A recent article from the BBC highlights the growing demand for skilled workers in the data centre construction industry, driven by the rapid expansion of cloud services and AI.

Data centres, used by major tech firms like Amazon and Microsoft, require highly specialised construction and installation work, such as electrical and cabling tasks. However, the sector is struggling to recruit enough qualified workers, with a shortage of skilled labour and an aging workforce posing challenges.

The article reads:

“If someone had asked Billy Keeper five years ago what a data centre was, he admits: “I would not have had a clue.”

The 24-year-old joined specialist electrical firm Datalec Precision Installations as a labourer straight from school.

He’s now an electrical supervisor for the UK-based firm, and oversees teams up to 40-strong carrying out electrical and cabling installations at datacentres.

This means, “managing the job, from a health and safety perspective, making sure everything goes smoothly, and dealing with the clients”.

And those clients are central to today’s technology landscape. Data centres are the massive warehouse-like buildings from which big tech firms like Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook deliver their cloud services.

Other organisations, large and small, run their own dedicated facilities, or rely on “co-location” datacentres to host their computer equipment.

Demand for data centre space has been turbocharged in recent years by the rise of artificial intelligence, which demands ever more high-end computers, and ever more electricity to power them.”

“Total data centre floorspace across Europe was just over six million sq ft (575,418 sq m) in 2015, according to real estate firm Savills, but will hit more than 10 million sq ft this year. In London alone, data centre “take up” in 2025 will be almost triple that of 2019, predicts real estate services firm CBRE.

But while demand is surging, says Dame Dawn Childs, chief executive of UK-based operator, Pure Data Centres Group, “delivering and satisfying that demand is challenging.”

Just finding enough land or power for new data centres is a problem. Labour’s election manifesto promised to overhaul planning to encourage the building of infrastructure, including data centres and the power networks they rely on.

But the industry is also struggling to find the people to build them.

“There’s just not enough skilled construction workers to go around,” says Dame Dawn.

For companies like Datalec, it’s not just a case of recruiting staff from more traditional construction sectors.

Datacentre operators – whether co-location specialists or the big tech firms – have very specific needs. “It is very, very fast. It’s very, very highly engineered,” says Datalec’s operations director (UK & Ireland), Matt Perrier-Flint.

“I’ve done commercial premises, I’ve worked in universities,” he explains. But the data centre market is particularly regimented, he says, with everything carried out “in a calculated and structured way.””

The article goes on to say:

“Mark Yeeles, vice president, Secure Power Division, UK and Ireland, at power and automation firm Schneider Electric, began as an apprentice in the 1990s.

Given that the industry is often looking for people with 15 years’ experience, he says, “The time to start investing in apprentices was 10 years ago.”

However, Schneider Electric is changing its ratio of graduates to apprentices. “We’ve doubled our intake of apprentices,” says Mr Yeeles.”

We believe that apprenticeships are going to be crucial for combatting the talent shortage for data centre companies. That’s why we’ve signed up to be part of the Digital Futures Programme, a programme that gives children aged 16-19 the knowledge the need to pursue a career in the data centre industry.

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