The moment has arrived to reveal the winners of the 2024 edition of the annual DCD Awards !
DCD is delighted to honor the most talented people and the best data center projects in the industry.
As ever, hundreds of entries were submitted by contestants from across the world. An independent panel of data center experts selected the finalists for the open entry categories, and determined which was worthy of an award.
Today, the awards were presented in a gala ceremony - and the winners are listed here
Click here to see the names of all the finalists .
Edge Data Center Project of the Year
Winner: Scale Computing Royal Farms Edge Computing Deployment (USA)
As AI use cases continue to proliferate, real-time, decentralized processing has never been more important. This award recognizes projects that can demonstrate a unique and strategic approach as to how a successful Edge deployment is designed, set up and operated.
Royal Farms, a convenience store and fuel chain with over 300 locations in the US, wanted an Edge solution that optimized operations and enhanced customer experience. The Scale Computing platform has accomplished this, with a scalable platform that reduced installation times by 90 percent and reduced overall management time and licensing costs by 75 percent.
Category sponsor: VIAVI Solutions
Asia Pacific Data Center Project of the Year
Winner: Firmus Metal International in collaboration with ST Telemedia Global Data Centres
This award recognizes projects from across Asia Pacific that have pushed the boundaries of data center design and construction over the past year.
Firmus’ Sustainable Metal Cloud’s HyperCube deployment at ST Telemedia Global Data Centres in Singapore, introduced innovative immersion cooling technology, reducing energy consumption by 50 percent and achieving a PUE of 1.02. The project supports high-density AI workloads, demonstrating scalability and sustainability in next-generation data centers.
Category sponsor: Huawei
Middle East & Africa Data Center Project of the Year
Winner: iXAfrica Data Centres in collaboration with Schneider Electric
This award is dedicated to projects from across the Middle East & Africa that have deployed innovative new technologies and novel engineering, design, and construction strategies throughout the build process.
iX Africa Data Centre has transformed data center services in Kenya and East Africa, creating jobs and driving regional growth. With over 35 Kenyan staff employed directly and a strong focus on local suppliers, the project delivers a lasting impact on both the industry and the community.
Category sponsor: Stulz
Latin America Data Center Project of the Year
Winner: Scala Data Centers Phase 2 of the Tamboré Campus (Brazil)
This award recognizes projects from across Latin America that have demonstrated significant innovation in their data center design and build.
Scala's 24MW IT capacity data center combines innovation, energy-efficiency and AI-ready design to deliver resilience and sustainability for next-generation data center projects across Latin America.
Category sponsor: Hyphen
North American Data Center Project of the Year
Winner: ECL MV1 Off-Grid Data Center in Mountain View (California)
This award recognizes projects from across North America that have pushed the boundaries of data center design and construction.
ECL’s MV1 facility in Mountain View, California, is the world’s first off-grid, hydrogen-powered data center. Designed for AI with up to 75kW per rack and a PUE of 1.1, it sets a new standard for sustainable, high-density infrastructure.
Category sponsor: ZincFive
European Data Center Project of the Year
Winner: Green Mountain OSL-Hamar TikTok Data Center (Hamar, Norway)
This award is dedicated to projects from across Europe that have deployed the most novel engineering, design and construction strategies.
Green Mountain's OSL-Hamar data center in Norway is a 90MW facility and Europe's largest colocation data center. It was built at record speed for social media giant TikTok and features 100 percent renewable energy from hydropower.
Category sponsor: Global Commissioning
Mission Critical Tech Innovation Award
Winner: Centersquare Liquid Cooling Showcase delivered by MiCiM
This award recognizes excellence in cutting-edge, mission-critical technology solutions applied to the data center environment.
Centersquare's Liquid Cooling Showcase redefines data center cooling for the AI age. This modular facility demonstrates next-gen liquid cooling technologies, offering customers and partners hands-on access for testing, education, and development.
Category sponsor: CBRE
Energy Impact Award
Winner: T.Loop
This award recognizes data center projects or technological innovations where the primary goal has been the reduction of energy consumption and/or carbon usage.
T.Loop’s vision is to place data centers in every commercial property—office blocks, industrial sites, or shopping centers. By tapping into unused grid capacity, they are driving a true circular economy and uncovering power potential in key city markets, making data centers more accessible, efficient, and sustainable.
Category sponsor: RED Engineering
Environmental Impact Award
Winner: Intel
This award recognizes data center projects or technological innovations within the data center where the primary goal has been to reduce the overall environmental impact of a data center
Intel’s D2 P1 data center achieved LEED platinum data center status without the need for major capital improvements, demonstrating that high levels of environmental performance, energy savings, and low embodied carbon can be achieved even for a complex facility and timeline.
Category sponsor: Equans Data Centers
Community Impact Award
Winner: Applied Digital
This award recognizes projects or collaborations with the primary goal being societal and community development and growth, where corporate aims have been aligned with wider social and cultural responsibility.
Applied Digital transforms Ellendale, North Dakota, by combining AI-ready data centers with community projects, from housing initiatives to partnerships with local organizations, proving IT innovation thrives with community enrichment.
Category sponsor: Eland Cables
Data Center Workforce Initiative of the Year
Winner: Microsoft
This award recognizes initiatives which have helped to close the workforce gap and attract new talent in the forms of upskilling programs, educational schemes, diversity & inclusion initiatives and many more.
The Microsoft Datacenter Academy (DCA) initiative, launched in 2019, focuses on workforce development by offering training, certification, and job placement in tech. Through partnerships with educational institutions and local organizations, the program has expanded its reach, supporting 5,482 students, by creating pathways to employment and significantly enhancing community engagement and economic development.
Category sponsor: DCD>Academy
Editor’s Choice Award
Winner: K2 Strategic Malaysia JHR01-02 Data Center Project (Johor Bahru, Malaysia)
The DCD editorial team have shortlisted their favorite projects from this year's outstanding entrants, and chose their favorite project of the year to crown the Editor's Choice award recipient.
The DCD editorial team were impressed with how K2 Strategic deployed two 40MW data centers within just nine months. A prefabricated modular approach was combined with an innovative non-water, air-cooled fan-wall, delivered high flexibility, reliability and efficiency with a decentralized and distributed architecture - opening a new chapter in the construction of AI data centers.
Data Center Construction Team of the Year
Winner: Scala Data Centers Phase 2 of the Tamboré Campus (Brazil)
This award recognizes teams that have overcome regulatory, supply chain, technical or other major challenges during the construction process, to deliver projects on-time and on-budget.
Scala's remarkable construction team, responsible for building the largest data center campus in Latin America, managed six major projects simultaneously, including a new substation, while maintaining high safety standards. The team overcame challenges through innovation and excellence, consolidating the campus with four operational data centers.
Category sponsor: Cleveland Cable Company
Data Center Operations Team of the Year
Winner: Elea Data Centers Operations Team: Ensuring Uptime During the Rio Grande do Sul Floods (Brazil)
This award recognizes teams that have demonstrated great organization, coordination and dedication in addressing a significant change in a mission-critical environment.
Elea Data Centers demonstrated operational excellence when faced with the flooding in Porto Alegre in May 2024, ensuring service continuity and responding to the urgent demands of clients and the community. The company stood out for its team spirit of collaboration, resilience, and adaptability, as well as the inspiring leadership of Chairman Alessandro Lombardi.
Category sponsor: Mitsubishi Electric
Young Mission-Critical Engineer of the Year
Winner: Laura Munoz Becerra, Connectivity Engineer, Meta
This is one of the most enduring categories of the DCD>Awards, hard fought every year, giving the judges no easy task to determine the winner.
The data center community needs the next generation of talent to drive its continued growth and evolution, and this award recognizes young engineers that have demonstrated successful project leadership and delivery, and have burgeoning profiles that belie their age.
With a degree in mechanical engineering, Laura joined the highly competitive Meta DEC Gold program, where she discovered her passion and talent for telecommunications. In just a few years, Laura has grown from a talented engineering graduate into a key leader driving innovative solutions at the forefront of Meta’s mission-critical infrastructure, consistently demonstrating ingenuity, innovation, lateral thinking, and calmness under pressure throughout her work.
Category sponsor: Kirby Group Engineering
Data Center Woman of the Year
Winner: Dame Dawn Childs, CEO, Pure Data Centres Group
This award celebrates a visionary who has not only pushed the boundaries of technology but also paved the way for inclusivity and innovation. Her unyielding commitment to building or operating robust, scalable, and sustainable digital infrastructure has empowered businesses, connected communities, and transformed the way we think.
Candidates for this award have been nominated by the industry, with the winner being selected by a specially convened group of judges.
An accomplished engineer and operator, Dame Dawn Childs is the CEO of Pure Data Centres. She is known for her dedication to promoting STEM education for young people across the UK and addressing the gender imbalance within the world of engineering. She is also a champion of driving collaboration across stakeholders within the data centre industry to meet the growing challenges of rapidly increasing data consumption, the subsequent demand for delivering more data centres and the need to do this sustainably with the planet in mind.
Category sponsor: Anord Mardix
Outstanding Contribution to the Data Center Industry
Winner: Andrew Jay, CBRE
Every industry has its champions, thought leaders and pioneers who will be revered for their achievements for years to come. The previous winners of this Award are all distinguished by their extensive service to the data center industry, and have in some way changed the way in which the industry looks at key challenges or key opportunities.
This year's winner, Andrew Jay, is an Executive Director within the Global Corporate Services division based in London. He is head of the EMEA Data Centres team which is the World’s largest data centre real estate advisory group.
He is recognised as one of Europe’s leading advisors to the data centre industry and benefits from in-depth knowledge of all aspects of the technical real estate market including development, leasing and corporate data centre dynamics.
Category sponsor and headline sponsor: Mercury Engineering
