The Impossible Engineering Behind Modern Data Centers

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This is the Construction Insiders Podcast.
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I'm Jessica Bush bringing you the newest trends and strategies in construction, essential to anyone in the industry.
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Welcome back to the Construction Insiders Podcast.
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This is part two of our focused discussion on advanced technologies.
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In part one, we discussed these aren't just your typical buildings when we're talking about construction.
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They are the literal backbone of our digital economy.
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There's another 15 gigawatts that's currently in construction.
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Three, four, five, six, seven thousand people that are coming in to build these factories and build these data centers.
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You're seeing some of the hyperscalers are engaging to restart nuclear power plants that have been shut down.
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Okay, so to jump right back in here, where we left off, we talked about third-party developers getting in the space and that control for land, power, and permits.
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Tom, I'm going to start with you on this.
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How is this shift in the landscape?
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How is it impacting things?
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And why are we seeing a surge with these third parties coming in?
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It's a great question.
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We've said it a few times.
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It's speed to market.
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Speed to market right now is driving the industry.
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And when you need capacity and you can go to a developer, and they already have, as we talked about earlier, uh, I'll say there's no shortcut, but they will shortcut the process for you because they already have that land, they already have that power, they already have the entitlements, the permit, they're they're they're somewhat ready to go.
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And you can partner with them if, say, you're a hyperscaler and uh within a significantly shorter time period have your capacity delivered, that that's a win.
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Uh obviously there's a bit of a premium to that, right?
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Uh there always is.
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And I, you know, and you have to deliver, of course, if you're uh if you're a developer, an operator in that space, you you've got to, if you sign up a uh a tenant, such as a hyperscaler, and you've made a commitment to them, you absolutely have to deliver.
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And and I think that's uh uh it's where we kind of come into play, to be perfectly honest with you.
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And that's where we can help provide some additional construction management, project management, uh, cost scheduling services that can really support that environment to ensure that that delivery is on time and that that commitment is met.
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And that's very, very important to us.
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What about when we're talking location, region, country?
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I'm assuming this is my naive assumption, right?
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That the differences can be quite dramatic when we're talking about the actual location, the country, the region throughout the US.
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Um, can you walk us through the different costs globally?
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What we're seeing, um, our new markets opening up.
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How does how does that look right now?
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I'm assuming it's always changing, but in the moment, how are you looking?
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Yeah, I think what we're seeing is the availability of the land in different um locations through the U.S.
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If you were to go to uh say Atlanta, you may have a tighter uh market around for space rather than going to Des Moines, Iowa, Cheyenne, Wyoming, uh, the West Texas region.
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Uh I was just in Louisiana and a lot of land out there.
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A lot of land.
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It's a hot topic for this type of build.
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For certain, for certain.
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But it's uh, you know, everyone's trying to position and look at where they want to build or can build, and again, it's back to speed.
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Can it secure the power contracts?
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Uh is the local jurisdiction, the the county, whoever's governing the code to go build a facility.
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Oftentimes uh these jurisdictions have never seen a data center.
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They don't know what it requires, what are the code requirements and expectations, electrical code or a fire code in a semiconductor facility.
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So all these things matter in terms of educating a jurisdiction, educating uh the local community and coming into those spaces.
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But uh what you can find for uh call it lower cost parcels of land, acres and acres of land, but then it requires considerable amount of work to go bring that space, that that ground up to um to a point at which the facility can be built.
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Semiconductor, huge facilities, vertically very tall, uh, carry a lot of weight.
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And so the ground compaction, so the ground conditions have to be assessed via geotech and things of that nature to ensure that building there makes sense, both from physical attributes of the soil and the surrounding community, um, but also from again the other aspects of power and uh and people to be able to get there to build it.
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You you made some really good points about the domestic market.
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And when we look overseas, uh, I think we're starting to see more and more, uh, and there there has been, and I think there will continue to be, more and more data centers uh and semiconductor fabs as well built overseas.
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Uh India is a very hot market right now for that, uh, for example.
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Uh, we're also seeing more, even just in Canada, just north of here, uh, South America as well.
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Uh the Asia Pacific region is certainly a hot region.
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And in fact, my first uh my very first data center that I was ever on was in Taiwan.
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Um, and you know, it and there's lots of things that have to be considered when you're working in an overseas market.
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Uh, it may be the labor productivity, it may be the cost of that labor, uh, it could be just simply some of the design, right?
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Uh Taiwan is a is a seismic earthquake zone.
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And uh the the steel columns that were used on that data center were impressive, to say the least, uh, because you've got to be able to absorb any kind of potential earthquake that comes about.
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Um, and I'll tell you that even just doing some of the scheduling and the assessments that we were doing on that project was uh, I won't say it was complicated, but we had to, we had a lot of historical data from the US in terms of how electrical commodities were being installed.
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And a lot of that had to be kind of thrown out the window because the labor force in that country was frankly able to do it uh at just different rates and and honestly better rates, right?
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And there's a lot of reasons for that.
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But uh, you know, so there are things that you have to you can't necessarily take something and uh it's not cookie cutter, you can't just copy it from here to there.
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You have to understand the market you're dealing with.
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And it could be, like I said, labor rates, labor productivity, uh governmental issues that you may or may not have to deal with.
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Uh and that obviously is something that is unique across the globe and across the US as well.
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So Jeff, the integrator model we hear about when we're talking about this space, um, what does that look like with the off-site manufacturing in terms of accelerating timelines?
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Because when I talk to you guys, all I hear is speed to market, speed to market.
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So, what does this all really mean in context of what this this specific space?
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Yeah, that's a critical topic.
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The integrator model really looks at when an owner or the contractors are buying equipment or materials.
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The integrator is a concept where that material arrives at an another person's facility, a company, who takes that equipment and materials and integrates it into modules, skids of pumps and other equipment that are critical, whether it be in semiconductor or data center.
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So the off-site manufacturing, there's different terms that are used for that.
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But the opportunity to move the assembly off-site into another facility, it may be 200 miles away from where we're building a data center.
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But that uh market in terms of labor available to go build on the site, trained electricians, pipe fitters, sheet metal, and so forth, um, moving that labor to an off-site facility to take that equipment and materials, integrate it into a package and replicate it multiple, multiple times, and then ship that completed unit to the site, it not only moves labor off-site.
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So, for example, if we're in West Texas where the labor availability may be very low, we can move that assembly off-site to Louisiana or wherever and uh package that up and have the labor available to do that at an efficient rate, uh, speed.
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But most importantly, it's safety and quality because you're in a more controlled environment, you're not on a facility with people working around you, underneath you, over you, adds a lot of complexities, but the safety component of that is critical.
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We get a quality product that then is checked, verified that it's ready to ship, then it goes to the job site.
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And it's a very repeatable model.
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Interesting.
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I never thought about it from that perspective.
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Yeah.
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It it's also and it's it's a huge, I mean, everything you said was spot on.
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And it's it's such a huge time saver.
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And and that, again, that's the whole thing here, right?
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Schedule is so important on these jobs.
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Um, and you gotta get things done on time, gotta hit the the deadlines or beat the deadlines that are committed to.
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Uh, and that's that's just a it's a it's a current strategy for doing that and having a lot of success.
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And and I would say that all that being said, you you do have to be very mindful about that because if you're not coordinating that work off site with when that work needs to be done on site, all of those benefits can disappear from a schedule space.
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And and that's again, not to plug us too much, but do it, Tom.
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That's where we come in, is is facilitating on behalf of an owner, taking that schedule or taking those delivery commitments and dates that are needed for when that equipment or when that module must arrive on site, and making sure that that's actually happening such that we're not, hey, uh this e-room fab is now not going to be here, and we've got this space for it, and that's gonna delay commissioning by three months or whatever the case may be, just putting an example out there.
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Yeah.
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Uh and so being on top of that, managing the schedule, managing the delivery of that, making sure it doesn't show up too early, making sure it doesn't show up too late, super, super critical to ensure the continuity of the project.
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So let's talk about design and construction construction, design and construction approaches in this space.
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Because I'm jumping ahead of myself here.
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But when I'm thinking about AI workloads versus your traditional commercial cloud application, different needs, different requirements, I'm assuming particularly around cooling.
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How is that working?
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What are we looking at for that?
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How is that evolving currently in this space?
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Uh with not only the AI and the AI training models that the hyperscalers are pushing right now, but also in the commercial cloud, we're seeing what we'll call densification of the compute power in a data center.
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So the number of servers and racks within a body of a data center, no matter what its utilization is for, again, AI training or otherwise, that's driving higher heat loads within the facility.
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And with that, then the more historical traditional means by which air cooling could be utilized, uh, still cooled via chillers into an air handler pushing air over, because in the end, uh many of these servers are set up with air over the chip.
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Uh, but the cooling solutions are moving more to a liquid cooling, and there's lots of papers and studies that are out there about how to do that.
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Uh, but uh bringing cooling water into a server rack and more directly providing cool cooling water into the rack itself to provide cooling is becoming more uh more of the uh the mainstay, if you will, relative to the cooling uh uh technology and and uh methodology.
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Let's talk about kind of that that cooling technology and the technology transfer.
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Um again, to bring it to off-camera, to bring people folks up to speed here of some previous conversations we've had.
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We've talked about something that we talk about in our our meetings at work here are this this concept of the semiconductor facilities data centers using those concepts.
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Um, what is that looking like and um what is that process, requirements, all of that?
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How is that being handled right now?
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Yeah, I think from a semiconductor, for decades, the semiconductor industry has been using uh cooling water, process cooling water, uh if you will, that is uh very clean, uh filtered, and uh utilized within the body of the manufacturing tools, whether you be in uh microprocessor, what we call logic uh technology, uh, also into memory.
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So the cooling waters are provided through a uh a system within the factory that is uh uh also tied then into more of what we call a central plant uh chill water system that is the more of the heat rejection side within these facilities, both data center and semiconductor.
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But these cooling water loops are being utilized in now data centers in higher volume.
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So the the pipe uh and the chiller sizes within data center are growing significantly back to the amount of compute power per, if you will, square foot in a data center.
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So with that densification, the cooling water requirements are going up.
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And with that, chiller capacities, the types of chillers you use, the size of the pipe, the miles of pipe that had to be put in.
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And it's just it's really becoming uh very similar to the semiconductor.
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So think about a manufacturing tool requiring cooling via water.
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Um, and then the server rack is kind of analogous, if you will, to a manufacturing tool because again, it's producing revenue, if you will, but just through a different means.
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Right.
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Okay.
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So when it comes to moving faster, speed to market, um what are the key items that people need to really prioritize early in this type of a build?
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We have talked and seen in the news about the CDU delivery, the fiber optics being a major player in that kind of speed to market.
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Can you break down how people are moving faster?
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What they should prioritize.
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I'll put a couple things out there.
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Uh and and again, we've we've spoken a lot about uh land, site selection, power, entitlement, zoning.
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So kind of leave that aside for a minute.
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Uh honestly, it's and I think the supply chain is a lot more stable than it was, let's say.
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I think I think everyone got a real uh education or re-education, as it may be, about how the supply chain can disrupt things during the COVID-19 pandemic several years ago.
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Um, I I think that's largely stabilized.
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But now with with such a significant uh backlog of projects being contemplated right now, I think you've got to be heavily, heavily focused on A, what you're designing and B, what you need uh from an equipment standpoint out of that design and making sure you're in the queue uh to get that equipment delivered when you need it.
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Um I think that's that's one.
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And I think secondly, uh and whatever that may be, that that may be CDUs, that may be electrical switch gear, uh, you know, the list goes on and on.
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I think the other piece though that we're seeing more and more now because of the AI data center and and how it's designed and what has to happen is the the fiber, the connectivity piece.
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Uh I I think three weeks ago I saw in the news, late January, uh Meta had actually, I think they've got a now a six billion dollar partnership with Corning that they've invested in to ensure uh ramp up into production of fiber optics, uh the the latest technology, the training, the workforce, everything that goes with that.
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Uh and so I think you're seeing not just, hey, I need to go buy this off the shelf, but you're seeing the major players in the market are now they they're understanding they've got to invest in this, they've got to partner with the companies that are providing this.
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It really is, it's gotta be a collaborative environment, right?
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Um, there's just such a demand out there that I think that has to be the path forward.
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So on that note, Jeff, fiber optics.
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Now, is this going to be a trade that is boosted because of this demand from the space?
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That sounds like something that we're also gonna need.
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Yeah, no, absolutely a great topic.
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We've talked with uh several owners and in my past life uh you know, on the owner side, um, it is a huge space.
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Uh fiber splicers.
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Uh, if if you've ever had an opportunity uh to watch somebody splice glass fiber, uh it is uh meticulous at best.
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Uh it is amazing to watch.
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I couldn't do it.
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Uh, but that that market is booming.
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And for those that are looking to get in and have the patience to sit there and bring individual strands of glass fiber together and and basically fuse it, um, more power to you because I, like I said, I couldn't do it.
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But it is huge.
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And the amount of fiber, to Tom's point, uh that's being put out in the ground and through vaults and so forth, uh, the more traditional lanes where the dark fiber may have been laid within the US, now we're into regions where there is no fiber.
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There's no nothing.
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It's literally dirt.
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And so the new fiber that has to be put in to connect those new facilities into the web of the internet and the connections throughout the US and then abroad, uh, across the sea, the undersea cables, it's is amazing.
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So uh if you're looking for a trade to get into, that might be one to explore, but bring your patience.
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So, on that, let's just keep moving towards the future.
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Um, how are robotics, automation, how is how is all of that being integrated, dumped into kind of our construction environment now, especially when we talked about workers, worker safety, quality of life, um, and at the end of the day, project outcomes.
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How are you seeing all that play out?
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Yeah, that's a great question.
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Uh, what we're seeing is a lot of the traditional, very meticulous and repetitive tasks are being replaced by a robotic um uh uh means, if you will.
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Uh, for example, drilling holes.
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Um, in semiconductor years ago in building a fab for my previous employer, uh, drilling uh screws into a roof to hold down a temporary roof, and it's thousands upon thousands upon thousands of screws to hold the roof down.
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Um and at the time we came up with a means by uh running multiple drills with a little press type.
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Now you can replace that today with robotics and a robot that goes around and will mark where the holes need to be, then also then go drill the holes.
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And it's it's accelerating um really at a pace that's frankly, it's it's amazing.
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It's great to see.
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So we've gone from uh models where you can go out with a set of goggles and view what's being put in place in the field, how does that match to the design, to now other evolutions of that to um, you know, what looks like a little dog walk walking around through the facility and it's mapping what was done in today's work to what's in the model and flagging things that were put in wrong, or they're off by a half of half an inch.
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In many cases, a half an inch does matter.
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So uh it's how do we use the technology going forward?
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There's so many different companies that are in the space right now.
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It's pretty exciting uh to see and where it'll go.
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So, final question before I let you two go.
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What should owners and contractors and any professional in this industry be doing today to stay ahead of the curve?
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And and what does that advice look like?
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As we move forward, Tom?
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I I'll bring it back to a couple couple things we've said and just put a different spin on them, but but talent, none of this happens without good people that are willing to learn, work hard, uh, apply the skills that they have.
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Maybe they already have experience in this industry, and that's great.
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They can teach, mentor, educate, and lead.
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Maybe they don't, and they can bring others along uh because there's again, there's a tremendous demand.
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There's not enough people, in my opinion, right now, at least that's what I'm seeing uh in my space that that are positioned to drive this forward.
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So I think one is is the talent pipeline, and it doesn't matter whether you're an owner, whether you're providing services like we are, uh in a professional capacity, or you're uh we talked about fiber optic trade uh tradesmen or tradeswomen as it may be.
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And it's uh that that's a huge piece of it.
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I think also, and we've talked about the integrator and the integrated delivery model earlier, uh, and how that's uh changing construction, uh and I maybe I shouldn't say changing construction, but it's uh it's changing the speed at which these projects are being built.
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Uh, I think that type of mentality with you know, how do we how do we get faster?
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How do we get better?
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How do we deliver these things safer?
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Uh, all of that has to be looked at.
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And I think any strategy that's out there to accomplish that will be welcomed with with open ears.
00:21:21.759 --> 00:21:26.640
Uh and and maybe the last thing I'll say before I hand it off to Jeff is simply collaboration.
00:21:27.119 --> 00:21:32.720
Uh the the more I have never when I started in construction, it was close to 20 years ago.
00:21:32.799 --> 00:21:36.160
Uh I remember being in situations that were not very collaborative.
00:21:36.240 --> 00:21:40.319
Uh probably had to dodge a few chairs uh in meetings.
00:21:40.799 --> 00:21:45.200
Uh it's not like that now, uh, at least not in the space that I work in in the data center space.
00:21:45.440 --> 00:21:52.480
I think everyone is recognizing that you yes, there is a contract and you have to be held accountable.
00:21:52.559 --> 00:21:56.720
And but at the end of the day, there's a common goal, and we succeed or we fail together.
00:21:56.799 --> 00:21:59.759
And whether you're on the owner side, you're consulting like we are.
00:22:00.720 --> 00:22:04.960
You're on the contractor side, you're you're a vendor delivering equipment, it it doesn't really matter.
00:22:05.359 --> 00:22:08.480
Uh everyone has a shared goal, and they have to have a shared goal.
00:22:08.559 --> 00:22:12.480
Uh otherwise these projects will not succeed, and that that's detrimental to everybody.
00:22:13.759 --> 00:22:15.279
Yeah, I think uh that's good.
00:22:15.440 --> 00:22:21.519
I think I would add one more, and that is um recognize from an owner, developer, it doesn't matter.
00:22:21.759 --> 00:22:26.319
You're building a facility in literally someone's backyard.
00:22:26.559 --> 00:22:31.200
The sensitivity, the community engagement, the public affairs.
00:22:31.359 --> 00:22:40.640
In some cases, you know, neighbor number one may be happy that that owner is there, bringing jobs and and uh many other aspects to the community.
00:22:40.799 --> 00:22:44.000
Um, person number two may not have the same sentiment.
00:22:44.160 --> 00:22:45.519
They may be against that.
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:58.559
So recognizing that uh that community engagement and uh what we're bringing to the community in terms of jobs, um, you know, revenue, tax revenue, uh things like that.
00:22:58.640 --> 00:23:00.319
But but keep being a good partner.
00:23:00.480 --> 00:23:03.759
Do we need to build and does the owner need to build uh parks?
00:23:03.839 --> 00:23:10.640
What is needed in the community and be that strong partner, uh not just someone who's gonna come in and take over the community.
00:23:10.799 --> 00:23:11.839
I think that's really critical.
00:23:11.920 --> 00:23:15.839
And that's that's part of that um probably part of that softer side of that.
00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:23.200
And I know a lot of companies do a lot of that community engagement do a really good job, uh, but it doesn't end at the end of the job, end of the project.
00:23:23.359 --> 00:23:25.200
It continues on for the life of the facilities.
00:23:25.279 --> 00:23:27.759
These are being built for 20, 30 year life.
00:23:27.920 --> 00:23:30.559
And so that that engagement is so critical.
00:23:30.640 --> 00:23:32.559
Um, and then back to the labor a little bit.
00:23:32.640 --> 00:23:41.920
I'd say the professional services, uh both from an owner, developer, or what we provide in that more of the owner's rep space is important, but also the trade labor.
00:23:42.000 --> 00:23:48.640
So we spoke about fiber splicers, uh, orbital welders are a critical uh trade within the semiconductor.
00:23:48.880 --> 00:24:04.640
Um, and making sure that we have uh uh programs in place with the unions or non-union affiliates uh that are really focused on training, again, next generation of electricians, of carpenters, clean room carpenters, and the like.
00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:15.759
Uh, that will be uh critical for the for the foreseeable in terms of how do the how does the owner, how do the developer, and how do we assist them in deploying and delivering that project.
00:24:17.599 --> 00:24:21.519
Well, Jeff, Tom, thank you so much for your insights today.
00:24:21.599 --> 00:24:22.880
Um, this has been wonderful.
00:24:23.119 --> 00:24:31.119
And it's clear after this discussion that if it wasn't before, uh, that data centers and semiconductors, it the space just isn't growing.
00:24:31.200 --> 00:24:35.599
It is truly transforming um the entire construction industry.
00:24:35.839 --> 00:24:38.799
Um, it'll be really interesting to see what the future holds.
00:24:38.880 --> 00:24:45.039
Um, and we'll probably have to bring you back again for that discussion as we start to map that out.
00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:47.680
Um but for our listeners, thank you for joining us.
00:24:47.759 --> 00:24:53.039
And if you want to learn more, please reach out to Cumming Group's website, WWPS's website.
00:24:53.119 --> 00:25:01.519
Um, and if you enjoyed the episode, please remember to like and subscribe the Construction Insiders podcast, um, leave us a review and share it with your colleagues.
00:25:01.759 --> 00:25:02.960
So thank you.
00:25:03.119 --> 00:25:05.839
And until next time, let's just keep building the future.
00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:06.559
Thank you.
00:25:07.119 --> 00:25:10.000
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00:25:10.160 --> 00:25:15.200
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