The 2025 Commissioning Giants report provides the most comprehensive picture of where commissioning revenue is coming from, which markets are growing fastest, and what challenges firms face. All data below is sourced directly from that report.
The Revenue Picture
- $993M, Combined revenue, top 25 Cx firms
- 8.7%, Year-on-year revenue increase
- 36.2%, Avg share of gross revenue from Cx
The average firm earned $39.7 million from its commissioning division, with the top three firms each earning $70 million or more. On average, commissioning revenue represented 36.2% of a firm’s total gross revenue, though 52% of firms reported commissioning as 20% or less of their total revenue, showing a significant spread across business models.
Where the Work Comes From
The 2025 report breaks commissioning revenue down by project type:
- Data Centers: 34%
- Hospitals/health Care Facilities:14%
- Government or Military Facilities:7%
- Research Laboratories: 5%
- Office Buildings:6%
- Colleges or Universities:8%
- Industrial or Manufacturing Facilities/Warehouses:8%
- Utilities, Public Works or Transportation: 5%
- K-12 Schools: 7%
- Sport or Entertainment Facilities or Convention Centers:1%
- Hospitals, Motels, or Resorts: 1%
- Mission-critical Facilities, Not Including Data Centers or Hospitals:2%
- Engineering Multi-dwelling Buildings, Retail Complexes or Restaurants:2%
Key Markets Driving Commissioning Revenue
Data centres and hospitals/healthcare facilities were the top two building types for commissioning revenue in 2025. The report notes three new firms entered or returned to the top 25 rankings this year, reflecting continued competitive movement in the sector.
All 25 firms provided commissioning services in North America. 60% also operated in Canada and Mexico. The average firm reported 34 certified commissioning authorities, agents, or certified commissioning professionals on staff. Professional bodies these engineers belong to include ASHRAE, the Building Commissioning Association, the AABC Commissioning Group, and the Association of Energy Engineers.
Why Clients Commission
Firms were asked why their clients commission buildings. The top reasons reported were:
Savings (92%)– energy efficiency and lower life cycle cost
Sustainability (88%) – long-term materials and performance efficiency
Mandates (84%) – codes, standards, and benchmarking requirements
Resiliency (80%) – safety, flexibility, disaster resilience, health
The Bottom Line
Commissioning revenue broke through the $993 million mark in 2025, growing 8.7% year-on-year. Data centres have overtaken all other building types as the leading source of commissioning revenue, a shift that has structural implications for both firms and the talent they need to hire.
One of the most interesting takeaways from the latest Commissioning Giants report is the growing workforce challenge behind it.
Firms highlighted three key issues
- The quality and readiness of younger engineers is now the #1 concern.
- A shortage of experienced commissioning professionals is tightening capacity.
- The broader skills/awareness gap is still limiting how the industry scales.
As demand continues to rise, especially in Mission-Critical and Data Center sectors, firms that invest early in training, mentorship, and workforce development will have a clear competitive edge.
Deal Spotlight
Bureau Veritas Acquires LotusWorks
LotusWorks is an Ireland-headquartered provider of commissioning, quality assurance and quality control, calibration, maintenance, and construction management services for mission-critical facilities. The firm serves semiconductor manufacturers and data centre owners, operates across the US and Europe, employs 750 people, and generated EUR 131 million in revenue in calendar year 2025.
Bureau Veritas is a France-headquartered global leader in Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) services. The firm operates across construction, industry, marine and offshore, agri-food and commodities, and government services worldwide.
The transaction carries an enterprise value of EUR 375 million, implying an EV/EBITA multiple of 15x on 2026 estimates, and is expected to close by summer 2026 subject to regulatory approvals.
Combined with Bureau Veritas’s existing data centre activities, the acquisition creates what the firm describes as a new mission-critical platform in the TIC industry, targeting approximately EUR 300 million in combined revenue. At closing, the LotusWorks platform will represent around 15% of Bureau Veritas’s Buildings & Infrastructure division.
What This Signals
A EUR 375 million price tag for a 750-person commissioning firm signals how significantly the market values specialist technical expertise in mission-critical environments. For MEP and Cx professionals, this deal underlines where institutional capital sees long-term growth: data centres and semiconductor facilities, and the highly skilled commissioning workforce needed to bring them online safely.
AI Data Centres & the Commissioning Gap
The Scale of What’s Being Built
The AI infrastructure buildout is generating commissioning demand at a scale the industry has not previously encountered. Deloitte has forecast that US AI data centre power demand could increase from 4 GW in 2024 to 123 GW by 2035. McKinsey estimates that meeting global compute requirements through 2030 may require nearly $7 trillion in data centre investments.
Why Liquid Cooling Changes the Commissioning Equation
Traditional data centre commissioning was largely about air handling systems, power distribution, and controls. AI-era facilities are different. The density of GPU workloads and the heat those workloads generate have made liquid cooling a prerequisite rather than an option.
This is pertinent for commissioners as liquid cooling is an integrated system, not a component. Coolant distribution units (CDUs), secondary fluid networks, cold plates, and racks interact continuously.
The People Problem
The growth in commissioning demand for AI data centres is running ahead of the workforce available to deliver it. Data centre commissioning professionals who understand both traditional building systems and liquid cooling integration are in short supply. The 2025 Commissioning Giants report flagged the lack of sufficient commissioning authorities and agents as one of the top anticipated future challenges for firms, alongside changing codes and standards.
For MEP and Cx firms, this creates both a hiring pressure and a business opportunity. Firms that invest now in upskilling commissioning teams on liquid cooling systems, direct-to-chip integration, and mission-critical validation processes are positioning themselves to capture a disproportionate share of one of the most technically demanding and fastest-growing segments in the built environment.
