The data center market has changed the construction industry quickly.

We started seeing a meaningful increase in data center opportunities in late 2024. At first, the company was especially selective, pursuing projects that made sense for its capabilities. By early 2026, the number and scale of opportunities had changed the equation. Large projects were moving forward across multiple regions at the same time, making it clear that the market was entering a new phase.

That kind of growth creates obvious opportunities. It also brings a new set of considerations around how the industry plans, staffs and executes major projects.

There are only so many experienced craft professionals, supervisors and project leaders available at any given time. As demand grows across regions, the ability to plan ahead, develop talent and mobilize the right resources becomes increasingly important. For contractors, capacity is no longer simply about how much work can be taken on. It is about having the people, processes and preparation in place to deliver that work at scale.

For us, that creates an opportunity to put nearly five decades of experience to work in a market that demands both scale and precision. The data center boom is raising the bar for construction capacity, and it is giving contractors new opportunities to rethink how they prepare for what comes next.

Familiar Fundamentals, New Pace

Much of data center work is deeply familiar to our team. These are large, complex projects where safety, schedule, quality, logistics, and workforce management determine success. That's the work Performance Contractors has been doing for nearly half a century.

What's different is the pace and scale, and the sheer number of interfaces between industrial and commercial trades. That requires closer coordination and a sharper approach to planning and execution. For us, the adjustment hasn't been reinventing who we are for these kinds of projects—it's been scaling what we already do well.

We’ve always taken planning seriously with the perspective that no phase of construction is as important as preconstruction. For these kinds of projects, planning has to start even earlier and at a much larger scale. Sequencing, site access, and schedules have to be coordinated closely with the commercial trades working alongside us. We have to plan workforce, supervision, equipment, procurement, and logistics well ahead of mobilization. Our approach has also evolved: where we once looked at data center opportunities one at a time, we now plan programmatically across multiple projects and regions so we can allocate workforce, supervision, fabrication, and equipment on a much larger scale.

That programmatic view is only possible because of our self-perform capabilities. Our range of in-house expertise gives us a strong foundation for data center work, from civil and mechanical construction to electrical, soft crafts, and fabrication.

The Biggest Challenge: The Fight for People

The labor market may be the clearest example of the challenges this uptick in data centers has caused because as data center development has accelerated, so has competition for experienced craft professionals. That creates a difficult question for contractors with established relationships across other industries: How do you pursue new demand without weakening the commitments that built the business in the first place?

Our answer has been to avoid treating the workforce as a fixed pool that simply gets moved from one project to another. Our goal has been to grow the pool itself. That means recruiting in new labor markets, developing people internally and strengthening supervision rather than shifting existing resources from one customer to another.

Corpus Christi offers one example of what that looks like in practice. The region has a strong base of experienced industrial craft professionals, giving Performance an opportunity to expand its labor reach while protecting commitments elsewhere.

That approach points to a larger change in how contractors may need to think about recruiting. As demand spreads across regions and industries, access to labor becomes less about finding people for a single project and more about building relationships with talent markets over time.

What This Cycle Has Taught Us

We expect data center investment to stay strong for the foreseeable future while knowing that no market grows at the same pace forever. So our strategy is to participate in that growth while investing in the things that make Performance stronger across the board: our workforce, our supervision, our fabrication, our project controls, and our ability to execute large projects safely.

If this growth cycle has taught us anything, it's that true construction capacity is about far more than headcount. It takes experienced craft professionals, strong supervision, safety leadership, equipment, fabrication capability, and the systems to support all of it—grown deliberately, without losing the standards that got you here.

Data centers may be a newer market for us. Executing major projects safely and at scale is not. That's what nearly five decades builds, and it's exactly what this moment demands.