The article is based on first part of the HRP opening keynote presentation at the Connect:DatacentersXConstruction summit 2026, presented by Øivind Breen and Lasse Jenssen. Second part will be published soon.
HRP’s core expertise lies in project management and infrastructure development.
We are consultants, but our job is to deliver results—which means we have to understand our role within the bigger picture.
It’s always tempting to use big words. Phrases like “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” feel within reach when summarizing the ambition behind Norway’s data center evolution. We know the «moonshot» cliché is tired. Yet, the sheer complexity and potential of these projects remain genuinely inspiring.
The parallel to the moon landing is purely practical: it was an incredibly complex mission that forced people to invent entirely new solutions to entirely new challenges.
We doubt President Kennedy and NASA ever considered
a standard turnkey contract for their mission.
HRP delivers complex projects that demand extraordinary quality, flexibility, management, and future-proofing. A data center represents a paradigm shift for the construction industry; it cannot be built using outdated ideals of sequential phases and rigid turnkey formats. To solve new challenges, we must question the status quo.
We will dive deeper into this in an upcoming article.
At HRP, we view building data centers
as building society itself.
Our mission is to elevate every project that shapes our communities. Our vision is nothing short of perfect: the perfect utilization of every societal resource. Naturally, this includes data centers—projects that are exceptionally resource-intensive.
Yet, data centers are vital pillars of community building because they form our digital foundation for the future. So, why dedicate all this energy to a data center? Why invest so much expertise, land, capital, and labor?
Together we are building
the brain capacity of the world.
That is the answer. Call data centers a necessary evil if you must—they do consume vast amounts of energy. But when we view them as the bedrock for new industries, groundbreaking research, public services, and nearly everything a modern society relies on, the perspective changes. Data center capacity represents our collective ability to make things happen—to make the world function.
The real question is not
if we need data centers, but how.
While this development is debated philosophically and politically, our focus remains on the critical, actionable questions:
The stakes are incredibly high. Getting it wrong is simply not an option.
