Andy Tolbert
Senior Vice President - Engineering Echelon Data Centres
Andy is a Senior Vice President of Engineering with over 30 years of experience designing, building, and operating hyperscale data centres across North America and EMEA. He leads globally distributed engineering and technical operations teams responsible for delivering mission-critical infrastructure at scale with a focus on safety, efficiency, and reliability.
His expertise spans the full data centre lifecycle, from site selection and design through commissioning, operations, and lifecycle optimisation, including large-scale deployment of white space and gigawatts of critical power capacity. He has driven innovation in areas such as thermal management, electrical redundancy, modular construction, automation, and sustainability.
Andy also operates at the intersection of strategy and execution, having built and scaled high-performance organisations and partnered with cross-functional and executive stakeholders to align infrastructure delivery with broader business objectives.
Seminars
- Exploring how grid constraints, AI-driven demand growth and regional infrastructure limits are reshaping where data centers can realistically be developed to avoid nonviable sites and stalled projects
- Assessing how grid connection queues, regulatory complexity and speculative applications impact project timelines to enable more accurate feasibility assessments in congested European markets
- Aligning site selection and development strategies with realistic power delivery horizons to improve confidence in long-term capacity planning and investment decisions
Why this workshop matters
In Europe’s most established markets, grid access has become the biggest determinant of project success. In hubs such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Dublin, data centers already account for a significant share of local electricity demand, creating growing pressure on regulators and connection approvals. This session gives teams a practical understanding of grid systems, connection queues and regulatory processes, while creating opportunities to network with peers navigating similar power and permitting challenges across Europe’s leading markets.
