Digital Infrastructure: Meet Matt Gurr
In this Digital Infrastructure blog series, we’re highlighting our data center design, delivery and construction experts and how they are accelerating our clients’ digital journey in the market sector.
Matt Gurr is a data center expert with 17 years of experience, including roles at Aurecon and Amazon. He now leads AECOM’s high-tech projects in Australia, focusing on innovative designs for our digital infrastructure clients. His expertise includes adapting to emerging technologies and creating flexible, future-proof data center solutions, ensuring reliability and scalability.
Tell us a bit about yourself – your role and career journey.
I’ve worked in the data center industry for about 17 years. I began my career in the United Kingdom with the Ministry of Defense, working on mission-critical airfield navigation systems and radars. I then moved to a defense technology company, where I spent four years designing radar systems. Later, I relocated to Australia and joined a specialist consultancy working on mission-critical projects with companies like Telstra and Optus. This period marked the early days of the data center industry, where I contributed by developing small telco rooms into larger data centers. After six years, I moved to Aurecon and worked on major projects, including a significant 20 megawatt power upgrade for a data center in Sydney.
Following that, I spent two years at Amazon as a technical program manager, overseeing regional and international availability zones. I now lead AECOM’s work for high tech clients in Australia. Primarily focusing on data centers, I connect with the largest clients in the industry to facilitate the exchange of technology, skills and talent between Australia and the global market.
Primarily focusing on data centers, I connect with the largest clients in the industry to facilitate the exchange of technology, skills and talent between Australia and the global market.
Talk to us about a technology or data center project that has impacted or been a major highlight of your career. How is it solving the challenges and issues our clients and communities are facing today?
A major highlight of my career was working with a colocation provider in Australia. Initially, we started with small projects, but quickly scaled up to develop their second-generation data center sites. The first site involved converting an old bank into a Tier 4 compliant data center, while the second was a modular expansion on a greenfield site. I led these two projects from the design perspective and managed the entire team, achieving the Global Design Team of the Year award from the industry body Data Center Dynamics.
These Tier 4 sites, rated by the Uptime Institute, ensured the highest level of resiliency and availability, crucial for maintaining continuity of service. This is vital for clients relying on critical computing systems, such as airport booking and check-in systems, or emergency services like police and ambulance operations. The enhanced reliability provided by these data centers means clients experience uninterrupted service, ensuring their critical systems remain operational without outages while maintaining a smooth, continuous business operation for their clients as well.
A major highlight of my career was working with a colocation provider in Australia. Initially, we started with small projects, but quickly scaled up to develop their second-generation data center sites.
What are some of the key components and considerations in designing a state-of-the-art data center facility?
While the buildings themselves are typically simple, large structures, they house very large and heavy computer racks and servers, requiring strong, rigorous structural engineering to ensure their stability and safety.
Data centers demand enormous amounts of power, often drawing as much electricity as entire urban areas so electrical engineering to ensure a reliable power supply and distribution is essential. We work with power providers to bring in high voltage power from energy authorities and convert it into a usable form for the data center. One data center project I worked on for example required 500 megawatt power supply, that’s the equivalent to the power needed for an entire city like Geelong in Victoria, Australia!
Data centers demand enormous amounts of power, often drawing as much electricity as entire urban areas so electrical engineering to ensure a reliable power supply and distribution is essential.
How do you ensure that the design of a data center meets both current needs and future scalability requirements?
The rise of AI is significantly impacting the way we work, in fact it’s impacting everything we’re doing. Many data centers now require huge upgrades. Traditional data centers relied on large fans to cool their computer processing units (CPUs,) but must now adapt to the increased power density and heat generation from the graphics processing units (GPUs) used in AI systems. Watching the trends emerging from various suppliers and manufacturers, and understanding their trajectory helps us future proof our designs and stay ahead of these technological shifts.
With the move from using CPUs to GPUs, comes an increase in power density requirements by seven or eight times. This shift necessitates a transition from large buildings with substantial power to more compact facilities with even higher power demands. Our design approach is to provide spaces that are flexible for use and can be converted into either white space or additional plant areas, allowing for higher density power, and cooling to support the changing needs of the AI revolution.