Robert Thorogood

Robert has over 30 years of experience in the design of a wide variety of projects, but more particularly in colocation data centres, hyperscale facilities, critical environments, energy centres as well as commercial development and fit-out projects. During his career he has worked on data centre and other critical engineered projects for Ark Data Centres, Lloyds Bank, Microsoft and UBS.

He started his career in the electrical industry intertwining practical learning with Hawker Siddeley with academic studies at Imperial College. He moved into consultancy in the mid-1980s and had many years in an architectural/engineering firm learning and understanding how engineering can be the lead discipline on critical projects.

Robert engages significantly with the technical aspects of critical engineering project and maintains a strong technical bias both in the project winning phase and during the development of the design when he is accessible to many key clients. He continues to specialise in data centres and critical engineering design and delivery, but also applies his capabilities to other related areas such as trading buildings and healthcare infrastructures.

He has led the change in data centre design, moving towards large scale electrical infrastructures, energy storage, adiabatic cooling, fresh air cooling and alternative power delivery processes, all of which have been part of the continual evolving design to the meet the requirements and demands of the data centre market. Robert has regularly contributed to the works of Datacentre Dynamics, speaking at their conferences, as well as writing opinion pieces on topics ranging from COVID-19 tracing apps to U.K. planning processes.