Barossa Green Sprint
PART OF THE BETTER DATA CENTRES INITIATIVE
An innovation intelligence sprint building workforce capability for Australia's next generation of sustainable data infrastructure
THE CHALLENGE
Systems-level thinking is the limiting factor
Australia is entering a critical phase in the expansion of data center infrastructure. Growth driven by AI, cloud computing, and digital sovereignty is rapidly increasing demand for compute, while exposing constraints across energy systems, water availability, planning processes, and community acceptance. As data centers become a larger share of national electricity demand, their success is increasingly shaped by factors beyond technology alone.
While investment and engineering capability continue to grow, systems-level thinking has emerged as a limiting factor. The challenge is not simply technical expertise in isolation, but the absence of integrated understanding across the disciplines shaping data center delivery. Energy, water, planning, construction, operations, and regional stakeholders often work in parallel rather than as a connected system, leading to late-stage friction, approval risk, and missed opportunities for integration.
This Barossa Green Sprint responds to that gap by grounding learning in a live Australian case and bringing experts into a shared systems conversation. Through structured dialogue and applied case discussion, the sprint surfaces how different systems interact, where assumptions break down, and where better coordination and integration models are required.
In doing so, the sprint helps shift thinking from siloed problem-solving to integrated systems design, supporting the delivery of data centers that are technically robust, socially credible, and regionally integrated.
WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO ACHIEVE
Ambition
To establish an early-response, cross-sector capability cohort able to identify, assess, and co-develop Better Data Centre Precincts in Australia beginning with Barossa Green as a live Proof of Concept.
Specifically, the ambition is to:
- • Build shared system literacy across the disciplines shaping data center delivery
- • Develop individual capability in precinct-scale data center design and decision-making
- • Translate expert insight into practical frameworks that can inform future projects
Purpose
The sprint uses the Barossa Green precinct as a live Australian case to:
- • Ground discussion in real constraints and trade-offs
- • Stress-test assumptions about workforce capability early
- • Surface emerging skills and roles needed to design, build, and operate next-generation data center precincts
In doing so, the sprint builds individual and collective workforce capability, while producing insights that can be translated into national guidance for better data center development.
SPRINT STRUCTURE
Five capability areas, five live sessions
The Barossa Green Sprint is structured around five interconnected capability areas that collectively shape how Better Data Centres are designed, approved, built, and operated. Each area focuses on the skills, roles, and system understanding required to deliver better outcomes in practice.
Circularity & Precinct Activation
Co-location, social license, regional value creation
📅February 17, 12:00pm
Planning & Approvals
Regulatory pathways, community engagement, approval risk
📅February 19, 12:00pm
Power Solutions
Renewable integration, storage, grid constraints, system resilience
📅February 24, 12:00pm
Thermal & Water Systems
Cooling, water positivity, heat reuse, circular infrastructure
📅February 26, 12:00pm
Modular Construction & Delivery
Speed-to-market, prefabrication, supply chains, workforce readiness
📅March 3, 12:00pm
HOW SESSIONS WORK
60 minutes, three structured segments
Expert Challenge Framing
20 minutes
Two external experts introduce the key challenges in the focus area with an emphasis on real constraints and trade-offs, capability gaps and workforce implications, and what is currently difficult, misaligned, or underdeveloped. Short provocations rather than formal presentations.
Barossa Green Case Discussion
30 minutes
Live discussion grounded in the Barossa Green precinct. Barossa Green expert present throughout. Experts interrogate the case by testing assumptions, exploring system interactions, and surfacing practical implications for delivery and workforce capability. This segment ensures learning is applied, not theoretical.
Group Discussion & Reflection
10 minutes
Open questions from participants, cross-disciplinary reflection, and capture of key insights, tensions, and emerging capability needs.
This format prioritizes shared understanding, honest discussion, and applied insight, creating the conditions to surface workforce capability needs early and accurately.
PARTICIPANT MODEL
Small, deliberate, cross-disciplinary
Sprint Parameters
20 participants (maximum) — A deliberately small cohort to maximize signal, depth, and trust
Invitation-only cohort — Participants are selected to ensure cross-disciplinary balance and relevance
5 Live Sessions — One session per focus area, building shared system understanding over time
60 minutes per session — Structured for focused discussion, not presentations
Chatham House rules (default) — Contributions are confidential unless participants opt in to attribution
Why this matters
Participation in the Barossa Green Sprint involves a clear commitment to attend all five sessions, actively contribute expertise, and engage across disciplines and systems.
This format is designed to create the conditions for honest, applied, and high-value insight, enabling experts to engage with real constraints and contribute to workforce capability development that can be translated into future projects.
Commitment:
✅ Attend all five sessions
✅ Actively contribute expertise
✅ Engage across disciplines
WHAT THE SPRINT PRODUCES
Building knowledge infrastructure for the industry
The Barossa Green Sprint is designed to produce practical, transferable insights that help define what workforce capability is actually required to deliver Better Data Centres in Australia.
Documented Systems Logic
A shared understanding of how energy, water, cooling, planning, construction, operations, and precinct activation interact in practice.
Identified Capability Gaps
Clear articulation of where skills, roles, or coordination are currently thin, misaligned, or missing.
Emerging Role Definition
Insight into new or evolving roles required across the data center lifecycle.
Cross-Disciplinary Interfaces
Visibility on where handovers, dependencies, and capability overlaps create delivery risk or opportunity.
Translation Beyond the Sprint
Sprint insights will be synthesized into a public Better Data Centres Knowledge Node, used to inform future Innovation Intelligence work, and shared through broader industry and policy conversations, including Climate Action Week.
KNOWLEDGE INFRASTRUCTURE
From sprint insights to public knowledge
Econome and Climatalist are partnering to create a shared, curated knowledge base that turns sprint insights into a trusted, interactive knowledge layer.
The process works in three steps: (1) Capture knowledge from the sprint, (2) Organize and make it discoverable and interactive via AI, (3) Extend impact as durable infrastructure for the entire initiative.
This transforms sprint insights into reusable public value, makes knowledge discoverable for stakeholders not directly involved, and kickstarts a knowledge node combining know-how from multiple contributors.
Step 1: Capture Knowledge
Inputs and outputs of the sprint are captured and inputted into the platform
Step 2: Access & Interact
Knowledge is organized, digestible content is created, and AI makes it discoverable and interactive
Step 3: Extend Impact
Knowledge lives on past the conclusion of the sprint and seeds the start of a larger knowledge node centered around Better Data Centres
Knowledge Node Flow
Capture → Organize → Share
BETTER DATA CENTRES INITIATIVE
Innovation Intelligence upstream
The Barossa Green Sprint sits within the Innovation Intelligence function of the Better Data Centres Initiative.
Innovation Intelligence is the upstream engine of the initiative, focused on building shared understanding before solutions are piloted, funded, or scaled. Its role is to surface emerging risks, capability gaps, and system-level constraints early, while there is still time to respond to them.
By positioning workforce capability development at the front end of the Better Data Centres Initiative, the sprint helps ensure that future projects are not constrained by skills, coordination, or system understanding that could have been built earlier.
What Sprint Informs:
- • The design of future innovation challenges and pilot projects
- • How workforce and capability needs are anticipated earlier in project lifecycles
- • Public conversations and showcases, including Climate Action Week
JOIN THE SPRINT
Will you rise to the challenge?
Australia is entering a defining moment for its digital infrastructure. As AI workloads accelerate and national energy, water and planning pressures intensify, the country needs new models for how data centers are conceived, integrated and built. The Better Data Centres initiative and the Barossa Green Sprint offer a practical, collaborative way to design those models that is grounded in a real site, real constraints, and a shared ambition to get this right.
By joining this effort, you become part of the team shaping how Australia can scale AI infrastructure sustainably, competitively and responsibly. Together, we can build the systems, relationships and ideas that position Australia as a global leader in Better Data Centre precinct development.
Participation is invite-only. Expressions of interest will be reviewed and participants selected for cross-disciplinary balance.
Be part of building Australia's next generation of Better Data Centres
This sprint runs February 17 - March 3, 2026. Expressions of interest are open now.
Questions? Email us at hello@econome.co