Amy Marks
Senior Vice President of Innovation
I recently joined Compass Datacenters in a position that I could not be more excited about: working side by side with Compass’ Chief Innovation Officer Nancy Novak to drive innovations that will transform not only how data centers are built, but how the entire construction industry builds.
Joining Compass is a homecoming for me in so many ways. I have known Chris Crosby for nearly 15 years, going back to the earliest days of Compass. That was when Chris and his brilliant team were mapping out a strategy that would completely reshape the data center industry. They were developing an entirely new approach to designing and building data centers, leveraging industrialized construction best practices to build data centers dramatically faster, better and more sustainably.
The Queen of Prefab
Back then, “prefab” wasn’t a term applied to the data center industry, and my nickname ‘Queen of Prefab’ was a few years away. I had recently formed the first prefabrication consultancy in the industry, and the concepts of prefabrication and industrialized construction had not taken root yet in the larger industry. But Chris had heard me give a talk about it, and he immediately recognized how important it would be for the data center industry. He had me fly down to Dallas to join Compass’ early engineering meetings so I could share industrialized construction concepts with the team. I could tell it was clicking immediately, and the concepts became part of the DNA of Compass, and the collaborative culture of Compass influenced our business moving forward. Looking back now, that small team was reimagining the way data centers could be built better, faster and more efficiently, building the foundation for what has made Compass the global industry leader that it is today.
Ever since that initial consulting gig, I have been part of the Compass family. Over the years, I would provide input in official and unofficial ways to the Compass team, but for the most part I was cheering from the sidelines as the company drove so many innovations in the industry. So, it was a wonderful surprise when Nancy and Chris recently approached me about joining the company full-time in this SVP of Innovation role. It is a role more than a decade in the making.
Coming back to my roots in construction
Joining Compass is also a homecoming for me because it is my return to the construction industry after several years working in the technology industry. I loved the work I did at Autodesk, which gave me a powerful platform for developing and evangelizing industrialized construction and digital transformation concepts to organizations around the world. But my roots have always been in construction. I grew up in a family that owned and operated a construction company. I spent so much of my childhood on construction sites, watching my mom, who started the company with my dad, accomplish so much despite the enormous obstacles women have always faced in the industry.
Why diversity in the construction industry matters
One of the reasons I am so excited to join Compass is how it walks the walk on an issue that is so important to me: diversity in the construction industry. My parents never wanted me to go into construction because of the challenges women face, but Compass has always been a beacon in the industry. Chris Crosby and Nancy Novak have built a remarkable construction delivery team whose senior executives are all women and whose on-site construction managers are all women in the U.S. and nearly all women globally. This is unheard of in our industry, and the results speak for themselves through performance metrics that are incredible. This is a powerful case study about how construction benefits from diversity of gender and diversity of perspective.
Compass is also a remarkable case study in the impact of an innovation-driven culture that truly embraces new ideas and continuous improvement.
Compass has achieved an incredible number of firsts since it was founded:
- The first data center company to use a standard kit of parts to drive major construction and operational efficiencies
- The first to use industrialized construction as a foundation for data center construction
- The first to be able to deliver data center facilities in a 6-month timeframe – which was light speed for that era
- The first to conceive of and deliver data center facilities in modular chunks of IT capacity
- The first to focus on sustainability and use green concrete that dramatically lowers the carbon footprint of data center construction and to eliminate water use through global deployment of air-side cooling
- The first to build concrete batch facilities on-site to accelerate delivery time, reduce emissions and improve community safety
- The first to use fiber reinforcement instead of rebar to increase the durability, speed and sustainability of concrete construction
- The first to use HVO biodiesel for generators to make backup power far more sustainable
- The first to use Sarnafil roofing to mitigate against creating an urban heat island, and create significant sustainability and operations benefits
- The first to adopt a number of owner-driven safety best practices to protect construction and operations teams including a safety & wellness program for frontline supervisors
- The first to drive co-innovation through collaboration with key supply chain partners, resulting in new products for cooling and power systems
- The first to use AI and predictive maintenance to increase uptime, increase safety, lengthen equipment life and increase sustainability
- And many others
That is a tremendous legacy of innovation, all driven by Compass’ unique culture. I am so excited to be part of the next chapter of Compass firsts, not only for the data center industry but for construction globally. Who knew that chatting with Chris at an event all those years ago would lead to this opportunity today? Sometimes life comes full circle in remarkable ways, and I am so excited to take on this role and continue helping to drive positive change in our industry and beyond.
