Akanksha Barman

I have been working as a Data Center Construction Manager for 5 years now, and I absolutely love what I do. My background started in engineering and structural engineering back in India, where I worked on different kinds of commercial projects involving both design and execution. I came to the United States to pursue my master's degree at the University of Maryland College Park, with a focus on project construction management. During that time, I would drive across Loudoun County and see these big boxes everywhere. Since I'm a civil engineer, it intrigued me, so I started researching about it. I discovered that Virginia is the hub for data centers and that it was a very different industry requiring a new skill set. I thought I would leverage my expertise in this area, so I researched a lot about it. Straight out of grad school, I was able to secure a project engineer job with Amazon, and since then, my time with AWS has been great. I've delivered different designs, and my main area of expertise today is first-of-a-kind data centers. I have done the world's first-of-a-kind, most accelerated schedule for AWS, and I have developed entire playbooks and similar initiatives internally for my company. My day-to-day involves on-site issue resolution, with safety being most important to me. I handle any safety issues on-site, quality issues, mechanical failures, electrical failures, and very high severity issues. Because it's a combination of owner plus general contractor kind of role, I'm heavily engaged in on-site execution, including a lot of change management and cost estimation and management. What I love most is the site walks - I love to see what we're building and watching projects come to life in front of me. Recently, I'm doing a three-story data center, which is first of a kind in Virginia, and it's so good to see the building we've built and now putting in all the mechanical and electrical components that will become the spine of the internet. I'm currently pursuing an MBA at the University of Cumberland because I want to move towards the leadership side and strategic management, as the next growth plan would be on the strategic side.