Data centers may house AI, but they don’t get built without tradespeople
RESTON, Virginia—Trade talent is tight for the data center industry. With tens of billions being poured into getting concrete poured and data centers up and running as fast as humanly possible, the electrical, HVAC, construction workforce and other related trade positions are one of the major limiting factors in how quickly that happens.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are roughly 400,000 skilled trade jobs unfulfilled across the United States, and the number is growing. Data centers face soaring demand, but struggle to find skilled tradespeople like electricians and HVAC techs.
During a panel at this week’s Data Center Frontier Trends Summit, construction experts hashed out some of the current issues related to data center construction and the construction workforce. They agreed that most of the issues stem from three things: The speed desired for data center builds; the sheer number and size of the projects; and the fact that data centers are now being built across vast geographic area, instead of a few, predictable regions.
“There’s such a vast quantity of projects, at the scale that they’re being built and being developed, and at the pace. And if you build it this fast, that’s not fast — it needs to be faster,” said Kurt Wallner, project executive with DPR Construction.
And, he pointed out, projects are happening everywhere. “It used to be just Northern Virginia, and New York, and Dallas. And now we’re hearing Indiana, and Louisiana and every state in between. … Really, what we’re seeing, it’s an arms race for people, material, equipment.”
So how are people on the construction and trade side dealing with that race? The panelists mentioned a few factors in particular.
–Early teaming. Contracting teams and relationships are being formed earlier in the process, and more information is being shared sooner. Wallner said that developers are sharing more information about their project pipelines — not just a quarter or two ahead, but multiple years ahead. “Getting your team together is critical. And not just your design partners, not just your general contractor, but really deep-teaming, going to get your electrical contractor,” said Wallner. “Because there’s only so many journeymen in the Northern Virginia area. There’s only so many steam fitters.”
Even specialists like rigging companies are getting involved earlier than they used to be as well, Wallner said, so that there is a solid plan and commitment for the resources to move cumbersome, heavy equipment into place once the shell is constructed.
Steve Henslee, director – mission critical, at IES Electrical said that over the last few years, early engagement has become a necessity. “It wasn’t a matter of whether we wanted to really be collaborative early on in the project,” he said. “There’s really not an option, to get to the end game.”
Henslee said that data center owners are coming to companies like IES Electrical directly, asking about their capacity and pairing them with general contractors who are working across multiple markets. Just a handful of years ago, he said, it wasn’t common to be brought in for early review and input, and have contracts awarded at the point of conceptual drawings — but now that’s how most data center projects are happening.
“Engineers are great at putting things down on paper and making sure it all works, but when it comes to, can we buy it, can we get the equipment, that’s outside of their purview. So we’re seeing a lot more engagement with our owners doing that,” Henslee said, adding: “They’re all kind of going down that path and bringing us in early, in the initial engineering and design phase and then making us a partner all the way through it, through developing the schedule, developing how we’re going to build it up, and then adjusting to the changes as they come.”
–Communication, to avoid over-commitment and improve processes. With so many projects to choose from, and so much money to be made, it can be easy for trade companies to overcommit, then be spread thin in ways that cause project delays.
“Trade partners that are building these data centers are the backbone of how we get out of the ground and how we deliver. The biggest tool that we’re using to make sure our trade partners aren’t over-committing is communication,” said Connor Toomey, senior project manager with HITT Contracting, a general contracting firm.
While that means having conversations, he said, it can also mean monitoring financials of trade partners and sub-contractors to see their backlog and talking further, to understand their other commitments and what work they can commit to a given project — particularly when, for example, they’re also engaged with a hyperscaler who wanted to build massive, multi-year projects.
He said that as a general contractor, HITT likes to be involved in master planning to understand as much as possible so that they can feed that information to partners, so that they can manage their own staffing in line with demand.
“It’s really just trying to be that good partner in communication and planning so they’re not over-committing, or they’re not holding onto resources that could be used for another data center down the line,” Toomey said. Sometimes, communication also means learning from other recent or concurrent data center construction projects — if a new component is tricky to deal with, for example, good communication from trade partners can mean a heads-up that will benefit the build at another site.
–Avoiding trade and construction workforce burn-out. If companies are lucky enough to land the trade workers that they need, they have to treat them well in order to keep them. The demand for data centers may be relentless, but AI can’t build itself, and humans might very well quit if they are overextended — and there are plenty of other competitors who would be thrilled to have them. So the potential for burnout plays into risk management calculations.
“I think because our market is so hot, we are more worried about fatigue management,” said Toomey. “We’re really worried about overextending our electricians. We’re really worried about overextending our mechanical subcontractors — because we can tell our electricians, hey, you guys are limited to 50 or 60 hours on site, but on Saturday and Sunday, they might turn around and go to a different campus and pump out some hours and get some [overtime] on that one.
“The big conversations that we’re having right now with our trade partners is how to manage fatigue,” he added. Even when a trade partner is delivering and doing well, he said, there still need to be check-ins around managing the possibility of burnout, along the lines of: “You guys are doing great, but how do you make sure that your workforce is going to be able to do this for the next 8, 10, 15, 20 years? How do we make sure we’re not burning people out and overextending the individuals rather than the company?”
Part of preventing burnout is also ensuring that workers feel safe and appreciated on the job-site, that it’s a place they want to come back to each day. That can look like lavish snack spreads, air-conditioned bathrooms (unthinkable on many construction sites), training on physical well-being like tailored stretches, and even therapy dog visits.
See additional coverage from DCF Trends Summit here.
