| POSITION | CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER |
| REPORTS TO | John Lucas, Senior Director of Data Strategies |
| DATE | December 2023 |
| MORE INFORMATION | https://rowandigital/ |
| SEARCH CONTACT | Andy Lane – CFS Partners
M +1 414 807 4085 |
ROWAN DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE
Rowan Digital Infrastructure (https://rowan.digital/) is a data center focused energy and infrastructure services firm owned and managed by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (www.quinbrook.com). Rowan is the operational business platform for the Rowan ‘green data center’ investment thematic devised by Quinbrook, a recognized global leader in the energy transition. Through a number of industry leading investments and initiatives, the firm is helping to directly support the parallel achievement of ESG impact and material progress towards net zero emissions targets across the US, UK and Australia. For its efforts over 2022, Quinbrook was recognized as Energy Investor of the Year for North America by Infrastructure Investor and Global Sponsor of the Year by Project Finance International.
Rowan develops next-generation data center campuses designed to deliver turn-key land and energy (‘powered land’) solutions to hyperscale and multi-tenant data center owner-operators. Rowan’s scope of services focuses on land acquisition, site development, utility interconnection and fiber planning, among others. The team at Rowan has significant experience with industrial site selection, hyperscale data center design and development, energy procurement and management, and dark fiber network construction. Rowan’s energy-first approach creates industry leading value propositions in speed to service and total cost of ownership for data center operators.
Rowan has identified and is actively developing multiple, strategically located sites across the US to host next-generation, mission critical, hyperscale data centers. Rowan aims to design and configure each site to deliver sustained and long-term competitive land and power cost advantages and assist hyperscale data center operators in meeting their acute need for incremental capacity, accelerating carbon reduction in their operations and progress towards their ‘net zero’ targets.
Quinbrook brings a unique combination of expertise from project site identification, wholesale power markets, fiber, renewable power project development and project financing, and importantly data center site selection in the US. Rowan seeks to identify and develop strategic sites for hosting new data centers focused on procuring low-cost renewable power with related competitive advantages in operational schedule, land cost, fiber access, water supply and back- up power resiliency. Rowan can also develop, construct and own, ‘build to suit’ facilities leased to data center operators under long term agreements.
Through various strategies, Rowan can offer below-market power supply rates to data center customers at certain Rowan sites combined with fully funded backup generation-as-a service options. Rowan can design and configure each site to deliver sustained and long-term competitive land and power access advantages, while providing renewable power supply solutions assisting data center operators to meet their sustainability and ‘net zero’ commitments. Rowan has assembled a substantial pipeline of sites in Tier 1 markets across the United States in various stages of development to host next-generation, mission critical, green data centers powered by renewables. Rowan’s first site at Temple in Texas is one of the largest multi-tenant data center campuses in the US with a hosting capacity up to 800MW.
“Demand for high-performance computing and data storage is expanding at an extraordinary pace, as is the need for those resources to be powered by renewable energy,” said David Scaysbrook, co-founder and managing partner of Quinbrook. “We are looking forward to combining our experience in renewable energy project development, construction and investment with Rowan’s specialist expertise in data center siting and structuring of low-cost power and utilities solutions, to address the acute demand for next generation, hyperscale data centers delivering a net zero carbon footprint.”
Added Scaysbrook, “As the scale of the energy and water consumption and resultant environmental impact of data centers expands, the provenance of their energy supplies and the carbon intensity of those supplies has become a critical requirement in site selection. Recent public announcements made by the hyperscale operators indicate commitments to using 100% renewable energy and to reducing their carbon footprint significantly by 2030 and beyond. Rowan is dedicated to the conviction that renewable power supply and site selection are now integrally related and completely symbiotic.”
ROWAN LEADERSHIP TEAM
CULTURE
Seeking ‘Best Practice’ Stewardship and ESG Risk Mitigation – Rowan’s core goal is inherently driven toward Net Zero Climate goals and building real asset investments that deliver enduring carbon emissions reduction. Our focus on sustainability, ethics and stewardship supports and extends well beyond this, to our broad stakeholder population and the many communities in which our businesses operate. We are conscious of our impacts on society at large, through job creation and preservation, greater community engagement, increased team diversity, promotion of a business culture supporting principled and ethical behavior and importantly, reduced environmental outcomes from our daily operations.
Environmental Stewardship, Jobs and Community Impact – Climate and emissions reduction are central to Rowan’s purpose, and to meeting the 2015 Paris Agreement commitments to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels”. Renewable energy also has a much broader responsibility to minimize environmental harm and we endeavor to support the environments in which our assets reside. Job creation, job displacement and retraining, community health and wellbeing, human rights and modern slavery are all central considerations in the growth of long-term infrastructure development. By building assets, Rowan is able to create new jobs, support areas that may have suffered job displacement and can drive better environmental justice, provide better affordability, security and reliability of energy and work with communities who are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Beyond our impact on our immediate communities, Rowan is focused on our supply chains, seeking to use our influence to cease modern slavery, a complex issue across many industries and regions today.
Human Rights policy, Supplier Code of Conduct, Modern Slavery Management Framework, Responsible Contractor Policy, and Corporate Social Responsibility Policy documentation available via – https://rowandigit.al/esg-and-impact/
ROWAN PROJECTS
Rowan has identified, secured, and is actively developing the priority sites described below:
PERCHERON – Single Tenant Campus
OREGON
Percheron is situated in the Columbia River Gorge area of Oregon, a primary fiber corridor and a data center hub. The multi-building data center campus will be situated on 275 acres, a portion of which will be set aside for preservation. The campus is adjacent to high-voltage power infrastructure and right-of way and will offer a notable power capacity of 300 MW by mid-2027. The site enjoys proximity to multiple fiber providers within a 20-mile radius, and water served from the nearby Port of Morrow.
MORIAH – Multi Tenant Campus
TEXAS
Moriah represents Rowans’ first operating asset. This campus is in Temple, Texas on a 35-acre site. This strategic venture in the heart of Texas offers competitive energy rates and benefits from its proximity to a diverse array of nearby fiber networks, including Fiberlight, Level 3, Telia, Zayo, redIT, and AT&T.
FREDERICK – Data Center Project
MARYLAND
Frederick, located within the 2,000-acre development near Frederick, Maryland, is planned as an initial multi-building 300 MW campus. Furthermore, the campus plan incorporates expansion, which will lead to a doubling of the building size and an increase in power capacity to over 450MW. It boasts near-term power interconnection dates, competitive power pricing, a range of fiber options, and water and wastewater infrastructure. With advantageous General/Light Industrial zoning in place, Frederick is poised to deliver the initial 300 MW by July 2025, providing a high value alternative to the congested Ashburn corridor.
CINCO – Data Center Project
TEXAS
Project Cinco is a multi-phase site in the San Antonio, TX metro region with an ability to accommodate significant MW load capacity. The project also includes a Market Based Rate and potential for infrastructure hardening and back up generation. Located within major hyperscale availability zones, combined with renewable energy sources provides a great opportunity for savings.
Additional progress details available to qualified and interested parties.
Quinbrook was established in July 2015 by David Scaysbrook and Rory Quinlan (the “Founders”) who have invested in renewables for over two decades and in power infrastructure more broadly since the early 1990s. As fund managers, they have led investment teams and portfolio companies that have invested over USD 3 billion of equity in over 250 low carbon, renewable, storage and grid support projects covering a wide spectrum of technologies.
Quinbrook brings disciplined management of risk and return to each of the origination, development, and construction risk stages of infrastructure asset creation. The firm boasts a proven track record of successful business building, achieving significant platform scale in rapid time frames from earliest start-up phases. Examples include Scout Clean Energy (www.scoutcleanenergy.com) and Primergy Solar (www.primergysolar.com). Quinbrook targets markets and sectors where they see an early mover advantage and where scaled portfolios can be built efficiently by the Quinbrook investment team.
Quinbrook has a broad investment mandate to deliver ‘value-add’ investment returns from deploying innovative strategies in new infrastructure asset creation within defined thematics. This approach incorporates both ‘greenfield’ and ‘brownfield’ stage investing in project assets and the building of new vertically integrated businesses that take on defined strategies identified by Quinbrook’s investment team.
IN THE NEWS
October 2020 – Quinbrook Joint Venture to Power Renewable Data Centers in the US
February 2021 – Quinbrook’s Low Carbon Power Fund Awarded ESG Investment Fund of the Year by ESG Investing
October 2021 – Quinbrook, Birch Infrastructure’s 1.8GW data centre masterplan goes ahead with first $300m going into Texas hyperscale facility
October 2021 – Quinbrook’s Commitment to ESG Recognized by IJ Global 2021 ESG Awards
February 2022 – Quinbrook Hires Tech-Industry Renewables Veteran John Lucas to Lead Data Center Strategies
March 2022 – Green IT Is Having a Watershed Moment
April 2022 – Rowan Green Data granted zoning approval for 500MW campus in Temple, Texas
July 2022 – Quinbrook Launches $2.5 Billion ‘Supernode’ Data Storage Project in Brisbane
January 2023 – Quinbrook Expands Rowan Green Data Center Platform
March 2023 – Quinbrook Earns Trifecta of Awards For Excellence In Infrastructure Investing in 2022
Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (“Quinbrook”), a specialist global investment manager focused exclusively on the infrastructure needed for the energy transition, today announced that 2022 was a capstone year for the firm. David Scaysbrook – “We are honored and grateful to Infrastructure Investor, IJGlobal, and Project Finance International for their recognitions –
- Project Finance International (PFI) Awards 2022 named Quinbrook Global Sponsor of the Year
- Infrastructure Investor Awards 2022 named the Gemini Solar + Storage Project North America’s Energy Deal of the Year
- IJGlobal Americas Awards 2022 named Gemini Solar + Storage Project the Renewable Energy Solar & Storage Deal of the Year for North America
April 2023 – Quinbrook Starts Construction of UK’s Largest Solar + Battery Storage Project
QUINBROOK LEADERSHIP TEAM
An industry seasoned leadership team based in Houston, New York, London and the Gold Coast with decades of experience and milestone transactions in independent power project development, construction and operations, M&A, energy and commodities trading, and asset management across both conventional technologies and a diverse array of renewable power, grid support and storage technologies.
CULTURE
Quinbrook is an entrepreneurial investor and innovator specializing in the value-add infrastructure segments underpinning the energy transition. Quinbrook aims to foster a culture, both within its own firm and within its managed portfolio companies, that exhibits respect for others, the assumption of personal responsibility, the deployment of initiative and the encouragement of creative thinking that stems from collaboration among a diverse team of professionals displaying the highest standards of ethical behavior. Valued behaviors incorporate the progressive earning of trust from others, self-awareness, humility, and constant vigilance around financial and operational risk. Thoughtful risk taking is both promoted and tolerated within well-reasoned investment strategies. Quinbrook is also a committed and focused ESG impact investor who believes that ESG credentials are best demonstrated by facts and measurable outcomes rather than marketing platitudes. The firm’s authentic conviction to ‘do good to the best of our collective abilities’ lays behind the many ESG related awards and peer recognitions Quinbrook has received to date.
ESG AWARDS
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Reporting to the Board of Directors, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is responsible and accountable for formulating and communicating the vision of Rowan’s during a crucial growth, success, and value creation chapter. Rowan is currently developing multiple concurrent powered land campuses, each of which offer up to 800MW of critical load. The leasing activity and interest of Hyperscale customers on these existing campuses has grown at the rate to compel Rowan to resume looking at additional campuses across the US.
As Interim CEO John Lucas puts it, “we’re in an enviable position of being too successful too fast.” This statement in light of bringing a precedent setting and progressive solution to the world’s leading and most demanding customers at a time when their data center capacity demands require entirely new orders of magnitudes. Rowan’s “power first” campus development thesis is hitting the market at precisely the right time as a new era of IT infrastructure architecture is required to support the compute needs of AI, Machine Learning, IoT, and Metaverse on top of historical internet infrastructure demands.
From this vision the CEO will develop and implement the appropriate delivery methodology to achieve target leasing, revenue, asset and campus optimization, and profit goals. The CEO will prepare monthly reports measured against plans and adjust based on the on-going needs of the business. The CEO will be responsible for supporting the business with the right talent and will strategize and participate with the management team in the areas of sales, operations, customer relations, industry partnerships, supplier relations, and specific challenges in the day-to-day business.
This CEO will be a durable and credible executive with leadership characteristics with positive inertia to instill a vision, empower a culture, and continue Rowan’s commercial momentum in the market from both a sales and financing standpoint. We are looking for an exceptional executive leader with a track record of leading the commercialization of a purpose driven platform to deliver next generation solutions that solve increasingly complex industry challenges and demands.
More specifically, the CEO will:
– Successfully execute the business plan through alignment with the Board investors, and senior management.
– Identify and capture emerging market opportunities that leverage current approaches, capabilities, and expertise that enhance the company’s value.
– Provide the overall leadership, acumen, action and working environment necessary to build a world-class enterprise which provides true customer value and market adoption.
– Clearly articulate Rowan’s unique ‘power first’ go-to-market strategy and competitive advantage with customers and investors to ensure appropriate valuations
– Establish realistic annual performance goals for the business as a whole and each of the contributing functional executive parts.
– Work in close cooperation with the commercial team to determine the most progressive and appropriate message to the vast segments of the market Rowan collaborates with.
– Capital planning, financial analysis, and business performance variance reporting to the board on a frequent basis.
– Manage profitability and operating expenses within budget and reports monthly, quarterly, and yearly variances.
– Continuously position the company for maximum valuation contingent on the digital infrastructure capital market conditions in preparation for opportunistic event conditions.
– Identify, evaluate, and establish strong relationships with the capital market, partnerships, resources, and alliances necessary to succeed in current and future geographic markets.
– Develop and support the company’s value chain integrated strategy that supports the company’s growth strategy.
– Recruit, train, develop, coach, mentor, manage and promote high performing and contributing talent across the organization.
– Participate in major customer proposals and presentations.
– Act as a key strategist to company sales and marketing in order to formulate strategies and programs, identify resources, and resolve crisis situations effectively.
– Conduct regular communications with the management, sales, operations, and technical team to ensure empowerment and alignment of the company to Rowan’s core focus.
– Continuously advocate Rowan’s core value proposition across the digital infrastructure market for sustainable and progressive clean data center development solutions.
KEY QUALIFYING CRITERIA
Event – Demonstrated value creation with a progressive, formative growth stage, capital intensive organization resulting in a liquidity event (recapitalization, strategic sale, IPO)
Infrastructure Development – History of infrastructure asset growth – data centers, fiber, renewables, industrial, or other, closely related to clean energy and digital infrastructure.
Growth – Demonstrated success and expertise leading the strategy and execution of integrating geographically dispersed people, process, products, systems, and cultures.
Execution – History of collaboration, organization, delegation, empowerment, and alignment of organizations to perform at or above targets.
Commercialization – A strategic partner to the CCO ensuring leasing performance relative to target via market position, ecosystem relationships, and appropriate resource allocation.
Customer Experience – Success driving and maintaining revenue growth and retention via close attention to diverse customer requirements and positive outcome orientation.
Entrepreneur – A creative and humble thought leader who listens first and remains eager to run lean, test, empower, delegate, explore, fail fast, and innovate progressively.
Culture – A passionate, high integrity servant leader and culture creator with the gravitas necessary to align a formative growth stage organization’s core business purpose and focus.
Leadership – History of inspiring high performing talent toward transformative business successes, including, at times making unpopular decisions in the company’s best interests
WHY CONSIDER THIS OPPORTUNITY WITH ROWAN?
Precedent – Rowan is the latest thematic strategy to be launched by Quinbrook following precedent setting successful growth ventures and transactions with Scout Clean Energy, Primergy Solar, and Project Gemini.
Financial Strength – Quinbrook is a global, award winning, investor and developer of progressive innovations that are setting precedent for the clean energy transition across their portfolio.
Impact – Rowan’s charter is growth and value creation from day one. The CEO is directly accountable for visibility to QIP’s investment, development, and operational approaches and how those translate to Rowan’s value creation.
Progressive – Rowan’s unique ‘power first’ business model and value proposition is further ahead in meeting hyperscale market demands for clean capacity development than the rest of the market. Leadership requires capitalizing on this unique chapter.
Creativity – Rowan offers the opportunity to sit at the leading edge of multiple digital infrastructure market sectors colliding which requires innovative approaches to achieve progressive outcomes that benefit the whole ecosystem.
Culture – Rowan is a mission-focused, ambitious, and collegial organization working in the construct of an ethical and purpose driven fund supporting a portfolio of partner companies
COMPENSATION & BENEFITS
SEARCH PROCESS
Following a thorough exchange of information including increasing disclosures on Rowan, Quinbrook, project portfolio, resume, and Key Qualifying Criteria, CFS Partners anticipates recommending a short list of candidates in December 2023. Finalists will meet with select members of the Quinbrook & Rowan Senior Leadership Teams. The selected finalist will be presented with a compelling and competitive offer contingent on background check and positive references.