Digital Infrastructure & Data Centers

Holds the owner's interest across every interface the project has — utility, design, equipment vendors, general contractor, and commissioning agent — and reports on all of them to the party paying for the build. On a data center specifically, the work concentrates where the schedule is actually decided: the interconnection position, the long-lead electrical order book, the cooling and water strategy, and whether the commissioning program is real. The role is advisory. It does not certify design and it does not direct construction means, methods, sequences, or site safety.

Because three separate questions get collapsed into one adjective. A utility capacity letter says capacity exists somewhere in the network, subject to study and to a queue the letter does not describe. An energization date says when the connection could be delivered. Buildability says whether the site can physically carry the program — plot area for the electrical yard, generator compound, and cooling plant, plus the water and discharge position. Those three are answered by different parties on different timelines and they fail independently.

Before major capital is committed — typically ahead of a final investment decision, a financing, a land acquisition that includes a build program, or a board approval. The review is designed to inform a decision rather than to audit one already taken, and its value falls sharply once the design has been released and the long-lead equipment ordered.

Earlier than most programs assume, and often before a construction contract exists. Order books for medium and high voltage plant are measured in quarters, not weeks, and the delivery date frequently sits on the critical path ahead of anything in construction. The practical test is whether the order dates in the procurement schedule are consistent with the energization date the program claims — where they are not, the schedule is asserted rather than derived.

It should at least be constrained before acquisition, because cooling selection sets water demand, discharge consent, plot area, and a measurable share of total power draw — all of which are attributes of the site rather than of the plant. A site that works on a spreadsheet at one cooling approach may not physically accommodate another, and the capacity figure in the interconnection application depends on a decision that is often still open when the application is filed.