Carbon3IT has secured a lease for a site in Leamington Spa for its National Data Centre Academy project.

The academy, which is being supported by the Data Centre Alliance, Innovate UK, TechUK and other trade partners, will provide practical data centre skills training to new graduates, existing data centre personnel, military veterans and those with transferrable skills looking to move into the sector.

The currently disused office building will be converted to provide space for three technical training areas, classrooms and a showcase environment.

John Booth MD of Carbon3IT explained, “The growth of cloud computing and AI means more data centres and digital infrastructure will have to be built – what we’re doing aims to reduce the environmental impact of these facilities and to make data centres more sustainable in the long run.

“We’re already working on a number of projects relating to data centre energy efficiency and sustainability, and the National Data Centre Academy is a natural extension of our activities to date.”

While the new building is being fitted out, Carbon3IT will be running a number of courses which do not require the practical areas.

Rachel Booth, Operations Director, explained, “The fit-out process is fairly intense; data centres are very complex buildings, and we need to replicate that in the academy. We’ve been going through a number of designs and procuring equipment from the supply chain. Our intention is that delegates will go back to their own environments and replicate what they’ve seen in our environment, resulting in significant energy savings for them – but also for the country. In the meantime, some courses don’t need the practical elements, so we’re open for training now.”

John Booth added, “This facility is ‘for the sector, by the sector to train tomorrow’s digital technicians’, so we need digital infrastructure operators and the supply chain to become members and use the training centre to address the global shortage of digital infrastructure personnel.”