In March, a panel of local tech experts outlined why Alberta is a contender in the race to build AI infrastructure.
Less than four months later, Meta unveiled official plans for a $13 billion data centre in Sturgeon County northeast of Edmonton.
The company expects 3,000 skilled trade workers to be onsite at peak construction.
As AI adoption continues, and data centre demand rises, another skilled force—Canada’s consulting engineers—may prove key to ensuring proper physical infrastructure is in place to support tomorrow’s computing power.
Commercial AI data centres are essentially mega-factories, according to Canadian Consulting Engineer magazine, requiring a high and reliable supply of electricity, efficient cooling, robust security, and more.
The magazine is presenting “Engineering AI Data Centres,” a new virtual national summit where industry experts in a variety of specialized disciplines will discuss best practices, innovations, and case studies from across Canada and beyond, across all phases from planning and specifications through construction management and ongoing operations and maintenance.
Speakers will include Adam Gerber, CEO of Aspect Structural Engineers; Ghina Annan, Regional Sustainability Lead for Stantec; Jim Tsaknis, Data Centres & Telecommunications Specialist at Colliers; and Alberta’s own Lisa Gibson, also of Colliers.
Based in Vancouver, Gerber has been working with wood as a building material for 20 years and is passionate about ensuring data centres can be built with mass timber.
Annan, out of Ottawa, has more than 15 years’ experience in high-performance design and building science and contributes to ASHRAE’s Global Technical Innovation Committee, the Technical Resource Advisory Committee, and the Centre of Excellence for Building Decarbonization.
Based in Toronto, Tsaknis has 30 years of experience aligning real estate portfolios and business goals with technology.
And Gibson, stationed in Calgary, offers a local perspective as she tracks the emerging boom of data centres across Alberta.
The online event will be broadcast live on August 24, with interactive opportunities for Q&A. The cost to register is $25.
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