 and welcome to JSA TV coming to you today from Tech Capital's International Finance Forum 2023 in London, Central London, and I'm Barb Mitchell with JSA and joining me is Nancy Lam. Solicitor with Connections Law focused on construction. Yeah, so I focus on the construction of data centers. I advise data sensor developers on their construction procurement strategy, their construction contracts, so building the data centers currently everywhere from Iceland right down to South Africa. And so this event's been interesting for you, I'm sure a lot of your clients are here and and you know we've been hearing all day about different trends impacting the industry. What are you taking from all of this? So it's been really interesting to see the ESG continues to be a really strong theme throughout sustainability and for myself how we actually start to implement that through our construction contracts to drive a more sustainable build, to meet funder requirements, to meet developer requirements. It's also been really interesting to hear the vast range of different procurement models that are appearing, so hearing today from people in Latin America where they've taken that whole design and construction process in-house and are doing it themselves, which is quite different to what I see in the Amir market where we are still in some aspects going down a traditional design and build route, but slowly working towards a more collaborative approach, but definitely not doing that whole in-house model, so that was really interesting to see the difference. And so there's certainly some themes that we pick up when we're speaking to some of our clients, but I'm curious with you when you're looking at and specific to the region you're focused on and you're thinking about how your clients are focused on constructing new data centers and what that means for you in your role, what are some of the things that you're having to overcome these days? Yeah so what was really interesting to hear was the emerging market, so looking now away from the tier one into tier two and tier three, that brings its own challenges from a construction point of view in terms of experienced contractors who can then deliver those data centers. It increases the, we've got an increased pipeline of delivery, but we have a much smaller pool of really good contractors to deliver that, so again that starts to influence the behavior of how people get into those contracts, how we contract together a more collaborative way to build relationships so that you can get some long-term relationships and start to get contractors that build how you want them to build. Sustainability falls into that for sure, but also you know it is the finance forum, I know that there's been a lot of talk about economic conditions and what that's meaning in terms of some slowdowns, and so can you comment on that? Yeah so we also see that slowdown coming through in terms of suppliers as well, so there's obviously been an increase in the sort of cost of materials which has an impact on construction, which can sometimes change the whole business model for a developer that thinks that okay it's going to cost me X to build and because of those changes in the market and then the changes in any finance funding, the cost of that, it changes how the risk profile for that project and sometimes these things have to be stored or rethought about or delayed. So yeah it's been quite interesting as well to hear how in emerging markets like Africa that market fluctuation in terms of currency volatility, which we don't necessarily see in the markets that I operate in. And so as we, I mean the days we can hear the crowds coming out here, the days almost winding down and then we're moving into the awards a little bit later today, but as you leave here and you start to think about this 2023 you know the second half of the year and what are some of the things that you're anticipating that you'll be most focused on for the remainder of this year and potentially next? So for us it will be focusing on helping our clients to deliver the pipeline that they've currently got and but what's really exciting in which I expect to kind of be focusing on over the next six to twelve months is again those emerging markets as we see our clients move from tier one, tier two and maybe into tier three in a mirror and the challenges that that bring and our Nordic clients as well, the prospect of growth in the Nordics for our clients there is huge and for me that's great because that's quite a collaborative way of contracting from a construction point of view. So it's nice to be able to be a part of that. The Nordics have a great story and you know we live talking to them because they have such a great sustainability focus as well yeah. So anything else you sort of any parting words here for us today? It's still a really great sector to be involved in and it's not going to be tailing off anytime soon I think we're going to see some changes in the terms of where we see the growth and those more established markets maybe slowing down but that's really exciting because from a construction point of view once we start to talk about emerging markets that's a different way of you know a different way of contracting a different way of constructing and that's exciting for any of us in the industry. Well Nancy thanks for joining us. It thinks that we sort of pulled you off the floor and said we'd love to chat so I appreciate it. Thanks very much and thank you viewers for tuning in to JSA TV coming to you today live from Tech Capital's International Finance Forum. Until next time see you soon.