When data center trade packages are bought: a timeline for trade and equipment sellers

In what order is a data center bought?

In the order it is built. A data center goes from bare land to live halls in a sequence most builders follow, and each trade package is bought a set distance ahead of its work. Global Data Center Hub puts a clean run at 18 to 36 months from land purchase to power-on. Opendock puts hyperscale construction at 18 to 24 months from planning to deployment.

These are the six packages Spezia tracks on every project, and when each is bought.

Which packages are bought at each point in the build?

Read across a row to see what is being bought, and what is already awarded and under way, while the site is at that point.

Three points matter most for sellers:

• Power equipment is bought at approval. Switchgear, transformers and generators take a year or more to make, so the order goes in before the ground is broken. The owner often buys them directly and hands them to the contractor to set.
• Electrical and mechanical stay open for two stages. Their subcontracts are bought from the start of site work until the structures are up.
• Commissioning comes last. The commissioning firm is picked during design or early construction. Testing runs at the end, as equipment is set and the first halls go live. In the table above, it is being bought as the electrical and mechanical install begins.

How far ahead of power-on is each package bought?

When a public source gives the date a site goes live, Spezia reads each package back from it.

• Electrical, mechanical and power equipment: design and pricing more than 24 months out, buying 12 to 24 months out, installing in the last 12 months.
• Structure and shell: buying 18 to 30 months out, installing 6 to 18 months out.
• Commissioning: buying 6 to 18 months out, testing in the last 6 months.

A stated go-live date is one of the quickest ways to place a project you read about. Commissioning itself runs in levels, from factory checks (Level 1) to a test of the whole facility under simulated failures (Level 5), as Archdesk describes.

How many projects are buying each package now?

Here is where the 408 approved or under-construction U.S. projects in Spezia's tracker stand, package by package, as of November 13, 2026.

Counts under 25 are shown as "under 25", because a stage partly rests on a model's reading and Spezia publishes those only for groups of 25 or more. The rest of each row is projects past the package, on hold, too early or without enough evidence.

Site and civil shows few projects buying now for a simple reason: on most active projects the ground work is already let. 250 are installing it.

What does a "buying now" stage rest on?

Mostly on a reading of the reports, so it is a lead to confirm, not a fact. For each package, here is what the buying-now stage rests on most:

A public record (an FAA crane date, an EPA permit) is the main evidence for fewer than 25 projects in each package. That reflects the public record: most projects have no FAA or EPA filing yet, so the build phase has to be read from what the news says. Is that data center really being built? shows how few projects have a record, and how to check one.

Who holds the packages being bought?

Usually nobody in public. Of the 262 projects buying electrical now, 242 have no electrical contractor named in any source or record. For mechanical it is 254 of 260, and for power equipment 136 of 139.

An unnamed holder means one of two things. The package is still being bid, or it was awarded without an announcement. Either way, the general contractor or the owner knows, and Who builds U.S. data centers counts the builders named on each kind of job.

Where are packages being bought?

By region, counting approved or under-construction projects.

Texas alone has 68 projects buying electrical now. Inside Spezia, a member sets a territory by state or by distance from home and sees every project there ranked, buying their trade now first.

It also pays to watch the projects behind the announcements. 32 of the 343 projects still reported only as announced already read as buying electrical now. The evidence on these is often thin, but it is where a window can open before any groundbreaking is announced.

When should you call, by what you sell?

• Switchgear, transformers, generators and UPS. Call at approval, 12 to 24 months before power-on, and call the owner as well as the contractor. If a project is already setting gear, ask about the next phase: campuses are built in phases, and each phase buys again.
• Electrical distribution, cable and busway. Follow the electrical subcontract. It is let around the time the structures go up, and the contractor buys materials from then until the halls go live.
• Chillers, cooling units and piping. The same window as electrical. For the largest units, ask at approval whether the owner is buying them early.
• Commissioning and testing. Get on the shortlist during design, and expect the package to be let as the install begins.
• Site, civil and structure trades. Watch for the county's approval and the first stormwater permit. That is when grading can start, and the structure package follows while it runs.

The figures come from Spezia's research run that finished November 9, 2026, with the FAA and EPA records read on November 13, 2026. The tracker re-researches every project each week and merges records of one project as it finds them, so later counts on the live tracker will differ.