Ground-up data center construction with hyperscale-grade discipline.
Shell construction through L5 commissioning. Switchgear procurement, white-space buildout, generator yard, cooling plant, day-1 capacity sized against your expansion path. We deliver ground-up data centers for colocation operators, hyperscale tenants, and enterprise owner-occupants across 22 states, with the procurement discipline that determines whether your megawatts come online on the timeline your demand model assumed.
Data center construction for operators who measure success in capacity online by quarter-end.
Bentwood builds ground-up data centers for colocation operators, enterprise owner-occupants, and edge-deployment customers. Every project runs through the same operating platform we use for manufacturing, cold storage, and medical TI work, calibrated for uptime requirements and tier-aware sequencing.
Our work is judged on schedule predictability and commissioning quality. We focus our energy on procurement coordination and sequence discipline so the rest of the build can run quietly in the background.
Shell & Site
Site prep, foundation, structural shell, roofing, and envelope. Coordinated with utility availability and substation timing so the building is ready when the gear arrives — not waiting on it.
MEP & Mission-Critical Systems
Power distribution from utility tap through paralleling switchgear, UPS, PDUs, busway, and white-space at densities you specify. N+1 or 2N topology, chilled-water or air-cooled cooling plants, generator yards with paralleled fuel storage, fire-suppression and leak detection coordinated with your DCIM.
Commissioning Readiness
L1 through L5 commissioning support, MOP discipline, integration testing coordination with the CxA, and the operator's change-management process. The handover that makes the operations team happy.
Long-lead procurement decides the schedule before the first shovel hits the ground.
Switchgear lead times running 52+ weeks. Transformers at 78+ weeks. Diesel generators at 60+ weeks. Chiller plants at 40+ weeks. Any one of these slipping by a quarter pushes substantial completion by a quarter, and most of these orders need to be released before pad is poured.
Our platform tracks every long-lead item from submittal approval through factory acceptance testing through ship-watch through site arrival. When something is trending late, we surface it 60-90 days before it affects critical path. That window is usually enough to find an expedite, swap vendors, or rebalance the schedule before delivery commitments are at risk.
What We Track
- Medium-voltage and low-voltage switchgear, paralleling switchgear
- Transformers (pad-mount, dry-type, utility)
- Generator sets, ATS, fuel storage, exhaust systems
- UPS systems, PDUs, RPPs, busway
- Chiller plants, cooling towers, CRACs/CRAHs, in-row units
- Containment systems, hot/cold aisle, plenum work
- Fire suppression (FM-200, Novec, pre-action)
- Building automation, leak detection, environmental monitoring
Method-of-procedure discipline calibrated to the uptime tier you're targeting.
A Tier II edge node and a Tier IV concurrently-maintainable facility require fundamentally different construction sequences. We plan the sequence backward from the tier target, not forward from the field schedule.
MOP discipline begins at foundation pour and continues through L1 prefunctional, L2 startup, L3 functional, L4 integrated systems testing, and L5 ongoing operations turnover. Every system that goes live has a documented procedure, a tested fall-back, and a coordination plan with the CxA and the operator's NOC. Our PMs follow the same checklist, the same escalation paths, and the same documentation standard on every data center project, whether that project is in Atlanta, Dallas, or Columbus.
Why this is strategic: Hyperscale demand continues to grow regardless of the broader economic picture. Edge deployments are accelerating into secondary metros across the Southeast and Midwest where Bentwood already operates. Ground-up data center experience is a hard skill to staff up quickly, which narrows the competitive field.
Sequencing Capability
- Tier II / III / IV-aware MOPs from foundation through commissioning
- Coordination with CxA from L1 through L5
- Integration testing planning during shell construction
- Utility coordination (medium voltage, fiber, water, gas)
- Substation tie-in scheduling with the local utility
- Operator change-management process integration
- Post-commissioning support and warranty rounds
- Recurring capacity-expansion partnerships
Multi-site deployment requires a contractor who can hold quality consistent across geographies.
A single data center build is hard. Coordinating five sites across four states is exponentially harder, and that's where most contractors lose schedule discipline. Procurement diverges, engineering reuse gets blocked by ego, and your facilities team ends up reconciling five different reporting formats every Monday morning.
We run one operating platform across every Bentwood site. The PM in Nashville uses the same procurement log, the same commissioning checklist, and the same MOP library as the PM in Dallas. Your team sees a single source of truth across the portfolio.
One Operating Standard, Every Build
- Same project-management process at every facility, in every state
- Centralized long-lead-time procurement, decentralized field execution
- Cross-site engineering reuse: switchgear specs, MOPs, MEP drawings
- One Bentwood relationship across your portfolio
- Sub prequalification handled per-state, transparent to your team
- Live visibility into every project's cost position, schedule risk, and procurement state
The platform that runs every Bentwood project is the same platform that gives your facilities team one portal to see every site's status, every long-lead item, and every commissioning gate — in real time, with no separate reporting overhead.
Have a data center build in the pipeline?
We will review your tier targets, utility timing, and long-lead-item status before discussing next steps.
Contact BentwoodQuestions we hear a lot.
Do you build data centers from the ground up?
Yes, from shell through commissioning, including switchgear and gear procurement and tier-aware sequencing. The long-lead equipment usually drives the schedule, so we track it from submittal to delivery.
How do you handle long-lead switchgear and electrical equipment?
We track every long-lead item from submittal through approval, fabrication, and delivery, and we flag a slipping date before it moves so there is still time to mitigate.
What states do you build data centers in?
Across our twenty-two-state footprint in the Southeast, Texas, and Midwest, with the same operating discipline at every site.