Journey to 500: Leadership in Data Centres

9/10/21: CEO Mark Lawrence focuses on two aspects of TClarke’s technology story. First, he looks at the potential of the data centre market.

We have gone public in recent months detailing the potential long pipeline of opportunities in the data centre market, running to billions of pounds of work, that we are actively bidding for which will be delivered within the next 2 years. But it is worth unpacking a little more detail and context around this market.

The first thing to recognise is that the growth in data centres is a global mega-trend that is happening now and will carry on throughout the next decade at least. 

What is driving it is the digital revolution in which every part of each economy – from public sector to private sector, from businesses large and small to people in their homes – is going digital. 

And the need to respond to climate change, controlling our systems of transport and manufacture as well as the buildings we work, live, and play in and our means of producing food and managing natural resources – all of this requires volumes of data power.

For all of these advances and changes in our world, the infrastructure required is data centres – located close enough to the centres of need (cities globally) to allow for high-speed responsiveness. 

The race is on among global data centre players to build out capacity around the world and not least here in the UK – in one of the biggest and best connected economies in the world.

Data centres require skilled specialist engineering resource with deep experience in the market. Clients in this industry make very large and critical investments in engineering programmes that need to deliver. 

Data Centres also need sound financially strong companies to support the build programme.

All this places TClarke – as an acknowledged market leader – in a strong position. This is not a market opportunity that will be here today and gone tomorrow. There is, according to all the research available, at least a decade ahead of rapid growth in this market, worldwide.

Building data centres is not easy – it is complex – it requires skills and depth of resource which cannot be acquired overnight. It requires trust in your reputation. We know we must always maintain our reputation, job by job. But as with our dominance in key areas of the commercial office market, we have the opportunity now to expand our expertise, job by job, and increase our market leadership.