Outbuild is online scheduling software to work together on connected project schedules and look-aheads, enabling everyone to move faster.
Key Takeaways
- Schedules, Lookaheads, and Weekly Work Plans within one integrated platform.
- Real-time insights and project analytics through automated dashboards.
- Easier, streamlined plan management through a user-friendly interface.
Table of contents
- What Is a Data Center?
- The High Demand for Data Center Construction
- The Importance of Scheduling on Data Center Projects
- The Reality of a Data Center Build
- Schedules on Data Center Construction Projects Today
- The Risk of Overplanning (and Under-Planning) in Data Center Construction
- Layered Data Center Planning & Scheduling
- Why Outbuild for Data Center Construction?
- Being on Time is a non-negotiable for Data Center Builds
When you think about building a data center, you might imagine a large, windowless building on the edge of a city. However, inside those walls is the system that powers much of our daily lives.
This includes energy and utilities, government and public information, cybersecurity, cloud storage, financial transactions, video calls, streaming, artificial intelligence, and more. These aren’t just nice-to-have services, they’re the backbone of modern life. That’s why many data centers are classified as mission critical.
They cannot go down. Not for an hour, not even for a minute. And that makes the way we plan and schedule these projects every bit as critical as the concrete and steel holding them up.
Let’s dive in and start with the basics.
A data center is more than just a room full of servers, it’s a carefully designed facility that stores, processes, and delivers digital information around the clock. Running these centers takes huge amounts of power, specialized cooling, and precise coordination between many different contractors and trades.
When a data center fails, the effects can be large. It can cause website outages and disrupt hospitals, airlines, banks, government work, and AI systems that need to be online all the time.
A data center project is mission critical when its systems cannot go offline, even for a few minutes. These facilities have extra power, cooling, and backup systems to keep everything running no matter what.
Right now, the data center industry is in overdrive.
CBRE’s latest North American Data Center Trends report shows just how fast things are moving:
- Data center space is growing fast. Supply in top markets is up 34% compared to last year.
- By the end of 2024, there were 6,350 megawatts (MW) worth of projects being built.
For perspective: One megawatt can power about 1,000 average U.S. homes. 6,350 megawatts could supply electricity to around 6.3 million homes.
- Finding rentable space is nearly impossible. Only 1.9% remains open, the lowest ever.
- Prices are climbing. Rent for mid-size users went up more than 12% in a year.
So in this market, missing a milestone isn’t just inconvenient — it can mean losing a tenant to a competitor.
Delays hit harder for data center construction than almost any other sector. A late retail project might lose a few months of rent. A late data center can cost millions of dollars a day in lost revenue.
Owners, whether Google, Amazon (AWS), or other hyperscale clients, expect certainty. If their general contractor slips, they can shift workloads to another facility almost overnight.
The high cost of building a data center is in the equipment and these items often have procurement lead times measured in years.
Small problems can snowball on a data center project. Something as simple as a small piping issue might seem minor, but it can completely stall progress. It could push electrical power for several weeks.
In data center projects, everything is connected. When one task is delayed, the whole schedule begins to slip.
The reality of data center development: there are overlapping scopes, competing milestones, and no room for slippage.
In data center design and construction, the critical path often isn’t concrete or steel — it’s procurement. Without generators, you can’t start commissioning. Without air handlers, cooling systems stall. Without transformers, you can’t energize the building.
In projects where equipment can take two to three years to arrive, every missed date has real financial consequences.
Some data centers have 15,000-32,000 line item schedules.
Clearly, the sheer volume of activities creates problems:
- Updates become overwhelming
- Trade partners get lost in detail
- Coordination breaks down
Simple coordination issues balloon. For example, a trade partner sends the general contractor an email listing their roadblocks. That email turns into a meeting. The list grows from three
pages to ten pages and now countless hours go by trying to solve one trade partner’s issues.
When a schedule becomes un-manageable, it stops being a tool. Instead, it creates silos, delays, and wasted hours.
How to Fix the Disconnect Between the Office and Field.
Download the report to learn more:
- Learn about the why scheduling and planning fail the field
- Understand the pain points, inefficiencies, and evolving practices shaping scheduling today
- Find out how to bridge critical disconnects happening in construction
How to Fix the Disconnect Between the Office and Field.
Here’s the balancing act: too much detail slows you down, too little detail blinds you.
Overplanning creates:
- Endless activities that don’t reflect reality
- Delayed updates (by the time they’re entered, they’re outdated)
- Lost focus on what actually matters
Under-planning creates:
- Missed procurement deadlines
- Overlooked dependencies
- A possible drop in stakeholder confidence when durations are too large on your schedule.
Keeping it simple helps keep the master schedule on track. It also gives superintendents and trade partners a useful tool for the field. Layering the schedule is an ideal approach to scheduling data center construction projects:
- Early Phase: Track major milestones ( utility coordination, generator delivery, site readiness)
- Mid Phase: Focused 2–6 week lookaheads driven by field input.
- Late Phase: Weekly adjustments tied to actual progress on site.
Salan agreed that this method is smart for building data centers. He said, “Instead of spending an hour a day with ten people fixing a problem, Outbuild helps us track roadblocks directly. I don’t need another meeting. I can go to the roadblock, tackle it, and move on.”
Developers did not build Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project for the pace of building a data center today. Schedules live on one person’s desktop. Updates crawl through spreadsheets. By the time the field hears about a change, it’s already out of date.
Outbuild allows for a real-time schedule work flow, allowing the entire team to see the same information at the same time.
Why is Outbuild a great data center construction scheduling replacement for Project or P6?
Outbuild was Built for Field Teams, Not Just Schedulers
P6 and Project are often saved on a scheduler’s desktop computer. They get updated every two weeks. By the time changes reach the field, they are already outdated.
Outbuild is live, shared, and ipad-friendly, so superintendents and trade partners can actually use it in real time.
Outbuild Simplifies Without Losing Control
Data center project schedules can be huge. P6 makes this complexity worse by forcing all your project detail into one level of planning that is not truly accessible to all stakeholders of a project (not to mention impossible to adapt to changes quickly). Outbuild handles lookaheads, roadblocks, and real-time progress for the field. This keeps everyone aligned without drowning in thousands of extra data points. It puts the right data in front of the right people at the right time so your project can be executed smoothly.
Outbuild Promotes Roadblock Management Instead of Endless Meetings
With P6 or Project, identifying roadblocks means emails → meetings → spreadsheets → delays -> more meetings -> more delays.. Outbuild captures roadblocks in the schedule itself, assigns accountability, and shows exactly what’s holding up progress. The accessibility of the software turns hours of coordination meetings every week into short syncs/updates on what is already tracked in Outbuild.
Procurement and Construction in One View
Data center schedules live and die by procurement. Teams can Link submittals, material deliveries, and important equipment to milestones.
The data center boom is unlike anything construction has seen before. Supply is scarce, demand is massive, and every week counts. For contractors, the schedule isn’t just paperwork… it’s the heartbeat of your project.
If you’re one of the data center construction companies building today, your schedule can’t just live in P6 as a compliance document—it has to be a living, shared tool.
In data center operations, a single late pipe can delay commissioning for weeks, and a missed procurement date can cost millions. The schedule isn’t just dates—it’s clarity to where your focus should be day in and day out.
Are you ready to level up your schedules on data center buildings? Book a demo or start your free trial today.
How to Fix the Disconnect Between the Office and Field.
Here’s the balancing act: too much detail slows you down, too little detail blinds you.
Overplanning creates:
- Endless activities that don’t reflect reality
- Delayed updates (by the time they’re entered, they’re outdated)
- Lost focus on what actually matters
Under-planning creates:
- Missed procurement deadlines
- Overlooked dependencies
- A possible drop in stakeholder confidence when durations are too large on your schedule.
Keeping it simple helps keep the master schedule on track. It also gives superintendents and trade partners a useful tool for the field. Layering the schedule is an ideal approach to scheduling data center construction projects:
- Early Phase: Track major milestones ( utility coordination, generator delivery, site readiness)
- Mid Phase: Focused 2–6 week lookaheads driven by field input.
- Late Phase: Weekly adjustments tied to actual progress on site.
Salan agreed that this method is smart for building data centers. He said, “Instead of spending an hour a day with ten people fixing a problem, Outbuild helps us track roadblocks directly. I don’t need another meeting. I can go to the roadblock, tackle it, and move on.”
Developers did not build Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project for the pace of building a data center today. Schedules live on one person’s desktop. Updates crawl through spreadsheets. By the time the field hears about a change, it’s already out of date.
Outbuild allows for a real-time schedule work flow, allowing the entire team to see the same information at the same time.
Why is Outbuild a great data center construction scheduling replacement for Project or P6?
Outbuild was Built for Field Teams, Not Just Schedulers
P6 and Project are often saved on a scheduler’s desktop computer. They get updated every two weeks. By the time changes reach the field, they are already outdated.
Outbuild is live, shared, and ipad-friendly, so superintendents and trade partners can actually use it in real time.
Outbuild Simplifies Without Losing Control
Data center project schedules can be huge. P6 makes this complexity worse by forcing all your project detail into one level of planning that is not truly accessible to all stakeholders of a project (not to mention impossible to adapt to changes quickly). Outbuild handles lookaheads, roadblocks, and real-time progress for the field. This keeps everyone aligned without drowning in thousands of extra data points. It puts the right data in front of the right people at the right time so your project can be executed smoothly.
Outbuild Promotes Roadblock Management Instead of Endless Meetings
With P6 or Project, identifying roadblocks means emails → meetings → spreadsheets → delays -> more meetings -> more delays.. Outbuild captures roadblocks in the schedule itself, assigns accountability, and shows exactly what’s holding up progress. The accessibility of the software turns hours of coordination meetings every week into short syncs/updates on what is already tracked in Outbuild.
Procurement and Construction in One View
Data center schedules live and die by procurement. Teams can Link submittals, material deliveries, and important equipment to milestones.
The data center boom is unlike anything construction has seen before. Supply is scarce, demand is massive, and every week counts. For contractors, the schedule isn’t just paperwork… it’s the heartbeat of your project.
If you’re one of the data center construction companies building today, your schedule can’t just live in P6 as a compliance document—it has to be a living, shared tool.
In data center operations, a single late pipe can delay commissioning for weeks, and a missed procurement date can cost millions. The schedule isn’t just dates—it’s clarity to where your focus should be day in and day out.
Are you ready to level up your schedules on data center buildings? Book a demo or start your free trial today.
Frequently Asked Questions
In data center construction, megawatts (MW) measure how much power a facility can handle. More MW means more servers and storage can run inside. It’s like measuring the horsepower of a car, the bigger the number, the more it can do. Higher MW usually also means a much larger building with more square footage to house all that equipment.
Right now, there’s a record 3.9 gigawatts of data center space being built in North America’s biggest markets, according to CBRE. Data Center projects are most prominent in Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Arizona, New York, Georgia, and Oregon.
According to the Building Design+Construction's 2024 Giants 400 Report, Holder Construction, HITT Contracting, Turner Construction, DPR Construction, and Clayco are leading the way as the biggest contractors and construction managers in the data center industry.
Data center infrastructure is the full system that keeps our digital world running smoothly. It includes servers that process information, storage systems that hold data, and networking equipment that moves data quickly. It also covers power, cooling, and security to make sure everything stays running safely.
Building a data center usually takes anywhere from 12 to 36 months, depending on its size and complexity. There’s a lot of planning, installing servers, wiring networks, and setting up power and cooling systems. Bigger, high-tech data centers with advanced security and backup systems can take even longer
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