A Buildermuse Q&A, companion to the "How It Gets Built" series. Questions were sent in writing on October 7, 2026 and answered on November 10, 2026. Answers are attributed to Tom Mertz, President and CEO of EverOn Data Center Services, and are printed as returned, with light edits for length.
EverOn Data Center Services is the construction business that spun out of T5 Data Centers in September 2026, when T5's operations arm went to Salute. The construction side grew from $87 million in revenue in 2021 to $1.7 billion in 2025, with 83% of that now third-party work, and the company counts about 260 completed projects. Roughly 200 EverOn staff direct about 6,000 trade workers at a time.
We asked Mertz the questions a contractor, subcontractor or estimator would ask if they had him across the table: how long power takes to arrive, what the equipment lead times really are, what the trade shortage is doing to wages, and what liquid cooling changes inside the hall.
Growing 20x in four years
T5 Construction went from $87 million in 2021 to $1.7 billion in 2025, and 83% of that is now third-party work. What did the business have to change operationally to grow 20x in four years, and what broke along the way?
The biggest change was bringing our construction support functions in-house. When we were an $87 million business, we leaned on outside firms for much of that back-of-house work. Over the next four years, we built dedicated internal teams for preconstruction, BIM, scheduling, cost management and project controls, so the expertise behind every project lives inside our company.
Just as important, we had to scale our processes. What works for a small, tight-knit team doesn't automatically work for several hundred people running multiple projects at once. We had to take the practices that made us successful and rebuild them so they held up at that size.
As for what broke: systems and processes, first and foremost. That's honestly what pushed us to scale them in the first place. Any company that grows this fast is going to uncover gaps along the way. What matters is spotting them early and adapting quickly, and that agility has become part of how we operate.
Building without a sister operator
EverOn stands alone now that operations went to Salute. T5 built its pitch on construction and operations sitting at the same table from day one. What does an independent GC lose or gain when the operator is a partner rather than a sister company, and how do you keep commissioning handoffs clean?
For 14 years, we built our business on close coordination between construction and operations, and that mindset doesn't go away because the operations team now sits in a different company. It shapes how we approach every project and every owner.
It also helps to look at where our growth has come from. Much of the 83% of our work that's third-party has been delivered alongside other operating firms. Over the years, we've learned what matters most to operators and built that into our own internal policies and procedures for commissioning and turnover. Those processes let us work successfully with any operator, not just one.
Our internal operations handoff policy is what keeps commissioning handoffs clean. We bring the operations team into the project early, align on the mission from the start and follow that defined process all the way through turnover, so nothing gets lost between construction and operations.
So what we gain is flexibility and what we keep is the operator's perspective. That lens is a big part of what makes us a specialized data center general contractor and it remains one of our key differentiators.
Eight to 12 months to utility power
On a 50 to 100 MW campus today, what is the realistic gap between site control and energized utility power in the markets you build in, Georgia included, and what does EverOn actually do on site while that clock runs?
From the day we step on site to the day we have utility power, it typically takes eight to 12 months on a campus that size. A 50 MW site usually lands closer to eight months and a 100 MW site closer to 12. Some run longer and some shorter, depending on the market and the utility.
And that time isn't spent waiting. We're building the building. We're procuring equipment, preparing the pad, pouring concrete and erecting steel. All of that work moves in parallel so that the moment utility power arrives, the facility is ready to be energized, commissioned and turned over to the owner.
Lead times: 12 months to two years
You offer long-lead equipment procurement as a service. What lead times are you seeing right now on generators, medium-voltage switchgear, transformers, and chillers, and how far ahead of the GC award are owners having to commit?
Lead times vary, but they're long. For the four categories you named (generators, medium-voltage switchgear, transformers and chillers), we're seeing anywhere from 12 months to two years. Where a given piece falls in that range depends largely on its size.
To get ahead of that, most owners are ordering equipment two to four months before they award the general contractor, on average. Even with that head start, in most cases we're seeing that equipment still lands on the critical path, the longest sequence of work that determines when a project can finish. Ordering early helps, but it doesn't take equipment off the critical path on its own. That's why we manage procurement so closely, from order to delivery.
The trades that constrain the schedule
You told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution there are only so many people who can do this. About 200 EverOn staff direct roughly 6,000 trade workers at a time. Which trades are the real constraint in 2026, what is that doing to wage rates and crew sizing, and what does an electrician need to learn before they are useful on a data center floor?
At the end of the day, it's still electrical and mechanical. Every data center depends on those trades and demand for them keeps climbing.
That demand is pushing wage rates up, period. In competitive markets like Texas and Georgia, we're working with our trade partners on incentive packages that add $10 to $20 an hour on top of standard rates, including union scale, to attract skilled tradespeople to our job sites.
As for what an electrician needs before they're productive on a data center floor, it comes down to consistency and quality. Connecting a breaker is connecting a breaker, but in a mission-critical environment, every connection must follow a rigorous, repeatable process. Electricians who succeed with us bring that discipline to every task, every time.
What liquid cooling changes in the hall
Direct liquid cooling and high-density AI halls are now a stated specialty. What changes in the build sequence, the trades on site, and the commissioning scope when a hall is designed for liquid-cooled racks instead of air?
Liquid cooling breaks some long-standing rules inside the data hall. For years, welding inside the hall was off-limits and so was water. Now we're bringing piping, welding and liquid right to the server.
That changes the build sequence in a few ways. Welding becomes a major scope inside the hall. Flush and fill, the process of cleaning, filling and preparing the cooling loops, becomes far more important and takes much longer on the mechanical contractor's side. Those activities are what really drive the design and the schedule on a liquid-cooled project compared with an air-cooled one.
Commissioning changes too, largely because of load banks. A load bank stands in for the servers during testing, so you can prove out the systems without a live IT load. An air-cooled load bank is essentially a giant resistor, like a massive space heater. It draws power and pushes heat into the room and the cooling system has to bring that room back to temperature. A liquid-cooled load bank heats the liquid directly and that heat travels back to the chiller and coolant distribution unit (CDU), which have to remove it.
Liquid-cooled load banks are more labor-intensive to install, take longer to run and are much harder to get. Five years ago, we rarely needed them. Over the last two years, demand has surged, and there are now manufacturers that build nothing else. If they aren't managed carefully during construction, they become a lead-time challenge of their own.
Where the cost has moved since 2024
Roughly how does cost split today between shell, electrical, mechanical, and fit-out on a hyperscale or large colocation build, and which line has moved the most since 2024?
Mechanical has moved the most since 2024 and liquid cooling is the reason. Mechanical used to represent about 5% to 10% of total project cost. On liquid-cooled builds today, it's approaching 20% to 25%. Electrical still accounts for roughly 20% to 40%, so combined, MEP (including equipment) can reach as much as 60% of total project cost.
On air-cooled facilities, the split has stayed fairly consistent over time, with MEP making up about 40% of the project. The shift we're seeing is specific to liquid cooling.
Why schedules slip
Across 260 completed projects, what is the most common reason a data center schedule slips, and what is EverOn doing differently on current jobs to take it off the critical path?
Equipment, both delivery and quality, is the most common reason for a schedule slip. There are plenty of reasons for that, but the result is the same: a direct hit to the schedule. And when equipment shows up with defects or built to the wrong spec, the rework creates another delay.
We try to solve for this by getting involved as early as possible, long before equipment reaches the site. We visit manufacturers' facilities to check status and progress. We bring the people who will actually work with that equipment, our electricians and commissioning agents, into the factory to confirm quality and catch issues at the source. Building those relationships with manufacturers before anything ships is critical. That's how we find problems early and keep them from becoming schedule impacts in the field.
What a contractor should take from this
Three numbers in Mertz's answers are worth writing down. Equipment is 12 months to two years out and owners are committing two to four months before the GC is even picked, so a sub bidding electrical or mechanical on a data center should expect to price labor and installation against gear it did not buy and cannot expedite. Data center trade incentives of $10 to $20 an hour above standard rates in Texas and Georgia set the market for anyone staffing a crew nearby, data center or not. And on a liquid-cooled hall, mechanical has gone from a 5 to 10% line to a 20 to 25% line, which is where the new scope, and the new margin, sits.
For the equipment side of that story, read Data Center Electrical Equipment Lead Times: The Long Wait. For the cooling side, read how liquid cooling is changing data center builds.
