Skanska Wins $1.2B Contract to Build Four Data Centers

Skanska has signed a $1.2 billion contract with an existing, undisclosed client to build four data centers totaling roughly 808,000 square feet in the southeastern United States, the company announced August 20. Construction starts in the third quarter of 2026 and is scheduled to finish in the third quarter of 2028, a 24-month build covering shell construction and interior fit-out of technical and support space.

Why it matters

For general contractors chasing data-center work, the deal is a marker of how concentrated the largest awards have become. Four buildings, one client, one contract, $1.2 billion, booked without a competitive bid because the relationship already existed. That is the pattern Skanska described to investors in July, when it told analysts data centers made up roughly a tenth of its record SEK 297.5 billion order backlog: repeat clients expanding with contractors that have already proven they can staff and schedule a hyperscale build. Fewer GCs are absorbing more of this category, and this single order adds nearly 40 percent on top of what Skanska already had booked in data centers three months ago. That concentration matters for anyone bidding against Skanska for Southeast data-center work: the field of contractors with the balance sheet and workforce to take a four-site, billion-dollar package in one signature is small, and it is getting smaller relative to the volume of work moving through it.

The numbers

The $1.2 billion contract works out to about $1,485 per square foot across the 808,000 square feet of shell and interior fit-out, and to roughly $300 million per building split evenly across the four sites. Using the SEK 9.73-per-dollar rate Skanska disclosed in its Q2 filing, the company’s total backlog converted to about $30.6 billion as of June 30, with data centers near 10 percent of that, or about $3.06 billion. This one contract, arriving weeks into the third quarter, is worth roughly 39 percent of that entire prior data-center book.

What’s next

Skanska has not named the client or the specific sites beyond “southeast USA,” and the order will post to third-quarter bookings when the company reports results. Groundbreaking is set for the third quarter of 2026 with delivery by the third quarter of 2028, giving Southeast subcontractors and skilled trades a two-year window of funded work across four sites. For national contractors still bidding data-center packages, the award is another sign of how much construction capacity the sector is absorbing relative to competing asset classes chasing the same trade labor.