COMPU DYNAMICS

“ Data centres are here to support IT,” Steve says.“ Really, a data centre is just the environment around the IT that feeds power, extracts heat and provides network connectivity to the IT equipment. So when the IT equipment changes, the environment has to change.”

That shift is measured in multiples rather than percentages.“ It used to be 10kW a rack, now it’ s 100kW or even 200kW,” Steve notes, adding that the cooling load rises in step, so“ liquid cooling is mandatory in a lot of applications today”.

The consequence, Steve explains, is a data hall where the containment and support structures have effectively become buildings in their own right.

Rather than hanging equipment from a ceiling, today’ s busway, network and cooling distribution sit on structural platforms rated for loads that older designs never anticipated.

It is this density, he argues, that makes the white space a natural candidate for prefabrication in a way that traditional cloud and telecom facilities never were. As such, the term“ AI factory” has entered the industry vocabulary to describe that shift, and Steve treats it as more than marketing language.

“ AI factories are simply data centres that are focused on AI workloads. They tend to be the most dense of any design,” he says, distinguishing them from colocation facilities built for a broad

6 September 2026