About Us

Ian Perryment

Chief Business Officer

Ian Perryment joined Ark in December 2012, from HP Defence and Security. Prior to this, he was CFO of the Atlas Consortium, delivering the Ministry of Defence DII (Defence Information Infrastructure) programme, and Finance Manager with the NAAFI, a multinational providing services to the British armed forces.

Ian is a chartered accountant, having trained with PwC, including a two-and-a-half-year assignment in Australia with the Transaction Services team specialising in due diligence, initial public offerings and financial modelling.

Rob Silvester

Chief Revenue Officer

Rob joined Ark in 2018 to drive the growth of the company’s real estate strategy. He has over 30 years’ experience in the UK and European Real Estate capital markets industry as an advisor or principal and has executed over £2Bn of transactions across multiple geographies and asset classes. Rob is a chartered surveyor, has held senior positions at CBRE, King Sturge (now JLL) and advised the UK’s leading real estate institutions on Capital Markets transactions.

As Chief Revenue Officer, Rob has strategic responsibility for Site Acquisition, Planning/Permitting, Power, Sales and Ark’s Crown Hosting Joint Venture with The UK Government.

Andy Garvin

Chief Operating Officer

Andy joined the Company in 2009 and now heads up the Construction Team, responsible for the co-ordination and management of all data centre construction activities across the Ark estate. A civil engineer by training, Andy has over 15 years of experience within the construction industry and has successfully lead many multi-million pound data centre build projects with a total value well over £300 million.

Andy joined Ark from Black and Veatch where he was involved in both designing and constructing many large critical engineering projects across Energy, Water and Telecommunications sectors.

Huw Owen

Chief Executive Officer

Huw joined Ark in November 2012 as Chief Executive to lead a new Management Team following the recapitalisation of the company. He has held key roles at a number of organisations, including BT Global Services and HP Defence and Security. Other roles in his extensive career include Chief Executive of the Atlas Consortium, delivering the Ministry of Defence DII (Defence Information Infrastructure) programme.

Huw also worked for the Asia Foundation, formulating and driving national reform programmes in Cambodia, as well as advising the United Nations on their efforts in Central Asia. Before this, he served with the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, latterly as a Detective Inspector.

Wesley Brookes

Commercial Sales & Marketing Director

Wes has 20 years of career experience in technology sales, and for the last 9 years has been working across multiple data centre sales & marketing roles including 7 years with Ark, culminating in him leading the Ark sales & marketing team.

In this time he has played a major role in all key deals with customers across our Enterprise, Cloud, and Hyperscale products, developing our partner business channel that has seen Ark grow into a world leading, socially responsible data centre provider and is passionate about sharing Ark’s story with our current and future customers.

Lindsey Sherar

Director of People, Leadership & Change

Lindsey graduated in 2015 after completing her LLB Law with Business Degree at the University of Brighton and joined Ark shortly after, in June 2015. Since joining, Lindsey has completed her Advanced CIPD in Human Resource Management and used her experience during her sandwich degree course to assist in creating a culture focused on our people.

Lindsey is responsible for ensuring that we look after everyone intellectually, physically, spiritually and emotionally. She continues to focus on personal development and task performance by using training to develop all our skills and knowledge, in addition to ensuring the right people join Ark through effective recruitment and selection processes. Lindsey supported Ark in becoming a High Performance Organisation in 2017 and achieving Investors in People Platinum in 2017 and 2020.

James Owen

Client Experience Director

James joined Ark in 2013 and is responsible for end-to-end client experience covering account management, project delivery and service management. He has over 10 years’ IT services experience, specialising in financial services, defence and the public sector industries. Before joining Ark, James worked at Hewlett-Packard, developing through the programme management discipline before supporting UK senior leadership with strategic planning, transformation and business operations.

Tony Singh

Commercial Director

Tony leads our in-house Legal and Compliance team whose remit, in addition to legal advice, covers insurance, risk management, governance and compliance activities including our quality management systems, environmental licensing and ISO certifications. Tony also assists with contract negotiations and supports Ark’s sales construction and operations function.

Tony joined Ark in September 2014 from Eversheds where he was an Associate in the Commercial practice group with a focus on railway, telecoms and IT contracts as well as pro bono activities.

Louise Methven

Compliance Director

Louise joined Ark in 2016 and is responsible for leading our compliance team whose remit includes Cyber Security across all relevant standards such as PCI DSS, Cyber Essentials Plus & ISO 27001, Health & Safety, ISO Management Systems, ISO certifications as well as our Licencing and permitting activities. Before joining Ark, Louise has over 25 years experience working within the telecoms, IT and education sector in both technical and non-technical roles.

Nathan Violet

Finance Director

Nathan Violet joined Ark in June 2013 from Grant Thornton UK LLP, where he qualified as a certified chartered accountant.

Prior to joining Ark, Nathan advised a wide range of businesses including listed companies, privately held businesses and investment funds.

During his time with Ark, he has helped to deliver and support rapid growth, both in terms of turnover as well as geographical presence. Nathan leads on all aspects of financial operations and reporting within the business, and his knowledge of data centre operations means that he is perfectly placed to lead Ark’s financial team.

Mark Brown

Security Director

Mark spent over 25 years in the Royal Air Force Police working closely with other agencies and departments, specialising in the inspection of Defence Critical Assets (CNI), and a SME in protective security and security risk management.

Upon leaving the service in 2009, Mark worked with a number of companies supporting HMG on various projects in the UK, worked overseas in hostile environments ensuring the security of multi million pound assets supporting the MoD and DoD around the globe and managed a team of specialist security operatives who provided hostile environment training, both in the UK and overseas to journalists and NGOs deployed worldwide.

Mark joined Ark in 2014 as Head of Security, assisting with the design and build of highly secure data centres, working with the MoD, HMG departments and clients to ensure relevant security requirements and standards are applied, and mandatory certifications are achieved. Mark manages the Ark security team and oversee the management of Ark’s third party security providers.

Lewis Rogers

Construction Director

Lewis joined the company in 2014 and now leads the Construction Team, responsible for the co-ordination and management of all data centre construction activities across the Ark estate.

A Chartered Mechanical Engineer, Lewis has over 15 years of experience within the design and construction industry. Whilst at Ark he has successfully delivered many datacentre build projects with a total value well over £500 million.

Lewis joined Ark from Black & Veatch where he was involved in both designing and constructing many large critical engineering projects across the UK and USA for the Energy and Water sectors.

Tim Coxon

Design, Technology and Innovation Director

Tim joined Ark at the beginning of 2020 and now serves as the Director of Design Technology and Innovation, leading the Design, IT, Network, Energy, and Sustainability teams at the Company. With a background in physics and over 12 years of experience in the Data Centre Industry Tim has passion for advancing the design and sustainability of technology through innovation within the data centre industry. Tim joined Ark from NTT where he led the design of their UK Data Centre facilities.

Steve Ross

Technical Facilities Director

Steve joined the company in 2019 and now heads up the Technical Facilities Team, responsible for the management and support of all facilities and technical engineering services across the Ark estate. An electrical engineer by training, Steve has 35 years of experience in the industry and has successfully led Data Centre facility support services for multiple customers over the past 18 years.

Lord Evans of Weardale

Non-Executive Director

Lord Evans was Director-General of the Security Service (MI5) between 2007 and 2013, having previously served on the Management Board as Director of International Counter Terrorism. He is a Non-Executive Director on the Board of HSBC Holdings, as well as being a member of the Advisory Boards of Darktrace and of Facewatch.