, cooling, and site selection requirements
- Solutions to addressing water shortage and grid reliability concerns
- How resilience responsibilities and risks are shared across owners, designers, contractors, suppliers, and utilities
- How owners and major program delivery organization are embedding resilience requirements earlier in the project lifecycle, and what that means for cost, schedule, and risk allocation
- Session Speakers:
- Thornton Tomasetti Energy Resilience Expert, Emily Kunkel (Moderator)
- Thornton Tomasetti Protective Design and Security Project Director, Rebecca Soja
- Rittal Colocation National Account Manager, David Haynes
- Google Project Controls Regional Manager, Pete Jackson