When you ask most data center contractors how long a project takes, the answer is predictable: two to three years. Katie Coulson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Skanska Advanced Technology, operates differently. Her projects compress significantly faster without sacrificing safety or quality.

The philosophy separating her approach from standard practice: "If everything works, we're probably not trying hard enough." This isn't about working harder. It's about working differently. Speed becomes a diagnostic tool, revealing where processes are broken.

Understanding this framework matters enormously. The workflows enabling faster execution are fundamentally different from traditional construction sequences.

Speed in data center construction isn’t magic. It’s operational discipline. Katie Coulson (Skanska) shows that 2–3 year timelines collapse ONLY when you rebuild the entire workflow, not just push people harder.

Here’s the real playbook behind extreme compression:

Bottom line: Contractors don’t lose to Skanska on tech. They lose on operational sequencing, vendor relationships, and culture. If you aren’t re-engineering these foundations, speed stays out of reach.

The data center boom creates urgency, yet most general contractors still operate on traditional timelines. This gap is structural.

Speed requires crews who understand your culture and have executed similar work before. Trust matters more than cost when the schedule is compressed. Skanska works with the same specialized electrical and mechanical subs across multiple states precisely because these crews understand what the client requires. They reduce onboarding friction and enable rapid execution in unfamiliar markets. Without this relationship depth, moving fast becomes nearly impossible.

In high-tech construction, owners furnish 40 to 60 percent of equipment. When cleanroom subs, equipment vendors, and electrical suppliers operate on their own schedules, one bottleneck cascades across the entire timeline. Coordinating these dependencies requires constant communication and weekly reviews. Most general contractors lack the institutional bandwidth to manage this complexity. A single delayed shipment can consume weeks of schedule buffer.

Procurement still lives in spreadsheets and email at most contractors. Buyout cycles stretch across weeks because vendors aren't pre-qualified and pricing frameworks don't exist in advance. By the time an RFQ goes out, weeks of design work have already consumed the schedule buffer. This sequential approach creates a bottleneck that forces everything downstream to wait.

These barriers explain why competitors cannot match Skanska's speed. They also create opportunity for those willing to solve them.

Traditional construction follows a sequential pattern: design completes, specifications finalize, vendors bid, responses arrive weeks later, negotiations occur, orders placed, manufacturing begins. The cycle consumes six to eight weeks.

Fast-track construction inverts this. Procurement begins during design, not after it.

The mechanism:

Katie noted this approach works particularly well in standardized data center work: "There are a lot of owners who are not having so many different types of buildings or different types of things; they're really building similarly so that it's a lot easier to price." When projects follow similar patterns, pre-qualification becomes increasingly effective.

Tools that succeed in this space don't replace RFQs; they enable pre-qualification workflows and maintain vendor relationships across multiple cycles. The companies winning in fast-track construction have built institutional vendor relationships. Technology should help them scale those relationships.

A subcontractor who has executed three data center projects with your company understands your safety expectations, quality standards, and timeline pressure. They know which details matter. They are an extension of your team.

Skanska pays a premium to work with the same specialized subs across multiple projects because the premium is less expensive than onboarding new crews and managing performance variance.

Katie stated directly:

When expanding into new markets, Skanska brings core subcontractors (often at higher labor rates than local subs) and supplements them with local crews for routine work. The specialized work stays with proven teams. This creates strategic partners who travel and tactical resources that provide geographic coverage.

Tools managing subcontractor workflows often assume commodity labor where workers are interchangeable. That assumption fails in fast-track construction. The constraint isn't finding workers; it's finding crews with the right experience and cultural fit. Technology that helps contractors maintain and scale relationships with proven subs solves a real problem.

Katie described offsite mechanical assembly:

This approach compresses on-site assembly work dramatically. The factory manufactures precise skids to BIM-derived specifications. The site crew focuses on final connections and integration.

Katie mentioned prefabricated ductwork "so large you could drive a semi through it." This isn't standard HVAC assembly; it's engineered components built to exact specifications. The ductwork ships to the site ready for installation, eliminating weeks of fabrication.

Prefabrication requires detail. The factory cannot build to ambiguity. BIM models provide the precision needed to manufacture offsite components that will fit and function on-site. Coordination matters enormously. Prefab schedules must align with site construction sequences. The prefab shop cannot build three months ahead of when components are installed.

Schedule tools that treat prefabrication as an afterthought miss the central coordination challenge. Winning technology integrates prefab manufacturing timelines with site construction sequences in real time. It shows when materials arrive, where they stage, and how they integrate with other trades.

Data center construction spans multiple geographies where labor costs vary dramatically: Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Ohio, and the Pacific Northwest all host significant facilities.

Katie described the approach:

The logic:

This requires understanding regional labor markets and relationships with manufacturing facilities in labor-abundant regions. Most contractors lack this visibility.

Geographic labor rate databases integrated into construction planning workflows remain sparse. Predictive models showing where prefabrication makes economic and schedule sense don't exist at scale. Technology that helps contractors identify manufacturing locations based on labor economics and supply chain factors provides real value.

In data center and semiconductor construction, owners supply substantial equipment. Most GCs treat OFE as something that "arrives." Fast movers treat it as a critical path driver.

Katie explained:

The operational practice:

One delayed shipment consumes weeks of schedule buffer. If electrical equipment slips from week four to week six, the entire electrical trade sequence adjusts. The cascade effect means one supplier delay can domino across the project.

Most project management tools treat owner-furnished equipment as passive. They show when equipment is scheduled but don't actively track equipment orders, vendor communications, or delivery dependencies. Technology integrating OFE tracking with site scheduling and flagging delivery risks early would solve a real problem.

All five operational moves rest on a foundation that cannot be purchased. Katie articulated it: "If everything works, we're probably not trying hard enough."

Katie described this approach:

The company pilots new tools on one or two projects before broader deployment. They accept that some pilots won't work. They value the learning regardless.

A scheduling tool cannot make a team more willing to try new approaches. A procurement platform cannot build vendor relationships. A prefab management system cannot create the safety mindset that moves work from height to ground.

Tools amplify culture. They do not create it.

Many construction companies buy tools and see no improvement. Tools expose process gaps, but culture determines whether gaps get addressed. Companies with speed cultures use tools to scale what they already do well. Companies without speed cultures struggle to benefit from tools.

This explains why some contractors achieve significantly faster timelines while others remain constrained to traditional schedules. The constraint is cultural discipline, not technical capability.

The data center and semiconductor boom creates structural demand for speed. Clients have committed capacity to market. They face liquidated damages if delivery slips. They pay premiums for contractors demonstrating speed capability. This demand is structural.

Understand workflows first. Speed isn't about individual tools; it's about operational sequences allowing parallel work, early coordination, and continuous adjustment. Execution succeeds by fitting into established sequences, not disrupting them.

Recognize speed as a symptom. Speed results from operational excellence removing waste and creating alignment. The goal is delivering projects safely, on budget, with quality.

Prioritize vendor relationships. Vendor relationships matter more in fast-track construction than traditional construction. Operations should deepen and scale relationships systematically, not treat them as transactional.

Integrate supply chain visibility. Treat owner-furnished equipment and supply chain visibility as central to execution, not afterthoughts. Coordinate prefab manufacturing with site sequences. Integrate vendor schedules with site schedules.

Build for geographic flexibility. Labor markets vary. Manufacturing locations matter. Execution planning should consider where work happens, not just when work happens.

In your current projects or operations, what is the single biggest operational bottleneck preventing faster execution?

Reply with the constraint you face most often. Understanding where real problems sit helps identify where operational improvements might create the most value.

Watch the episode with Katie Coulson here 👇👇👇

A major step for product visualization

Doing nothing is now the riskiest strategy

The infrastructure spending spree continues