Data Center Construction for Colocation and Wholesale Operators

Colocation and wholesale operators carry a risk that no other buyer segment does: they build before they have a customer. A shell, a generator yard and a chilled water plant go up on the operator's balance sheet, and the return depends on how quickly a tenant can move in once a lease is signed. Every construction decision is read through that lens. A feature that delays the first tenant's rack-in by a month costs more than a feature that costs more to install.

We build for that pattern. The base building is sized and cleaned for the tenant who has not been named yet, with power and cooling blocks that can be energized hall by hall, and with the fit-out scope held in a ready state so that a lease turns into a notice to proceed rather than a new design cycle. Operators who also read our pages for hyperscale cloud providers will recognize some of the same site work, but the commercial logic here is different: more buildings, smaller blocks, more tenants, and a stricter standard for what the landlord delivers.

Texas Local Government Code Sec. 214.216, as amended by HB 738, makes the International Building Code the municipal commercial building code, and allows cities to adopt local amendments by ordinance after a public hearing. In practice the same operator can face the state baseline in one city and a newer edition with local chapters in the next. The City of Dallas, for example, lists the International Building Code, the energy and fire codes and the National Electrical Code, each with Dallas amendments, as the codes it enforces. A wholesale operator who builds in two metros should expect two different review checklists.

We keep a code matrix for each jurisdiction before design starts, and we ask the building official early which edition and which amendments apply to the generator fuel storage, the battery rooms and the egress arrangement of the data halls. The state energy code adds another layer: the State Energy Conservation Office continues to use the International Energy Conservation Code as the adopted energy code for use in the state, so an operator with a mixed portfolio often has to reconcile three standards in one set of drawings. Our work on permitting and utility interconnection runs this reconciliation as a standing task.

A wholesale campus is usually a shell plus central utilities, and the shell is divided into data halls that are delivered to tenants as powered, cooled and secured space. The colocation data center we build has a clear boundary between landlord scope and tenant scope: the landlord owns the substation connection, the generator yard, the chillers, the uninterruptible power supply rooms and the meet-me rooms, and the tenant controls what goes inside its cage or suite. We write that boundary into the drawings so that a tenant's fit-out contractor knows where it stops and the landlord's systems begin.

Interconnection density is the product in retail colocation, so the building has to serve carriers. That means two or more diverse fiber entrances, a protected meet-me room, and riser paths that let a tenant cross-connect without opening a wall. Our carrier hotel and meet-me room scope covers the mechanical and electrical backing those rooms need, because a carrier will not install in a room that cannot hold temperature through a utility outage.

We manage closely the early and structural scopes that decide whether a shell is ready for the owner's equipment: mass excavation and grading, utility trenching, duct banks, equipment pads and the mission-critical slabs. Keeping that work under one supervisor removes the hand-offs where schedule is usually lost. A duct bank poured on the wrong day, or a generator pad cured before the embeds are set, shows up months later as a rework item when the tenant's schedule is already running.

We also manage the concrete that supports speculative expansion. A shell built for four halls but initially fitted for one needs the slab, embeds and cable tray supports for the other three already in place, and the unused halls need to be sealed against dust. Our scope for mission-critical concrete slabs describes how we flatness-check, cure and protect these floors while the first tenant is already moving in next door.

Wholesale operators phase by block of capacity, not by building. The first phase carries the shared infrastructure and one or two halls. The second phase adds halls inside the same shell, and a third phase adds a second building. Municipal power can matter here: Garland Power and Light, which serves over 69,000 customers and is described as the fourth-largest municipal utility in Texas, and Denton Municipal Electric are examples of city-owned electric providers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. A site served by a municipal utility may offer a different interconnection path and timeline than a site on an investor-owned transmission line, and the phasing plan should reflect.

The test we apply to any phasing plan is whether the second hall can be built without shutting down the first. That means separate utility isolation points, temporary partitions rated for dust, construction access that does not cross the live data hall, and commissioning windows agreed in advance with the tenant's operations team. Details are in our phased expansion build-outs scope.

When a tenant is live in Hall One, the construction team in Hall Two works under that tenant's rules, not only ours. Dust barriers, hot work permits, lockout and tagout of shared systems and escorted access are routine. We write a method of procedure for every task that touches a shared system, have the operator's facility lead sign it, and rehearse the rollback step before the real work starts.

Weather is the other safety input. Texas led the nation in 2024 with 878 hail events and 169 tornadoes, with insured losses in the state above $47.2 billion. Rooftop chillers, louvers and generator exhausts take that exposure for the life of the building, and a lease usually requires the landlord to maintain availability through a storm. We treat roof equipment, fuel tank restraint and enclosure ratings as design decisions with a named wind and hail basis, and we coordinate with enterprise and financial institutions and other tenants that want to see that basis documented before they sign.

Tell us the number of halls, the target capacity per hall and the cities you are considering. We will return a phasing outline and the code questions to resolve first.

How much of the base building should be built before a tenant signs?

Most operators build the shell, the central utilities and enough power and cooling for the first hall. The remaining halls are left as clean, sealed shells with slab, embeds and cable supports in place, so that the fit-out scope is the only work between a signed lease and rack-in. The right split depends on the lease pipeline and on equipment lead time, which often runs longer than the shell itself.

Which Texas jurisdictions are the hardest for data center permitting?

Difficulty tracks how far a city has moved from the 2012 state baseline and how many local amendments it has adopted, not city size. We check fire code treatment of battery rooms and fuel storage first, because those items have the most variation between building officials.

Can a single set of drawings serve campuses in different cities?

The core design can be reused, but each city needs its own code review, civil layout and utility coordination. We build a prototype set and a jurisdiction overlay for each site so the repeat work is controlled and the local changes are visible.

What cleanliness standard do you build to before tenant move-in?

We set a written cleanliness plan before the slab is placed: sealed slabs, controlled entry, walk-off mats, and a final clean of the data hall before the tenant's equipment enters. The standard the tenant requires is coordinated in advance and verified by inspection.

Do you coordinate with tenant fit-out contractors?

Yes. We set up a coordination schedule, a shared logistics plan and clear scope boundaries so the tenant's trades and ours do not compete for lifts, loading dock time or power.