The future of data center delivery will not be built in parts, but in systems that know how to interlock from day one
Much has already been said on the pressures facing the data center industry, with AI demanding denser infrastructure and developers seeking faster deployments. Adding to this strain are ongoing recruitment challenges, which have created additional stress and can lead to delays from design through to handover. Despite these pressures, many projects still seem to be following legacy deployment models.
In the early stages of development, individual suppliers and critical service providers, covering areas such as power, cooling, and connectivity, typically work together in alignment. However, this coordination often begins to fragment once construction is underway. The expectation is that it all comes together neatly once on site, but the reality can be very different. From issues around coordination to staccato delivery of scopes and typical site constraints, project delays and cost overruns easily occur.
When several contractors work in parallel, each with their own timelines, tolerances, constraints, and assumptions, those meeting points quickly turn into friction zones. A misaligned duct, a power feed that arrives a week late, a containment pod that conflicts with structural posts: these all cascade into costly reworks and delays. Furthermore, these remedies are at times not as effective or of the same degree of quality as those conducted in a controlled off-site environment.
Adaptability and agility
The industry is gearing up to address the demands of AI. However, the current reality of design, manufacturing, and installation is that many facilities must support both today’s operational requirements while also being effectively AI-ready. This necessitates the development of agile, adaptable solutions to provide clients with a ‘day one’ system for lower load capabilities in parallel with the flexibility to scale up to higher loads as needed.
The practical challenge of designing and building adaptable infrastructure naturally lends itself to the adoption of modular philosophies. These can then be designed to cater for increased capacity requirements. Through modular integration, the services most impacted by increased loads, such as cooling, power, and telecommunications, can be anticipated and provisioned well in advance of installation.
The Scalability Challenge
Another critical issue is scalability. Similar to adaptability and agility, clients often require you to be ready to deliver at scale. We have previously mentioned “day one” requirements, but there are often a host of reasons why full-scale building fit-out is not executed as initially planned, such as finance, power, planning, and chip-type deployment. However, clients frequently expect us to remain in a ready position, prepared to deliver at lightning speed and scale once the constraint is removed.
This expectation to ramp up and deploy data center solutions under tight timelines, while managing exponential increases in capacity demand, makes modular design philosophies a fundamental part of any viable solution.
A paradigm shift in the mechanical space is also underway to meet the high-density rack loads driven by AI. The move from traditional air-cooled systems to integrated liquid cooling introduces new complexities in service coordination within the white space that were not as significant before. Delivering at scale, particularly within the core of a data center, has always required early multi-service coordination. Yet, with the rise of mechanical cooling solutions, this early integration is now even more critical to achieving successful and scalable outcomes.
Even the nuances and constraints around large-scale commissioning and testing of liquid systems locally within a data hall are issues the industry is grappling with. The growing use of off-site modular solutions, where high levels of mechanical commissioning can take place in controlled environments, is quickly emerging as a practical and effective strategy to overcome these challenges and is gaining significant momentum across the industry.
The Practical Advantages of Integration
It’s intuitive that off-site and modular construction models reduce on-site build timelines in general construction, but we are observing the benefits within the data center space being amplified due to the increased density of services catering to larger rack loads. One of the main deterrents to modular adoption has been the perception of limited scalability and design repetition, combined with the inefficiency of transporting large volumes of unused space, essentially “shipping air.” As a result, traditional stick-build methods have long remained the default approach.
But that’s all changing. The services, be it telecom, electrical, or cooling, are getting bigger, heavier, and more densely packed, and the timeframe needed is being whittled down, so naturally the emphasis has moved towards fully integrated solutions. These systems are assembled and commissioned offsite wherever possible, then delivered ready for installation with minimal site work required.
Offsite integration also negates a lot of the complexities of trade-to-trade sequencing and handover of areas, which absorb site resources and hinder programme delivery. When systems arrive pre-aligned, factory-tested, and installation-ready on-site, activity shifts from coordination and correction to simple assembly. The cumulative impact is significant: reduced project timelines, fewer site dependencies, and greater confidence in delivery schedules.
In an AI-driven market, where the timeframe for delivery can define competitiveness, pre-assembled integration quickly becomes a strategic advantage. Modular integration also enhances safety and regulatory compliance. The fewer unknowns left to resolve on site, the fewer possible remediation measures in a high-risk site environment are required.
Tate's Integrated Solution
At Tate, our response to this new reality is called Konnect by Tate, a comprehensive solution designed to address the challenges outlined above, from streamlining communication and improving collaboration to ensuring seamless integration across your operations.
Born from extensive client conversations, Konnect by Tate brings mission-critical systems, power, cooling, containment, and telecom into modular, pre-engineered, assembled solutions. These arrive on site fully coordinated, populated, assembled, tested, and ready for installation. The system is designed to flex to client needs, whether they require full integration, a phased build, or hybrid approaches, providing “day one” lower-load design solutions with the ability to scale up for “day two” increased capacity requirements.
The Future of Delivery
In the coming years, developers will have to decide between traditional fragmented delivery models or more modular integrated solutions. The latter is not a 'nice to have’ option but a necessity for speed, predictability, scalability, and safety.
In a market that punishes delay and fragmentation, deployment models must change. The future of data center delivery will not be built in parts, but in systems that know how to interlock from day one
