By July 2025 the Meta data center campus in Los Lunas had passed 4 million square feet, with seven operating buildings and three more under development. That pace tells a developer what a data center schedule looks like here: building after building, each one repeating a proven design, with the civil, electrical and concrete crews returning to the same site for years.
We build data center shells, powered-shell buildings and the support structures around them, which means generator yards, electrical rooms, fuel and water systems and the site work that holds them together. A data center is a building that exists to hold power and cooling equipment, so the slab, the structure and the underground are built around the electrical one-line diagram and the cooling plan, and the architecture follows.
The data center construction process begins long before the first excavation, because utility interconnection, water supply and permitting often take longer than the building itself. We help owners line those items up early and keep the construction schedule honest about what depends on them.
The Los Lunas campus shows the repeatable-building model clearly. A November 2021 report said an additional $800 million would bring total investment there to $2.2 billion for nearly 3.8 million square feet of data center space, adding two buildings to the six already planned for eight total. Repeated buildings let the builder refine sequencing from one to the next, and reduce risk on the later ones.
For a developer planning a campus, we recommend building the shared infrastructure first: the roads, the storm drainage, the primary duct banks and the water lines sized for full build-out. Each building then connects to infrastructure that is already in place, which shortens every phase after the first. Carrying lessons from one building to the next is the point of the exercise.
The Los Lunas campus sits near I-25 and NM 6 on the west bank of the Rio Grande, and the village's October 2024 presentation to a legislative committee listed the campus at 750 acres and 4.2 million square feet, with over 50 active projects, an I-25 interchange in 2025 and a newly announced hospital site. A July 2025 newspaper report said the campus employed more than 1,000 construction workers at peak and is projected to support 400 operational jobs once the expansion is complete.
The city's Paseo del Volcan planning brochure also names data center facilities among the uses intended for thousands of acres on the west side. The Los Lunas and Huning Business and Tech Park areas have large parcels, rail and highway access, and utilities within reach, and we help owners compare those sites against the Rio Rancho side.
Data center sites reward a builder that controls the earthwork and the underground. We grade the pad and the surrounding yard, set the stormwater system, and install the duct banks, water lines and fire loops before the building is above ground. The electrical duct bank trade crews set conduit to tolerance and encase it so that electrical contractors can pull cable on schedule.
We also place the foundations for generators, transformers and cooling equipment. Those equipment pads carry heavy, vibrating loads and often have tight elevation tolerances for connection to conduit and piping.
A typical package includes a slab and structure designed for rack loads and heavy electrical gear, an envelope that keeps dust and weather out, a roof with proper drainage, and fire-rated separations between electrical, mechanical and white-space zones. The support buildings, such as security, maintenance and generator enclosures, round out the campus, and we cover them under data center support buildings.
Some owners prefer a powered shell: the building, power and cooling infrastructure delivered, with tenant fit-out completed later. That choice shifts risk and cash flow, and we help owners decide which fits their business. Smaller edge deployments sometimes go into an existing warehouse shell or a pre-engineered metal building, where the work is upgrading power, slab and roof rather than building new.
Expansion work often takes place next to energized buildings. We keep the construction zone separated by physical barriers, restrict crane and truck routes, and coordinate every tie-in with the operator's change control process. Excavation near energized duct banks follows locate and hand-dig protocols.
The workforce is large during peak construction, so we manage site access, parking and orientation as a logistics problem. Desert heat in summer and wind in spring also get planned for, with water, shade and wind limits on lifts.
Electrical gear, cooling equipment and the utility interconnection overshadow shell cost. The New Mexico 2020 Electrical Code, 14.10.4 NMAC, governs the electrical installation, and the 2021 Commercial Building Code, 14.7.2 NMAC, governs the structure. Permit timing, equipment lead times and the cost of site work for a large pad are the other significant drivers, and we price each on its own so an owner can see where the money goes.
Water use is a growing question for any large mechanical plant in a dry state. We help owners understand the options early, including the sizing of water storage and the choice of cooling approach, and then build the underground to match.
Send us the target megawatts, the parcel and the delivery date. We will respond with a phasing concept, a list of the utility and permit items that control the schedule, and a budget range. We also work with data center owners on expansions.
A shell and support buildings usually take most of a year. The long items are switchgear, generators and cooling equipment, which can take longer than the structure. We order early and keep the shell schedule tied to equipment arrival.
Yes. A powered shell includes the building, the base electrical service and the core cooling infrastructure, and leaves the white space for the tenant. We define the demarcation line carefully so that responsibilities are clear on both sides.
No. The west side near Rio Rancho and the Albuquerque west mesa also have large parcels and corridors, and the Paseo del Volcan plan names data center use for the west side. The right site depends on power, water, fiber and the timeline.
We follow the operator's change control, separate work zones with barriers and use locate and hand-dig procedures near existing duct banks. Tie-ins are scheduled for approved windows with a written plan.
It depends on the cooling design and the local supply. Air-cooled and hybrid designs use less water but more power. We help owners work through the supply, storage and permitting implications as part of preconstruction.
Tell us about the property, the building and the schedule.
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