Industry Insights
Grid access is now the constraint.
ENR’s coverage of the data center build-out has shifted significantly over the past few months, and current headlines keep coming back to grid access and what is actually limiting delivery. ERCOT in Texas and MISO across the Midwest are reporting the same pattern, that there is an influx of surging large-load interconnection requests with multiyear queues for studies and upgrades.
What this means in practice for MEP teams is that on-site generation, battery storage and grid-interactive systems are increasingly being incorporated into data center power strategies. Developers who aren’t planning for these from day one are finding that the required grid upgrades can add tens of millions of dollars and more than a year to a program. The commissioning implications are significant: validating islanding protocols, backup generation sequencing and storage integration on a facility that can’t rely on clean grid power is a fundamentally different scope to a conventional critical facilities project.
Congress moves on who pays for power infrastructure.
On September 16, the US House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 9340) with near-unanimous bipartisan support, 417 votes to 3. The bill applies to data centers with peak demand of at least 100 MW and would require states to consider rate structures that make large-load customers responsible for the additional costs of serving them, rather than passing those costs on to existing ratepayers.
The Senate has yet to pass the bill. Sen. Martin Heinrich has argued that it doesn’t go far enough, and he is proposing that large-load customers should cover the cost of the infrastructure needed to connect them to the grid.
Whatever happens next, the underlying issue isn’t going away. As data center power requirements continue to grow, developers, utilities and engineers are having to think much earlier about where that power comes from, how quickly it can be delivered and who ultimately pays for the infrastructure required to support it.
Contractor backlog is up.
Associated Builders and Contractors reported that US nonresidential construction backlog reached 8.5 months in August, up from 8.0 in July. The driver of this is clear as one in six ABC members now has data center work under contract, the highest share ever recorded. Contractors with data center projects reported 9.9 months of backlog versus 8.3 months for those without.
The labor picture is more complicated. Construction job openings are near two-year highs. Industry unemployment fell to 3.1%, the lowest in 26 years. But 12.3% of contractors plan to cut staffing over the next six months. The dynamic ENR describes is a market where data center-focused contractors are stretched, while firms without that exposure are pulling back.
The delivery model is changing.
Prefabrication has moved from project-specific tactic to a core strategy. BIM has evolved from a coordination tool to a manufacturing and operations planning instrument. The firms winning in this environment are the ones with self-perform MEP capability or strong in-house subcontracting relationships.
Early engagement between owners, designers and MEP trades is now the expectation. Engineers joining data center programs without that collaborative model experience are finding the environment challenging.
Workforce Challenges
The mid-career gap is the real problem.
The headline workforce growth figure, 186,660 to 242,989 across the MEP Giants report, looks strong on paper, but the number that matters more, from where we sit, is what’s happening in the eight-to-fifteen-year experience bracket. That cohort is critically short relative to demand. Graduate intake is gradually increasing, senior engineers are present in most large firms, but the layer in between, the people who run complex MEP scopes, mentor juniors, and operate with limited supervision, is where the market is stretched.
Addressing that gap requires looking across sector lines. Engineers with eight to fifteen years in oil and gas, industrial, transport or defense often have the core competencies these projects need. What they’re missing is sector-specific context, not fundamental engineering capability. The firms picking up the best of this talent are the ones willing to invest in targeted onboarding rather than waiting for perfect CVs that don’t exist in sufficient quantity.
Retention is the front line now.
With the larger consolidated platforms growing their internal recruitment capability and building employer brand narratives around national project exposure and career development, independent and mid-size firms are under real pressure on retention. The firms managing this most effectively tend to share a few things: transparent progression structures that don’t require moving into management to advance, early access to complex projects as a visible career signal, and compensation that gets reviewed more than once a year. The firms treating salary benchmarking as an annual exercise are systematically losing the engineers they most need to keep.
Market Moves
H&MV Engineering’s $1.6B valuation signals where the MEP market is heading.
One of the more telling M&A signals from this month came from Ireland. H&MV Engineering, a high-voltage electrical contractor that has grown from $70 million in revenue in 2020 to a projected $1.14 billion in fiscal 2026, closed a $1.6 billion private equity deal in September, backed by Exponent with additional investment from Apollo Global Management, Inc., S3, Pantheon and SQ Capital. The company’s order book stands at $2.3 billion with an $18.2 billion pipeline.
H&MV entered the US market in late 2025, opened a North American headquarters in Dallas in September 2026, and is targeting 1,000 US jobs over five years. Their focus is high-voltage infrastructure for data centers, battery storage, renewable energy and utility projects from 138 kV to 345 kV. The story is interesting less for the deal itself and more for what it signals: specialist MEP and electrical contractors with deep data center and grid infrastructure capability are attracting investment at a scale that would have been unusual three years ago. The capital is following the skill set.
Project Showcase
Metric DCX, the preferred search partner for Crux AI and Burns Engineering
Metric DCX has been formalized as the preferred search partner for two organizations that are operating at the leading edge of the data center and energy infrastructure build-out: Crux AI and Burns Engineering. These are structured, exclusive partnerships built on sustained engagement and a genuine understanding of what each organization needs.
Crux AI
Crux AI launched in September 2026 as a neocloud built around Google Tensor Processing Units, backed by Blackstone. They are targeting 500MW of TPU capacity by 2027 and came to market with an immediate and highly specific technical hiring requirement. The pace they are moving at, and the specificity of the engineering capability they need, makes standard recruitment approaches inadequate.
As their preferred search partner, our starting point is our proprietary network, a CRM built from years of direct engagement across the data center and critical infrastructure market. When a requirement comes in from Crux AI, we work from our active pipeline of candidates, delivering industry-leading professionals at pace.
Burns Engineering, Inc.
Burns Engineering is a Philadelphia-based MEP and electrical engineering consultancy with more than 60 years in the industry, ranked in the ENR Top 500 Design Firms and recognized as a specialist in mission-critical facilities. Their data center practice is built around one central brief: enabling speed-to-market with resilient, cost-effective power. That means medium- and high-voltage interconnection, precision cooling, UPS and battery energy storage, microgrid design, SCADA systems and substations, covering the full critical power stack from master planning through to commissioning.
What makes this partnership meaningful is the specificity of what Burns Engineering does. The work is deeply technical with a sophisticated client base, meaning the engineers they need must be able to operate across power, cooling and controls simultaneously. Our dedicated search team has engaged directly with their stakeholders to understand the technical environments and the type of engineer who will genuinely thrive in them. When a requirement comes in, we’re already working from an informed position, not building one from scratch.
What preferred partnership means in practice
For both organizations, the model is the same: Metric DCX operates as an extension of the internal talent function rather than as an external vendor. In practice, that means:
• Round-the-clock search activity across time zones
• Full CRM access to our network, including passive candidates not actively looking
• A dedicated search team aligned to each partnership
• Regular stakeholder briefings to stay ahead of live requirements and cultural shifts
These partnerships reflect the position Metric DCX has built in this market over time. If your firm is carrying a requirement that needs a partnership-led approach, reach out today.
