Skanska has signed a $238 million contract to build a second data center building for an existing client in Virginia, the construction giant said Aug. 13, adding to a data center construction pipeline that has become one of the busiest corners of the commercial real estate industry.
The contract, announced via PR Newswire, covers construction of a 22,000-square-meter (roughly 237,000-square-foot) data center with five data halls, along with associated site work and underground utilities. Skanska did not name the client, describing the deal only as an additional contract “with an existing client” for the second building on the same campus. The Stockholm-based company said the $238 million, or about 2.2 billion Swedish kronor, will be booked in its U.S. order bookings for the third quarter of 2026.
Construction is set to begin this month and finish in May 2028, a roughly 21-month build timeline that reflects the scale and complexity of modern hyperscale data center construction, which typically requires extensive electrical infrastructure, backup generation and cooling systems beyond a standard commercial building shell.
Virginia has emerged as the epicenter of the U.S. data center construction boom, anchored by “Data Center Alley” in Loudoun County and spreading into neighboring jurisdictions as available land and power capacity in the core market tighten. The state’s dominance has brought its own friction: Virginia regulators recently ordered data center operators to pay for dedicated transmission infrastructure rather than spreading those grid upgrade costs across all ratepayers, a response to mounting public concern over the industry’s electricity demands.
The Skanska contract is the latest sign that the data center construction wave shows no sign of slowing, even as it reshapes competition for land, labor and power. Homebuilders have said data center developers are outbidding them for land at what they describe as “impossible prices,” and separate research has found data center construction pulling skilled labor away from residential building. Commercial real estate brokerages have also reported that data center vacancy rates have fallen to record lows as power constraints β not demand β increasingly cap how quickly new capacity can come online.
For Skanska, the deal continues a pattern the company has repeated numerous times in 2026 alone: this is at least the fifth data center construction contract worth $190 million or more that Skanska has announced in the U.S. so far this year, several of them additional-phase contracts with existing clients in Virginia and Georgia. The recurring, similarly structured announcements suggest clients are expanding campuses in phases rather than committing to a single mega-project upfront. That approach lets both the client and the contractor scale capacity to match power availability and tenant demand as it materializes, rather than building speculative capacity that could sit empty if utility interconnection timelines slip.
What it means: The undisclosed client and repeat-contract structure are themselves telling β large data center operators increasingly prefer incremental build-outs with proven contractors over single massive commitments, likely reflecting uncertainty about how fast they can actually secure power for each phase. At $238 million for roughly 237,000 square feet, the contract also underscores how expensive data center construction has become per square foot relative to conventional office or industrial building, a cost premium driven by specialized electrical and cooling infrastructure that shows no sign of coming down as AI-driven demand for computing capacity continues to outpace new supply.
