The demand for new, bigger, data centres to fuel the growth Artificial Intelligence is unrelenting. In this Episode we meet Preston Williams from DPR, Preston is part of the team who designed and planned the construction of one of the biggest data centres ever built in America so far. Once the data centre is fully operational in 2026 it will consume 1.2GW of power, a little more than half of the power output of the Hoover Damn. Already planning for an even bigger data centre has been announced.

We meet David Lawson from France’s Assystem, one of the top three nuclear engineering companies worldwide, to talk about whether nuclear power is needed to power data centres, and how small modular reactors are likely to be part of the solution.

David Ayeni, Bentley’s Partner Manager explains how creating a digital ecosystem, interoperability, and digital platforms are key to the next stage of the industry if its to meet demand. And we talk to Dara Kherea and Sukshma Paranjpe from Bohm, a scale-up company, helping digitise the construction industry with smart contracts, tokenisation, distributed ledger technologies, and the concept of ‘trustlessness’.

Many industry analysts expect the demand for the processing power of data centres to triple between 2025 and 2030 as artificial intelligence spreads across industries. While the prospect of hundreds of billions being spent is enticing, it is putting pressure on the infrastructure industry to deliver, compounded by a shortage of skilled workers, in an industry that has been slow to grasp the productivity gains digitisation brings.

We hear how the pressure to build massive data centres is leading to new ways of working, new partnerships and alliances, and creating an innovation window where digital twins, robots, drones and AI, are all finding their place.

The Bentley Horizons podcast is co-hosted by Tomas Kellner, Bentley’s Chief Story Teller, and Paul Wilson, Chair of the Advisory Board for Smartcitiesworld.net.