Data centres: the golden ticket, with a catch

AI is becoming the backbone of almost every sector, and every query, model and transaction needs somewhere to run. That means a wave of new investors entering the data centre market, and an enormous amount of construction to deliver.

The scale is hard to overstate. When the National Energy System Operator (NESO) closed its latest application window, it had received around 125 GW of connection requests, roughly 1.7 times the UK's total grid capacity. Around 140 data centre projects accounted for approximately 50 GW of that (Savills). Globally, Bain projects $5 trillion to $6.5 trillion of buildout, adding 150 GW or more of capacity by 2030.

A decade ago, when I looked after all work winning for the International Technology Business Unit at Mace, demand was already rapidly outstripping supply across Europe, and the servers were mostly powering platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Today, whole economies depend on that capacity.

For contractors, it looks like the perfect opportunity: a huge pipeline, wide geographic spread and apparently simple buildings. That impression lasts right up to the moment you open the first tender pack and realise a data centre is far more than a shed full of servers.

Before you bet a meaningful share of your turnover on data centres, here are the issues we help clients understand and build into their bids. They fall into three stages: what happens before the tender, what goes into the response, and how you price the risk.

1. Before the tender

Most data centre contracts are won or lost before the invitation to tender is issued.

Know which client you're dealing with. Data centre clients are not one market. Hyperscalers apply repeatable global standards and appoint contractors through frameworks and long-term partnerships. Colocation operators are commercially driven and focused on speed to revenue. Enterprise and public sector owners often need more guidance and carry more design risk. In every case, much of the decision is made through pre-qualification, supplier onboarding and early contractor involvement, so firms waiting for a public opportunity are usually bidding for work that has already been shaped around someone else. We recently saw a set of Employer's Requirements for a London data centre issued to tender with another contractor's comments still visible throughout. Winning starts with mapping the operators, developers and their cost and project management advisers, and building those relationships long before the bid.

Show you can deliver the same thing again. Operators increasingly roll out a standard design across multiple sites and expect their supply chain to industrialise delivery. Prefabricated electrical skids, modular plant rooms and pre-assembled pipework reduce site labour, improve quality and compress programmes. Contractors who can evidence design for manufacture and assembly (DfMA), and carry lessons learned from one site to the next, become long-term partners rather than one-off suppliers. This is where framework positions and repeat work are won.

Secure the supply chain early. Generators, transformers, switchgear, UPS systems and chillers can carry lead times of many months, and specialist electrical and commissioning labour is scarce across Europe. Clients want to know how you will secure equipment slots and skilled people when competing projects are chasing the same resources. Manufacturer framework agreements, early procurement strategies, management of client free-issue equipment and workforce planning are all strong differentiators. In many evaluations, supply chain resilience now carries as much weight as price.

Theory in action: We developed an entire front-end proposition for a main contractor, including both written and animated content, to take to clients pre-tender and demonstrate their capabilities. It was used in engagement sessions for over five years, during their most successful period of project wins.

What evaluators look for: client-specific win themes, a history of early engagement, DfMA case studies, named strategic suppliers, and a credible long-lead procurement and labour plan.

2. In the response

Technical evaluators will judge whether you understand what this building is actually for.

Speak the language of resilience. A data centre exists to stay on. Every response is judged against uptime, redundancy and fault tolerance, often by reference to the Uptime Institute Tier classifications or EN 50600. A contractor that cannot talk fluently about N+1 and 2N configurations, concurrent maintainability and single points of failure will be marked down, however strong its general building credentials. That fluency shows you understand what failure costs the client, and that you will protect resilience through design changes, value engineering and installation.

Lead with MEP. On a data centre, the building is the box and the services are the product. Mechanical, electrical and controls packages typically make up most of the project value and almost all of the technical risk, from power distribution, UPS and generators to cooling, which is increasingly liquid and direct-to-chip for high-density AI workloads. Main contractors who present MEP as a subcontracted afterthought lose credibility immediately. The strongest bids put integrated MEP leadership, interface management and high-level BIM at the centre of the delivery model.

Prove your programme, don't just promise it. For most operators, every week of delay is lost revenue. Programmes are aggressive and often phased by data hall, so capacity can go live while later phases are still being built. Evaluators want credible programmes rather than optimistic ones, stress-tested against long-lead items and commissioning windows, with a clear critical path to energisation. Unevidenced claims of speed are a common reason strong firms lose.

Plan commissioning from day one. A data centre is not complete when it is built. It is complete when it has been proven under load, through a structured sequence from factory witness testing to integrated systems testing (IST), including failure scenarios. Late commissioning planning is the most common cause of handover slippage. Bids that treat commissioning as a workstream from the outset, with a named lead, clear test scripts and digital records, stand apart from those that mention it in a single paragraph.

Demonstrate live-environment discipline. Many projects are expansions within operational campuses, where an outage caused by construction could be catastrophic. Rigorous permit-to-work systems, method of procedure (MOP) discipline, personnel vetting and control of drawings and data are expected. Evidence of zero-incident working in live, secure environments is often a pass/fail gate rather than a scored question.

Theory in action: As part of a major review of their bid documents, we showed a developer how to reduce a 200-page technical section to a 15-page project summary, presenting the key interfaces, dates, risks and commercial issues as connected data points alongside the broader method. They adopted the approach across all their submissions.

What evaluators look for: named people with mission-critical experience, an MEP-led organisation chart, a phased programme with a critical path narrative, a full commissioning strategy with a named lead, and live-environment case studies with safety data.

3. Pricing the risk

Sophisticated clients can spot a low price that hides unpriced risk.

Treat power and sustainability as commercial issues. Grid capacity is now one of the biggest constraints on UK data centre development, and planning scrutiny of energy and water use is increasing. Clients value contractors who understand substations, high-voltage works, on-site generation and the interface with network operators. Investor and customer pressure is also turning embodied carbon, renewable integration, heat reuse and water-efficient cooling into scored criteria. A contractor that helps solve the power and sustainability problem becomes part of the client's route to market, not just its build partner.

Be honest about risk, and prove everything. Data centre contracts often use bespoke or heavily amended forms, with significant liquidated damages, performance guarantees and design responsibility passed down. Clients increasingly favour contractors who are transparent about risk allocation, open-book pricing and value engineering that doesn't compromise resilience. In a market where every bidder claims mission-critical capability, the firm that proves it with quantified case studies, named people and referenceable clients wins.

Theory in action: For a bid with under-developed design information and an extremely challenging programme, we re-tooled the risk register to sit alongside the main bid sections. This let us propose solutions in context, and removed the negativity that a long list of missing information and limitations would otherwise have created.

What evaluators look for: HV and grid interface experience, a measured carbon reduction approach, a clear risk register and allocation position, a transparent cost model, and referenceable clients.

Where we come in

The Whole Nine has worked across the data centre bidding chain, from shaping individual contractor bids to developing the entire sales proposition for a global data centre developer. That means we understand the market from both sides of the table: what operators and their advisers are looking for, and what it takes for a contractor to convince them.

If you're considering data centres as a growth market, or you've bid and not won, we can help you approach your next opportunity with confidence. We offer a data centre bid-readiness review that assesses your evidence, people and positioning against what evaluators score, before the tender lands.

Get in touch to talk about your next data centre opportunity.