Thomas Blankenship

AWS Owner’s representative for multiple Data Center (DC) campuses providing over 250 MW of both commercial and ML (AI) DCs for storage and computing. Delivered on hyperscale schedule and managed the relationship with internal and external stakeholders. Highlights: • Managed over $750M worth of CapEx Greenfield builds. • Team of one overseeing pre-construction, permitting, campus bid/award, schedule, construction, quality, financials, turnover to operations and closeout. • Creating processes and standards that improve the fidelity of contract schedule milestones. • Recording, developing and reporting KPIs to further improve the efficiency of accelerated build timelines. • Liquid cooling solutions including planning, construction and deployment.

Project and construction manager responsible for critical infrastructure improvement projects to optimize utilization of space, power, and cooling within data centers. These projects are outside of the scope of standard construction delivery and regular preventative maintenance tasks. This includes: • Liquid cooling deployments. Responsible for infrastructure delivery for first of its kind liquid to air cooling deployment. Deployment included design through implementation. • Conducting negotiations with general contractors and evaluate bids/proposals with detail and accuracy. • Creating construction project scope and request for proposals. • Financial analysis of construction. • Construction project management for specific initiatives aimed at increasing the resiliency of our data centers. • Constructability reviews of electrical and mechanical designs associated with the construction of new data centers or optimization of existing data centers. • Construction document management including submittal review, RFI’s, change orders, and invoicing. • Construction project quality control. • Recording and reporting key construction metrics to team members and management. • Driving teams to perform troubleshooting and root-cause failure analysis associated with equipment failures.

Served as a Naval Officer in technical and program management in the field of surface ship marine engineering, including maintenance and repair of main propulsion (gas turbine, diesel, steam, and combined diesel-gas turbine), electrical (High, Medium, and Low voltage) generation and distribution, and auxiliary machinery systems. Responsible for the management of large teams (10-100 direct reports). Focused on implementing clear organizational structures, establishing standardized communication channels, delegating authority through team leads, and developing scalable systems for performance monitoring and feedback. Managed annual budgets ranging from $50-300M for surface force modernization and capital investment projects, typically achieving a 98% on-time and on-budget project completion rate by employing critical chain management, weekly labor forecasting, and an Andon system for immediate issue resolution; conducted job walks with key stakeholders to improve communication, recognized employee contributions to boost morale, and developed leading indicators tracked weekly to proactively address potential challenges. The drive was to implement a systems approach to reducing the critical path in complex repair projects, reducing cost, and improving quality. Performed these technically complex maintenance and modernization projects on both Surface warships and nuclear Submarines.