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THE FRONTIER LINE
Hosts Wayne Aston and David Murray explore the critical global pillars of infrastructure development and energy production, from traditional methods to future-forward advancements. The Frontier Line covers the latest industry news, energy innovations, and sustainability trends that are shaping the future. Through expert interviews with industry leaders in renewable energy, utility-scale battery storage, and waste-to-energy technologies, the podcast provides insights into the evolving landscape of energy efficiency and sustainable infrastructure. By focusing on the intersection of innovation and the politics of energy, The Frontier Line highlights transformative ideas and technologies poised to deliver cost-efficient, resilient, and sustainable solutions for global industries.
THE FRONTIER LINE
Gensler- Shawn Reichart, Critical Facilities Expert
Architecture enthusiasts, prepare to be inspired as Shawn Reichart of Gensler takes us through his captivating journey into the world of design and construction. From childhood moments with Legos to transformative experiences at Temple University, Sean's story is a testament to the power of early influences and educational choices in shaping a fulfilling career. His reflections offer a unique perspective on how a small-town upbringing can lead to big-city dreams and groundbreaking architectural achievements.
The episode also tackles pressing issues in the architecture and construction sectors. We delve into the waning interest in skilled trades among younger generations and the ripple effects on construction costs. Yet, architecture's allure remains strong, offering a compelling blend of art and engineering to a diverse pool of talent. We explore the post-9/11 shift towards government and security projects, highlighting the gratification of contributing to national welfare and the evolving role of data centers in sustaining economic and technological leadership.
Innovation takes center stage as Sean shares insights into pioneering projects in data center development, with a focus on sustainable practices like geothermal energy and waterless designs. We navigate the challenges of community engagement, strategic site planning, and the transformative potential of AI in architectural processes. As we look to the future, Sean emphasizes the importance of strategic innovation and planning to address engineering challenges and drive growth, ensuring that technological advancements offer tangible benefits to both industry and society.
And we're back, sean Reichert, welcome to the studio. We are very excited to welcome a very special guest with us this evening, sean Reichert from Gensler Architects. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Glad to be with us here in Salt Lake City and just to give the listeners the intro. As we do with our interviews, we want everyone to understand who you are, and your team has been gracious enough to prepare a short bio. So if you don't mind, I'll read that and we'll dive in.
Speaker 3:Okay, you can make any corrections needed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Sean is a critical facilities leader for Gensler's Southeast region. Sean has more than 25 years of experience leading the design of data centers, secure government facilities and operations centers. In addition to ensuring that critical operational demands are met is to develop a compelling workplace design, both for the benefit of current employees and to help clients attract and retain a new generation of technology-driven talent. Sean understands and can translate into simple terms the complicated technical issues associated with mission-critical projects. An early adopter, he undertook his first LEED Silver Revit and Uptime Tier 3 certified project in 2004. Sean is a registered architect and earned his Bachelor of Architecture from Temple University. Did we get that right? It's all true.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, are we out of our depth?
Speaker 1:We've done. We've interviewed everyone on our team, okay, and we've interviewed some folks locally. You're the first that we're interviewing from so far away, like from from all the way from baltimore. So it's uh, it's a a treat for us to have you and your team here in Salt Lake with us, if we could. I've been really itching to learn more about the beginnings of Sean Reichert's career in architecture, because I started my career in architecture. I started as a freshman in high school paper drafting all four years my favorite class and then came up to the University of Utah and did five years in the CAD program, double majoring in architecture and business. So I've got a passion for architecture and it's really interesting and I think our listeners would love to understand. How did you start your architecture career? When did this all start? When you decided this is what you wanted to do?
Speaker 2:So it's like three people and one thing that kind of made me an architect. My dad is an engineer. He at one time wanted to be an architect himself, but my childhood was my dad was DIY. Before DIY was a word. Okay, you know, I remember watching this Old house when that was the only home improvement show that you could watch.
Speaker 2:There wasn't anything else yeah that did that and I did a lot of holding of screwdrivers and handing of tools and so I kind of got into that construction mindset as a kid. I don't know that I did a whole lot, I just held a lot of stuff and then so that kind of put that bug into me my dad's influence and he's a builder, he's always building something. He's been retired for years and he's always building something on his house or making something, and that's kind of how I am. So I'm a big believer in kind of doing things. You know, I lay brick, I I sweat pipes, I work in my electrical box, I run natural gas line which I probably shouldn't do but I've done all those things in my house. So that's part of it. Uh, another aspect like you, I had a really good middle school shop teacher named Mr Zen and he taught drafting and we did electronics and printmaking and photography and some of these things and I had a really good middle school.
Speaker 2:I say, unlike my kids' school, they don't do that anymore, like they don't teach that stuff anymore. I think it's kind of a shame. In my middle school you got exposed. You know, you had home ec, you, you stowed, you cooked, you built stuff out of wood, you built stuff out of metal, you drafted, you went to art, you had choir, you had music, you had all those things, that's right. And so you were exposed to some of it and I clicked with drafting. I thought that was really cool.
Speaker 2:I cannot draw a person to save my neck. If it has a straight line and an angle, then I can draw it and I'm very good at drawing it. But that was kind of a thing for me. And then my aunt Sam, who's an art teacher she's since passed, but she was a big influencer of me and she kind of funded the interest. So holidays I got my own drafting table, I got drawing books, I got markers, I got pens, that kind of stuff. She was always pushing that stuff to me. And then kind of the fourth thing which is a thing is legos oh yeah I was a huge lego maniac.
Speaker 2:Uh, before you know, before that was a term and that was coined. I was, uh, all the time building, creating, imagining, uh, worlds in little bricks. So those those things brought me to architecture. Um, you know, it's kind of before the internet was really a thing and so you just kind of feel it was like glossy books. They would send you to college, like, oh, maybe architecture, you know. So that was I made the choice and I chose Temple because I wanted a school that was more diverse, more urban than I grew up in.
Speaker 2:I was anxious to get out of my small town and get some more exposure to the big world that was beyond that small town and so I went to Temple University and that's kind of where it started and I've been kind of single-minded about it the whole time. For the most part I just kind of pushed through, got my license, got accredited, did all those things and that's always been kind of important to me to just kind of take care of that and and then sort of practicing architecture in philly for a little while and then I met my now wife in Baltimore and started commuting down and then I I've been working for basically two firms my entire career. I've been at Gensler for 11 years so, and I was another firm there before that for 17.
Speaker 1:So okay, fantastic it's, and I don't want to hog the conversation. No, no, I'm ready to fire hose and rapid fire the questions, but I won't do that, no.
Speaker 3:No, please, you get to speak. Well, I mean, you know this, but you know, interestingly, when I went into art, I was also that's where I started. I remember designing my first poem in my art class in grade and then went all the way through APR and I was going to the other side. But you know, I had one my best friend being an architect. So I had a path. So I again, I also share, at least on the outs, or some passion for it and understand it. And at least you know, I think, I think I can appreciate it like better than most.
Speaker 1:It feels like a generational thing because I think we're all roughly the same age and, and you know, as you described, like that class set, that was exactly what it was for me. And paper drafting you get all these cool tools, you know, you get the cool compasses and you've got the scales and the, you know the squares and all that different pencil sets and I mean it was fascinating to me, you know, to have my box of the toolkit. And this is all before computers and CAD. So that all changed. It all got way more exciting, you know, with, with revit and cad and all these advancements I remember the really expensive pens yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:But I think that mentality, like that builder's mentality that came from our fathers, that generational influence of building things and doing hard things for ourselves, is a commonality that we all share, yeah, which is why I think we find ourselves, you know, as land developers, doing what we do. It comes from a lot of the same roots of wanting to build cool stuff and design cool things yeah, for me, like hands-on learning has always been super important.
Speaker 2:I and I I always encourage and the folks I work with. It's like get out and do stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we draw two lines on a page and that's drywall yeah go hang a piece of drywall, put some mud on it and see how easy it is, because it's not that easy and you see it when I'm in the field and these guys have been doing it for years, they make it look so easy and I'm not as good at that as they are. But you just need to do some of this stuff. You need to lay a brick, you need to kind of do some things to appreciate what you're drawing and what it takes to build it, and it's not always translated.
Speaker 1:That's so true, sean. I come from a similar background in construction where I started my well. I built my first house when I was 21. Didn't know what I was doing. Hold a story a few months ago on the show about my then father-in-law influencing me to do that. He's like hey, you don't need a general contractor, let's just build your house. And I'm 21.
Speaker 1:I didn't know any better and we dove in and we did it and I regretted a lot of that along the way because we did concrete, roofing, electrical, plumbing, all the things and I learned all these trades and we ended up having to repair for a decade after we built the house. We were like redoing all these things because they weren't all right, but drywall to your point very difficult. I ended up really really developing an affinity for stone and tile and so I became a stone and tile contractor for the first decade of my entrepreneurial career as a young man and I loved it because it was artistic, it was really technical, but we got really good at that and at the end of that 10 years I just got to a point where my body couldn't hold up my knees and my back and working, you know, with the wet saw and mortar and thinset on my hands all the time. It was just. It just is a hard thing.
Speaker 1:And one thing that we've observed is and it's a little alarm, it's concerning to us that construction trades in general and it'd be interesting to get your take on architecture we're not seeing as many young folks taking on these trades these days and many of our big contractors are trying to fill that gap and trying to like bolster the labor force of skilled labor, like journeyman plumbers and electricians and framers or you know, cost of constructions going up because of this inability to incentivize or enroll these, the younger generations, in these, these skills. What's your sense of that?
Speaker 2:I think we're still seeing a good stream of people coming into architecture. It. It's a good mix of art and engineering. Um, you know it, it appeals to a lot of different kind of mindsets. You can kind of come at it or the business side, you can come at it from the technical side, you can come at it from the artistic side and still find your own path in what I do. Um, where we see problems is like where the industry's really sucked in, like 2008, 2009. A lot of folks it left architecture and so there's like generational divots in in the workforce within architecture. Okay, so if you look, you're looking for project managers right now. Those people should have been entering, you know, the industry in 2008, 2009 and instead they did other things. Wow, okay, when insurance, they did other kinds of kind of work, because there was just no work in the industry at that time.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean speaking to the mortgage crisis 2008,. No financing, no construction happening, so like a five-year gap.
Speaker 2:Interesting. It's made this kind of divot and so a couple of years ago it was hard to get what we call project architects, who that kind of lead the job and kind of put the drawings on page.
Speaker 2:And now it's kind of transitioned now where I feel like there's a gap in project management, because those folks would have been entering the career at that time, um but you know it's but there's still a good flow of people coming into our industry because I think it, like I said, it's got multiple facets for different types of brains and there's kind of different ways you can work your way through it. But it is a bit of a calling, you know. You have to kind of really want to do architecture, yeah, because it's a lot of hours, a lot of extra time, a lot of math. Well, yeah, I guess, I guess Maybe not as much math as it used to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we've got the computers for these days, right, but's, yeah, it's a tough. It's a tough job and you kind of gotta want to be here because there's a lot of extra involved in it. You know, almost like becoming a priest or you know, doing something like that, you kind of really have to make it about you. Most people that know their architects, you know it is their life and like when you talk to them, the first thing they'll tell you is I'm an architect, and then define the rest of it.
Speaker 3:So yeah, how did? How did you end up at gensler?
Speaker 2:so I had kind of an interesting career path. Um, I used to work for a firm called rtkl. That's no longer around in the same fashion it is now it's called arcadis. Now, um, I worked there before 9-11. I did hotels and resorts and mixed use and, uh, stuff like you developed. Yeah, you know, I did resorts in the chesapeake bay and I was working on a massive hotel in orlando, florida at time and 9-11 happened and that stuff just died Because especially the hotel stuff that I was working died Because all the conventions stopped. People canceled all that stuff. I was working on the Hyatt Hotel. The Hyatt folks called and they said stop. My whole team got laid off.
Speaker 1:Whoa.
Speaker 2:And my boss came to me before that happened. He said we're going to move you to the government and corporate side of the studio. Take me away from the kind of retail side. And I worked on the Pentagon reconstruction for a very short period of time and did a whole series of 9-11 related projects in New York City and in New York State and ever since then my career's been about this kind of work. It's been about kind of technology, communications, computers, security, blast protection. These kinds of things are all circle around all the projects I've done since 9-11. It's been great. I love the clients. The clients are always very up front and on the up and up and you know the clients I work with. When I used to do retail and stuff, the clients sometimes were you know, sometimes it was you know the project would shut down because they got indicted or something like that. There was always these stories and stuff going on.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:But the government clients and the data center clients and the command center clients that I work with it's like it's important work too. Yeah, Most of the things I do benefit the community or the country in some way. Even the data center stuff, I think, really is benefiting our economy in lots of ways. So I like those projects.
Speaker 1:And I couldn't agree more. I mean, we're super patriots. I, you know, spent a little over a decade in the military in two branches, and Dave and I and our entire team is very America--centric, very patriotic, sharing that sentiment about, you know, these critical facilities and data centers and our, our economy art. You know america leads the ai revolution right now. I mean we are, we are the beacon for the world in these advancements right now right now we have enough power to sustain, and that's the yes Bingo.
Speaker 2:Yes, because if we don't, somebody else will have a spot for it. That's right. And we don't make as much as we used to, unfortunately. So this is what we make. Yeah, we make intellectual capital, we make AI, we make technology, don the strategic resource of power that leads to being able to do these things. So I think that's when people start to finally figure out that we are in a strategic deficit in terms of power. Yeah, that that's, that's what people need to realize, and and how have you seen well in that, in regards like data.
Speaker 3:So how have you seen the evolution of design change and in relationship to power and power needs, or how is that evolving and your side of the?
Speaker 2:well, I first started doing these data centers in real, in real earnest. 2004 I started doing my first. That was that first lead certified 203 data center, and power was not really an issue. It was, you know, you got two feeds, but those projects were two megawatts, four megawatts I mean megawatts and you could find that power. I mean you had to be a little bit careful about where you put this thing, but you usually could get that kind of power and the. The schedules were longer, but now it's it's hundreds of megawatts being landed in a 500-acre campus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's huge. That's a regional impact on power needs. That's not, you know, can you get it from that substation or that substation that's landing multiple new substations and transmission lines and all these kinds of things to deliver power in the conventional way to a site like that. And that's a big challenge. It's. It's changed the way the the work is now due diligence. This kind of site finding and site testing aspect of what I do is a huge part of my business. Right now I've got probably I don't know 15 projects in this kind of realm of like. Here's this piece of site. You know, where can we get the power? Where can we get you know fiber. It's just not this big a deal, but power is driving it right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that happens to be the intersection that connected us is is the Valley Forge Impact Parks are a power-first project by definition, and we started seeing the writing on the wall here several years back when we approached a few of the municipalities. We were thinking about doing data center projects. In having a conversation around power, having electrical co-ops locally say, oh, that's really a problem, you need 300 megawatts. We probably are not going to be able to do that for seven or eight, 10, maybe long. I don't know if we could ever provide that much expansion what we're doing. And they said, hey, we're having this issue. We've approached XYZ Power Co with the same conversation, trying to find 300 megawatts on one site not there. And we've heard that you might be trying to co-locate power generation with data center assets. That'd be interesting to us and that really really accelerated our whole Valley Forge Impact Park plan into.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's what this is a power first, you know and you know focusing on a unique energy mix, not just one modality, not just renewables, not just coal-fired power that we could get from the local provider, but getting a redundant and unique energy mix on each of these sites to us feels like the most pragmatic approach. And so now here we are, you know, designing combined cycle gas power plants as base load with all these other and and trying to back as much technology advancement into it as we can best systems commercial solar augmentation. We we recently met with a company called Taurus. We'll talk to you more about them here in the coming days, but Taurus has developed a really incredible flywheel energy storage technology. That's really what was. The recent accolade was it.
Speaker 1:It was time, time times invention of the year last, this year, yeah, yeah, and they're right here in salt lake city manufacturing these flywheel uh storage units, and so that's another advancement of technology we're trying to build into this whole equation, um and and that's why I was excited to work with you guys, wayne, dave, I, I this is coming to my industry.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing it in places. People are talking about setting up their own power, but but you guys are thinking about it first, versus kind of backing into it and kind of like oh shoot, there's no power. You know how can we generate 200 megawatts? We weren't until we were.
Speaker 3:We don't have a choice to get into this. I mean, it was sort of like we can't solve this until we solve this first. We can't solve anything else.
Speaker 2:And so I was interested to work with you and I was intrigued to like what is that as a planning problem? What is that as a laying out of a new city, or a new at least a piece of a city? What is that planning problem now? Do you drop this thing in the middle and work around it, or is that maybe not a good idea because it hamstrings other developments? You're trying to do, I mean, making these decisions about where to land this on the site? Yeah, I think could be really critical to how it grows over time and you know, maybe it's super successful and it goes beyond what you have and maybe you'd be kind of kicking yourself in the butt. It's like, oh shit, we put this thing in the middle and now we're stuck with it in the middle and we maybe should have put it on the edge and grown beyond it or whatever. But like, making those decisions I think is really important. I think the in general I'd love to see do more planning and more forethought Because, like where I live in Data Center Alley and the Virginia market, it's really there's a lot of friction between single-family home owners, single-family home developers and the data center market home owners, single-family home developers and the data center market and they're all competing for the same pieces of land in Loudoun County and Firefox County.
Speaker 2:It's thrown the cost of land up. Now there's kind of like zoning tit-for-tat kind of escalation in terms of making it harder to build data centers in the Northern Virginia market, but it's partially because they weren't very well planned, you know, and the land was so expensive, and so they just come in and unfortunately they put a fence on the property line and they build a big, massive gray box, you know, 15 feet behind that fence and they don't talk to anybody about it. They don't engage the community very much about it, unfortunately, and and that's been some of the way it's been done some people were doing it better. Yeah, but I think, planning that edge and what is that edge around these things and how can you soften it a little bit? How can you work with the community? What? What are they looking for in this development?
Speaker 2:yeah um, that hasn't happened a whole lot and there's been some backlash in that area and they've just changed some zoning laws and things where, basically in Loudoun now you can't the by right part of zoning, you can't build a data center by right, and so you're going to have to go through a public process, a public hearing process, which is fine, but a 12 month process.
Speaker 2:So it's like entitlements and things that you've talked about on your podcast yeah but it's on a plot by plot basis, you know, and it just it's slowing that's a little that's.
Speaker 1:That's alarming. Yeah, that's a little scary if you're trying to develop data centers in that type of municipal political environment yeah, especially when I mean most of these folks.
Speaker 2:they don't want to actually pay for the land until they get a zoning approval that says that they can do what they want to do, and that makes sense. And so the landholder has to sit on that deal and the land buyer has to kind of sit on that deal for a long time.
Speaker 1:That really stretches the procurement process of land acquisition way out there and adds another level of risk.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, as land developers, you know we're always trying to project out 10, 20 years of the path of growth.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:And the probability of zoning or annexation or some of these implications that are required to get a project permitted and shovel ready implications that are required to get a project permitted and shovel ready so to throw that type of wrinkle into that plan. That's been happening traditionally, that I can only imagine that that's going to cause major developers to start fracturing the focus into other markets they might not have considered before.
Speaker 2:That's already begun. I mean they've already started moving out into central Virginia and further into Atlanta and other markets that have similar latency kind of numbers. That were maybe the communities more accepting of that concept or whatever. So it's been interesting to see that happen. And that really takes effect January 1. So, yeah, and we yeah, we haven't really even seen how, like, that policy is going to become reality and how it's going to be administered, and you know how long it will take to take that piece of land through that process and get approval to build a data center you know, sean, as we, as we roll through this conversation of power first, and you bring up maybe the most relevant case study in the nation today, which is Data Center Alley in Virginia, for the listeners I think our listeners are pretty well in tune to this.
Speaker 1:But emissions is a big piece of this conversation, huge when we talk about co-locating power. We can't just stand up a new coal-fired power plant, and in many instances natural gas is going to have its own special EPA-like analysis. And so this is why many of the Googles, the Microsofts of the world, are looking at nuclear, they're looking at renewables and they're trying to find ways to. They're hopeful I don't think they're maybe fully in tune just yet, but hopeful they can do this all renewable. And so power is not just produce power, it's produce the right mix of clean enough and cost efficient and dense enough power and dense enough power.
Speaker 2:That's the problem. The density is really the issue. The wind turbines and the solar is great. I wish it had the kind of density we're talking about, but at six acres a megawatt in my area maybe it's better out here. You might have a little better equation.
Speaker 1:Not much.
Speaker 2:And you want a 100-megawatt facility, which is a standard today. Right, the actual facility is 100 megawatts coming in, but it's actually 72 80 megawatts of actual compute. That's pretty much what people are looking for in terms of on the market. It. That's a lot of land oh yeah to generate that kind of that power.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, like you're going to need to do, unfortunately, you need to do natural gas or you're going to need to do nuclear or coal, because that's the only ones that have the kind of density to generate that kind of power in a smaller footprint. Especially when you talk about a Virginia area. You guys have more land out here, you know. So you could spread some things out and maybe it's achievable out west to do some solar powered data centers in a real way. But in northern Virginia the sites are not that big. They're not as big as you could get out west to do some solar powered data centers in a real way. But in northern virginia the sites are not that big. They're not. They're not as big as you could get out west and you. There's just no way of putting. I could cover every square inch of the whole site with solar and still not even getting close.
Speaker 3:That's right to this 80 megawatts, 100 megawatts that I'm looking for yeah yeah, I had a meeting this last week with somebody in the solar industry and you, you know, they said, yeah, you know, right now they're not looking at any projects that are not, you know anything, under a couple thousand acres. It's just not worth their time. It gives you the idea of the scale that we're talking about. So for them to actually even consider you know sizable project uh, they're, you know that that's. That's their basement is 2000 acres Just, and that's a lot of land, A lot of land, and there's even a lot of land out here. But it's finding those patches then, and then transmission and then all the other things that come along with it. It's not an easy challenge.
Speaker 2:Transmission's just as big of a problem. Yeah, I mean they're trying to put a transmission line across the county that I live in in Baltimore County and it line across the county that I live in in baltimore county and and it has become a big political issue and in in this voting season that was kind of voted against in lots of ways and um and it's it's kind of running kind of kind of new jersey-ish down through maryland headed down towards virginia, and as soon as folks found out it was kind of not power for our market, you know that was kind of the net now, because it was like yeah, why are you my, you know, giving up my farm land and my house or whatever, and big power lines and things like that?
Speaker 2:So I think it's going to be harder and harder to build transmission lines at scale too. You know, sending that grid out to the things is going to be a bigger and bigger challenge that's a great point, sean.
Speaker 1:You know we really haven't covered that in depth. You know there's a lot of talk in the headlines about expanding the grid. Uh, you know, we, we even see. You know signals from the feds, from current administration, future administration, saying streamlining, permitting and doing what they can do to get transmission development to happen. But you bring up a really great point. You've still got to get right of ways and deal with private landowners and farmers and homeowners to agree to this.
Speaker 1:And in many instances you talk about 100 miles of transmission line. This could be thousands of landowners, so that's where a developer gets to go and co energy independence within communities, so that these communities feel like they're getting a piece of the pie. They should be able to benefit directly from it. We're working on legislative measures right now that are going to hit the house here in the coming quarter that are going to create pricing tiers so that we don't just overwhelm our residential consumers, we get to protect their pricing and so that they're not openly opposed to data center coming into their community, because there'd be a different pricing structure if they're categorized as to data center coming into their community, because there'd be a different pricing structure if they're categorized as a high consumption or a high load consumer, and so that's some of the interesting innovation legislatively coming down the pipe that we're working on. Um. It also feels really lucky to us that both in our utah and wyoming projects we have geothermal capacity, and when we talk about power density, that you could need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's another source that's green and has the density.
Speaker 3:And it's improving out, at least, certainly here in Utah. One of the big projects we talk about a lot is the Fervor Project and they're beating all expectations. They're doing very, very well and density-wise they're really good. I think they're beating all expectations. They're doing very, very well and you know, uh, density wise they're they're, they're really good. I think they're going to get. Uh, what was the number was like six three acres to produce 780 megawatts.
Speaker 3:I believe somewhere, or yeah, so it was substantial. It's a substantial I can't remember the exact numbers, but it's a substantial footprint but I mean it's a substantial amount of power for the amount of land.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why I don't know much about the footprint of that technology. I'd be interested to see what that footprint is and, you know, can you do anything on top of it? Or is it kind of like this is a no-fly zone in that area on top of it?
Speaker 3:That's a good question, I know you know one of their kind of how this all came about is they're using what people have learned from the oil industry, oil and gas industry. So they're going down 8,000 to 10,000 feet. Okay, as opposed to a lot of geothermal, which is you're going to tap sub-surface and you're going to pull 100 degree water or 200 degree water right there under the surface, they're way down and they're using that whole system of going way down and then capturing the steam and generating the power.
Speaker 2:That's how they're doing them and they can punch that I've done geothermal heat pump projects and things like that football field full of wells. And we've had some success at building other things on top of them and doing other things with that land. I just was wondering what could be done beyond adjacent and how big a footprint it has.
Speaker 1:So it'll be interesting to talk to the folks who know about it and understand that. One of the interesting things in my awareness of the EGS the Enhanced Geothermal Systems that Vervo is developing and deploying is they're not only are they extraordinarily deep, but they're using fracking technology to do horizontal drilling. So they'll go deep and they'll go horizontal. And so you know, when we talk about site selection and land acquisition, we're cognizant of mineral rights under the ground and air rights above the ground. Those are both key factors.
Speaker 1:And so, if I do believe that you know, if we looked at Cape Station, if I do believe that you know, if we looked at Cape Station, it might have a 300 acre footprint on the surface, but the web of horizontal drilling is much, much extended beyond that. I don't think that precludes development from happening on the surface level. I think you could develop on top of all that because it's so deep. But it might have implications on mineral rights, which is why, in the case of the Cape Station, that's on BLM land, it's federal lands that they're leasing and so they've got, you know, they can get the mineral right that could be a tougher circumstance to try to put a geothermal plant in a municipality, that doesn't that you can't go get the mineral right to be able to, you know, impact the soils at that depth.
Speaker 1:It's interesting.
Speaker 2:That similarity to fracking could be a challenge too, absolutely Coming from Pennsylvania. There's some places in Pennsylvania that have had, you know, issues related to fracking and things in communities, so you have to be sensitive to that as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah for sure, and only share what you're at liberty to share legally. And maybe you're not mentioning names, but are there any companies or projects that stood out as kind of more exciting projects for you to be involved with?
Speaker 2:My world is blanketed in NDAs. That's very, very challenging for me to talk about specific people that I work with, especially currently. I've had some interesting projects. I did one project I can't really tell you who it's for, but, um, it was basically a kind of trial data center and it was really intriguing and unfortunately it only went through. It so far never got built. But it had a whole series of data centers within it and each of them were cooling it in a different way, and so there was liquid-to-chip cooling, there was submersion cooling, there was two-phase submersion cooling, there was traditional air cooling, there was a bunch of other technologies and each room had a different methodology.
Speaker 2:Wow, and it was for a company that was involved in the actual computers themselves and they were looking to kind of mass and and kind of tune that these projects and these, these components to work in these different environments. So, yeah, your computer can work submerged, especially with solid state-state hard drives and a couple modifications. It's not that hard and people are doing that. But how can we even improve that? Yeah, the epoxies that we put on chips and the things that we do on the boards, what can we do to really make it work well with the fluids they're using to cool. Maybe the epoxy is a little bit insulative and it's actually, you know, restricting some of the heat flow that you actually want to get out of these chips. So, yeah, it was all around kind of research and development of working in these different environments.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, when you buy these new nvidia servers, they're going to have this look. The newest version is going to have that liquid chip copper plate, right, yeah, right, there it's already attached like there's no other way to run it yeah that's the way you run it and so just how that is all going to be affected by these new methods of cooling.
Speaker 2:I think was was kind of interesting project and I was so sad to see it die. I really think, I really wish they would do it. But, um, the tech industry is, you know, heavily influenced by market share and investments and what their stock prices are, and things change and R&D projects go away. But that was a great project. I was really looking forward to that. I also do a lot of university research, computing, which are fun projects for me.
Speaker 2:I enjoy those projects. They're of a smaller scale than what we're talking about. They're usually 20 megawatts, but they are for all these different universities and they are looking to attract talent in terms of teachers, professors, graduate students. They're looking to attract grants to those schools, and so schools that have traditionally not been research institutions are investing heavily in AI and in machine learning and supercomputers, and so those projects are kind of nice because and the folks and the great teams that I work with, the consultants and things that I work with, can come to that project and provide a lot of value, because they don't build one of these every day.
Speaker 2:It's not like the big data center developers that have five of these in the books right now under construction. This is the only data center they're going to build for the next 20 years. And so we can kind of come and say this is like you know, this is what you should be doing, and really kind of help them along that process. And so those are great projects. So I like to bring those into the studio and bring them into my practice with gensler as a kind of counterpoint to maybe the big, massive you know hundreds of megawatts developments. So I I kind of try to do a couple different things within my practice. So I like those clients a lot yeah and then another client type.
Speaker 2:I like yeah, I'm not saying names, unfortunately it's all good, it's all good.
Speaker 2:Appreciate you sharing what you get is we do a lot of power company work, so we work a lot for power companies, and a niche I've developed is a power company command center projects and those are kind of similar. There's a little data center, maybe 6,000 square feet, but then there's all these other super reliable components that need to be supported so they're controlling the grid. There's all kinds of security requirements on top of those kinds of projects, so I like working on those projects.
Speaker 3:Do you find that all the designs that are coming out right now for these projects are the most efficient they can be, or are there big changes in kind of how this is being approached from a design point of view and, putting everything together, that has changed considerably or, you see, will be changing going forward?
Speaker 2:The tools are changing in a lot of ways. The tools are changing in a lot of ways. Bim's been around for a while, but now I'm finding my projects are being driven by CFD, computational fluid dynamics. So heat analysis oh yeah, the equipment we use to get rid of the heat is too packed too close together because the building is too big. We've got too many of these things, and so an air-cooled chiller is a really common cooling method for cooling a data center. They stop working at 130 degrees and so you fill your whole roof full of these things and then they start to fail.
Speaker 2:So that was never a really big concern a couple years ago. We just weren't that dense with computing, and now that process is driving the data center. That is literally turning the building, moving the building, spreading the building out, out, changing things about the design, and so we'll work with the engineers and they will come up with a scheme. Okay, let's, let's make the building flatter and wider, because we want to spread this equipment out so that this unit doesn't have influence over its neighbor, and that that's driving the design of the building and that was not so fascinating before it was about building rooms for gray boxes.
Speaker 2:that's driving the design of the building and that was not so fascinating. Before it was about building rooms for gray boxes. That's what data center work was about. They'd give me their gray boxes and I'd build rooms around them, but now it's a lot about how they interact, especially on the heat side and then also on a cost side. When it was 4 megawatts it was no big deal. When it's 72 megawatts, there's a lot of money in wire and pipe, oh yeah, and so anything we can do to get that switchboard closer to the server that is powering is money. The power is money and if we can get the server close and the power close and the cooling close, that's how we save money in these big, massive projects. A lot of what I do.
Speaker 2:The architecture is like called accounting dust in these projects. It's really not the architecture that represents the cost of a data center project. It's really not the architecture that represents the cost of a data center project. It barely reads on the radar screen. In terms of the structure of the building, it is the big gray boxes that cost some money. So my job as an architect in this space is translating English to engineering and engineering to english. Yeah, it's kind of going back and forth right between those different parties and especially explaining. You know, sometimes I have to explain things in layman's terms like, okay, these things too close together and people, people that work in this industry, get it now. But, like, a lot of my job is translating back and forth and communicating with engineers because it's an engineering-driven practice area. It just it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You've touched on so many things. I gotta get this off my tongue. Like Dave and I have been talking so much about the new NVIDIA chips, how they continue to evolve, the racks that are now, you know, I think, 123 KW racks the compute power, the density, the liquid cooling technologies. We covered Schneider Electric recently. They're one of our major consultants. In fact we're going to be with Schneider in Nashville in a few weeks Excited about that. But they recently acquired Motive Air and we believe that that has a lot to do with bringing on this new liquid immersion cooling technologies. And, as land developers, when we site, select water is always a consideration. Anyway.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's like it's always been that way, but now it's extra that way, and so it's like if you don't have water, you're not going to be able to get a permit, you're not going to be able to get a permit, you're not going to be able to build a building. So now we're really focused on can we actually design waterless data centers that are not the tier one through fours or tier one through threes that are billions of gallons of consumption. But moving into dielectric fluids and some of the things you've touched on, that feels like the next category of data center to get to waterless.
Speaker 2:Actually, a lot of data centers actually already are pretty much waterless. Okay, it's kind of a misconception. A lot of the developers out there that we work for do use a closed-loop system. Okay, yeah, so those air-cooled chillers, they do not evaporate any water, they just recycle the same. So once you fill it up a lot of the data centers, it's flushing toilets and running sinks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's the water that's filling used. But there are limitations, Like I was saying, like the 130 degrees on these air-cooled chillers. They do have certain parameters. So you take that guy and you put it in.
Speaker 2:Phoenix and it starts to have some problems because the regular temperature is almost there as it is. So then you start maybe using some water. So then there's some kits you can buy for that, where you spray some water on the coil, but you might do that in August and July and maybe you'll have't have to do the whole year. So there is some water use there, but most of the major developers now are desperately trying to stay away from using water. Yep, that's. I know that everything west of the mississippi water is a real big issue, absolutely yeah. So I mean, I did a day center here in in the utah area that does has cooling towers and does use water and I it was so strange to me, it's probably so normal to you is the hardest permit we had to get on this project here in south jordan was the permit to take the water off our own roof. Yes, and use it that's, that's astounding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you don't own your own water. That's been an issue.
Speaker 1:Yeah you're right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 2:And we I mean, we've done it in other projects in other parts of the world and it's kind of a no-brainer. It's like, oh, there's all this water that lands on this massive roof, let's just get this turned in and keep that water. One thing that people don't maybe realize but when the water shut off, it's like, you know, somebody backhoes through a water service line to a data center. They actually blow a water cool data center that uses water. They blew through a lot of water in a day's time and so they need to have a backup tank. So we would often use the rainwater to charge the backup tank. Oh yeah, and then that way, just that would just be our setting there, waiting for the day that somebody you know cuts off the water for two hours. So, but we did that here and out in Utah and that was the hardest way to get. It's just the water part.
Speaker 3:So we've talked about, I mean, the reason for a lot of the data center talk is obviously the demand of AI. How's AI affected everything that you're doing Like I was thinking about that when you're talking about on the design side and how are you implementing it? What do you see? This is an exciting time also in kind of your space, to where you can start leveraging some of these things oh it's, it's huge um, it's, it's a big part of what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Gensler's investing in it heavily. Um, we've got generative ai tools that can help you plan buildings and um, and we're developing our own software to do those things, um, and to do, uh, quick testing of floor plates and and kind of generation of options basically help us generate various options. There's a lot of ai out there. The the right now it's a lot. It's very novel uses of ai. They're kind of cute.
Speaker 2:I'm really interested when it becomes kind of makes money and start because right now it's being given away, right, everything in the ai is kind of like this oh here, jet chat gbt, go ahead and use it to write your term papers or whatever, yeah, but it's kind of getting us all hooked on this convenience and it's going to start, yeah, charging and they're also going to start using it for things that are more substantial, like medical diagnosis and, you know, running of power plants and tackling nuclear fusion problems and all those kinds of things is going to become a part of those projects. And right now it's just kind of and everyone's investing in it heavily because they know it's coming. But the public's perception of it right now is weird pictures on Instagram, but there's a lot more to it. That's, you know, coming to you and it's going to change our lives in lots of ways.
Speaker 1:From an architectural perspective and given the limited experience I have just in architectural training, I imagine AI's impact on conflict resolution alone would be one of the more substantive impacts. I haven't seen anybody do that yet. I know what you're talking about conflict resolution alone would be one of the more substantive impacts.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen anybody do that yet. I know what you're talking about conflict resolution. We do it in BIM, but it's not currently using AI in the versions we have, but I imagine someone is working on that. The challenge with some of it, too, is like where is it being stored? Who owns it? When it's generated, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:That's where the private llms. So you know you have your own custom llm to a gensler or whatever, and all that data stays specific to your company yeah, I mean we first started doing this at gensler.
Speaker 2:There's a bunch of people that ran out and like started using these, these image generating programs that you see these renderings and things.
Speaker 2:And ginseng was like whoa hold on you know we sell intellectual capital or property and that's kind of what we do. Our designs are ours and you know we sell them to clients and they build them, um, but if you look at a lot of these agreements, when you sign up the you know these different things you realize that that image really they've got the rights to that image, yeah, and that who knows where that image actually is created and where it's stored? And so, like some of the projects I work on, they're very cautious about where that information goes, where it's stored, who has access to it. So you know you don't want to be, you know, generative AI to generate your renderings for your secure government facility. You know, and you might find that a lot of those companies aren't based in the United States or if they are, they might still be offshore, a lot of their data work, and so you need to be real cautious of where that ai is going and then who's got access to it?
Speaker 1:that's a great point. You know there's there's a sentiment amongst architects since I've heard politicians speak on this and in just the last year of how we used to be a nation of builders and architects, like big visions and big things and monuments, and we've kind of gotten away from that. But you know, it's so fun to see gensler in the news on the neom project over there in saudi arabia. Um, I mean, talk about wonders of the world and and something you've already touched on here, which is this kind of transition away from designing the cool looking aesthetically, you know focus building into this highly engineered, highly technical, you know gray space or white space, data center, critical facilities, so that architectural focus has shifted. Do you want to chime in on neom and what you know about that? I mean, that is such a massive vision and project concept. I just wanted to pick your brain on your thoughts on it.
Speaker 2:I don't know a ton about it, okay, um, yeah, I know the, the high level of it and I know that we're involved in the first segment of it, but it's those kinds of projects are huge consortiums of all kinds of designers, you know, and and we've done this in the past we've done some big mega projects around the world, like shanghai tower, the other kind of things, and it's always a huge, huge team of jv, you know, designers and contractors to put it together. I'm I'm really intrigued to see what happens. Like I just I have some why? Questions in the back of my brain, like I I'd love to hear someone explain them to me and maybe I know those, but I don't nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I just think of a transportation system that's entirely linear, that has to go out back and forth, so so it's going to have to be very, very robust transportation system, because otherwise the distances are so long and spoke kind of city, um, where those distances are shorter, and then the transportation system can be a little bit maybe less robust because the distances are not traveled so far. So, yeah, you string everything out in a line that means that that the capacity of those multiple transmission systems, and you're going to have to have something for freight and logistics, something to move people, and. But it's all traveling in the same basic direction. Yeah, that it's going to be interesting yeah, I'm.
Speaker 2:I'm also interested when they're building it in the desert. Yeah, but there's a bio aspect of it. I'm certain animals you know migrate across the area. I'd be really interested to hear what the solution is around, yeah, and like how that works us too.
Speaker 1:There's so many engineering questions. I I can only imagine that there will be a never-ending list of innovations that have never been done before. How do we do before? How do we do waste management? How do we do sewer management? How do we effectively build this power structure? You know, is this a modular setup? I mean just so many things, I think, that are exciting, that are going to emerge out of an undertaking like that that we've never seen.
Speaker 2:Maybe like the Apple headquarters or, you know, like they developed new technology for bending glass because it just was never needed before. But now to accomplish this, we've got to bend it in three different planes and you know, we've got to conform it. They're going to have to do things like that around movement yeah you know you built anything straight that long.
Speaker 2:You've got a lot of movement to deal with. You know the foundations of the thing are going to be really interesting. I'm certain there's all kinds of structural challenges, yeah. And then you integrate a transportation system in the building. You've got vibration, you've got all these kind of things, all the things. So it it's really. I mean, it's a really cool project. I mean, yeah, excited to see. I wish I knew more about it, but I don't.
Speaker 1:We recognize it's the London office. That's like the office that's been assigned to actually handle that, but we're coming up on the top of the hour here. Any final thought, Dave. You want to ask Sean before we wrap this up. This has been so insightful.
Speaker 3:It's no, it's a pleasure. I think we could probably just keep going. I'm just intrigued by everything I'm hearing. No, my final thought was I was going to ask you more of a final thought, like just where do you, where do you? You know prediction for where you see the next few years going in these projects going, and you know the data center market and just kind of curious to see how you see that space developing out. That might not be something we've already talked about, or you know your unique insight into the space.
Speaker 2:And it has sheltered my career from multiple economic downturns within the rest of the kind of construction environment. Absolutely, because you continue to take pictures with your phone and that's not stored in your phone, that's stored in the data center somewhere, yeah, and so that's been really good for my career. I think AI is going to continue that. I think it's basically going to go on overdrive now because the the curve is here and now it's just going for the moon. I think the challenge is, and I think I foresee a good future for ai the two things I'm concerned about is the power is the one we just can't get ahead of.
Speaker 2:The power problem. It will go somewhere else and they'll take it offshore, they'll do other things with it or it'll slow the growth of it. So I'm really thinking that the power problem is a strategic problem for the country that we need to get in front of and we've needed to get in front of for years. We've needed a better green power grid or green power sources that are local to the need. I think the kind of other challenge with AI is it's got to start making money in a real way, tangible, that the capital markets see it making money, because you don't want to end up kind of like early internet right, remember early internet all those companies that were out there heavily investing in the internet and at some point the stock market said, well, they're not making many money. And things started to change, and so I'm hoping that that does not become a problem, that they monetize the technology fast enough, that the capital markets see that monetization and see value in all the investment that all these companies are doing.
Speaker 1:Those are great insights. I have another one. Should I ask it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it just occurred because I'm really curious. You've worked on and I know you can't talk about a lot of the projects you've worked on specifically, but I'm always curious. I've got some family and friends that are in and I always ask them this question, which is, given what you've worked on, if you could, has it changed your opinion about anything that you can talk about, information that you go huh, didn't know that and it's, and it's changed my opinion about what, say an entire space or the way maybe the country does something, because you have access to information that most people don't have you and you don't have to get it. I'm not asking you to get yourself in trouble, get into specifics, but have have you had those moments?
Speaker 2:I know that's an obscure question, but I've I've had like the good fortune to work on a lot of really cool projects over my career and um, being exposed to certain ones have really kind of opened my eyes to like I think some of the government ones are actually the more inspiring ones.
Speaker 2:Like, there are people in our government that have vision for things, yeah, and then convince enough people to actually do something and then do some pretty really neat stuff. I've worked twice now for an agency that's I built two headquarters for them in my career and I think it's an agency called NGA. They do geospatial intelligence, they do mapping for the US government and I've worked on two of those projects and they've been great projects and it's amazing to see what they do for the country that we don't even realize, and they do things for everyone. They do stuff for the Army and Navy, but they also do stuff for FEMA, yeah, and they do the mapping that if you're a private pilot that you've, you use their maps. They do all these kind of really great things and I've had the fortunate to work on two of their big projects and those are really cool people to work with. They do really interesting things that really benefit our, our whole country, in lots and lots of different ways and it's one of the largest three-letter agencies. You've never heard of kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an exciting answer. Thank you, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:That inspires a lot of optimism in me, because I think there's been so much negative connotation around big government, and so it's inspiring to know that we've got really smart people in really great places to impact innovation. Make sure that America stays on the forefront of innovation. Leading, you know, leading the world in all of this. So you would know better than almost anyone being in your specific position in this field of critical facilities. So that's great feedback, sean, thank you, thanks, thank you. Well, with that guys, I hope that you've all enjoyed this episode as much as I've enjoyed sharing an hour with Sean. That's phenomenal.
Speaker 3:No, it's been great to hear everything you had to say. I know you a little bit. We're very excited to actually now spend a couple of days chatting with you. That's right. Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Well, until next time, we'll hope you join us on the Frontier Live. See you next time.
