An owner's guide to data center construction

Evaluate a prospective property against the facility's operating requirements. Ask the design team to lay out the buildings, utility routes, access, stormwater areas, and equipment yards, including room for later phases. This establishes how much of the property can be used and how the site will function during construction and operation.

Collect the survey, soil investigation reports, environmental information, utility correspondence, and approval requirements in one site file. Record what has been established and what still needs investigation. The contractor can then review the planned work, price the known conditions, and identify assumptions that need to be resolved.

Ask the owner, electrical engineer, and serving utility to document the demand assumptions and proposed service arrangement. Keep the status of utility studies, agreements, design releases, and equipment procurement visible in the project schedule. Confirm the proposed service directly with the utility, including the information and site conditions it needs before work can proceed.

Set out who designs, supplies, installs, tests, and accepts each part of the work. Equipment foundations, underground conduits, grounding provisions, access roads, and restoration can involve several contractors. Use coordinated drawings and assign responsibility for the connections between their installations before requesting prices.

The Department of Energy's data center design guide considers IT requirements, air management, cooling, and electrical systems together. Use that wider system view when coordinating the information needed for site, foundation, and building construction.

• U.S. Department of Energy: data center design guide

Have the mechanical and structural designers confirm the selected equipment arrangement, support requirements, utility connections, and maintenance access. Ask the civil team to reflect those decisions in the grading and underground plans. Ask the designers to compare cooling alternatives against the owner's operating objectives and confirm the resulting water, space, and performance requirements for the project.

Translate reliability expectations into an owner-approved design brief. Ask the responsible designers and commissioning team to define which systems need independent paths, what maintenance conditions must be accommodated, and how the finished facility will be evaluated.

If a named certification or operating standard is required, identify its version, assessment process, and responsible parties in the project documents. Translate those requirements into the construction documents, including what must be built, how it connects with adjoining work, and the inspections or records needed at handover.

Map the sequence from site preparation through underground work, foundations, building enclosure, systems installation, testing, and turnover. Identify where work can proceed in parallel, the design information required for each release, and the areas that must be completed before another contractor can begin.

For each handoff, identify the prerequisite documents, access conditions, inspections, and acceptance records. Decide who protects completed work when another contractor enters the area. Use consistent work descriptions in the contracts and construction schedule so the owner and trades can see how their responsibilities connect.

Ask for a schedule that includes owner decisions, design completion, approvals, utility work, purchasing, construction, and commissioning. Assign the outstanding decisions to a responsible person and establish when each answer is needed. A target opening date is more useful when the team can explain the conditions on which it depends.

Use current supplier quotations and written utility updates when evaluating delivery dates. Revisit the schedule when the design, release strategy, or equipment selection changes. Keep the dates tied to the project's actual approvals, service arrangements, and construction requirements.

CBRE's March 2026 release, reporting on the second half of 2025, documents substantial data center development in Atlanta. Use that dated market information as background, then confirm the approvals, service arrangements, and construction requirements for the property under consideration.

• CBRE: Atlanta data center findings for the second half of 2025

Before requesting a civil proposal, collect the site's approval status, utility correspondence, current drawings, and anticipated construction dates. Discuss those documents with the contractor so the pricing and proposed team reflect the work you are preparing to award.