Turner Construction built Buildings 1 and 2 of the Polk County Data Center, the first of eight data halls for the new campus in Central Iowa (Image: Turner Construction)

In fact, last week US-based giant Fluor and Germany’s Hochtief (which owns Turner, CIMIC, Hochtief Europe, and co-owns FlatironDragados with Spanish parent company ACS) both set out why they still see data centres as a major opportunity for the future and how they plan to succeed in the market.

Juan Santamariá Cases, who is CEO of both Hochtief and ACS, revealed that Hochtief’s data centre order backlog stood at �8 billion at the end of 2024, which makes up 12% of the company’s entire order backlog. That was more than double the level of 2022, and the company expects it to grow further in the future.

Little wonder, perhaps, that Hochtief continues to regard data centres as an “attractive opportunity�, driven by the rapid expansion of cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

‘Strategic shift� for Hochtief

In fact, the company is undergoing a “strategic shift� from simply building data centres to taking a stake in their ownership as well, adopting the public private partnership (PPP) model that it already employs in other arms of its business, like toll road operator Abertis.

By the end of last year, it had committed equity investments of around �800 million, of which around �400 million are in strategic growth markets including data centres, solar farms, battery energy storage systems, EV charging networks, and critical metals.

Juan Santamariá explained that Hochtief and ACS have, up until now, had differing data centre strategies. Those strategies are now starting to converge.

Hochtief CEO Juan Santamaría Cases (Image: Hochtief)

Hochtief has been pursuing opportunities for edge data centres (a small data centre positioned close to the source of data generation, like end users or devices) ranging from 2MW to 9MW in urban locations. He said the plan was to deliver and own the infrastructure for these, deploying them in Europe, the US and Australia.

Meanwhile, ACS has been buying land to build larger data centres and lease them to ‘hyperscalers�. As part of the process of converging the two strategies, Hochtief has started to identify land for larger data centres in places like Germany, while also taking advantage of the ACS ecosystem to develop edge data centres, according to the companies� CEO.

Asked on a call with investors if the arrival of Deepseek would have an impact on Hochtief’s plans for its data centre business, Santamariá said, “Recently � and by recently I mean over the last few days � the US hyperscalers have announced plans to spend over US$320 billion in 2025. This is strongly up on 2024, when they spent $246 billion � and this is double the level of 2023. With the Stargate announcement, that is adding…long-term momentum.�

Europe, he added, is also planning to invest in its own AI infrastructure, mobilising �200 billion, while the UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has outlined his own AI plan.

“There’s a lot of demand growth. What can we say about Deepseek? It seems to be introducing efficiencies, and everyone is looking into it right now. But from our perspective as digital infrastructure providers, any new player reinforces the importance of a scalable and adaptable infrastructure,� he added.

Fluor similarly bullish on data centres

Over in the US, Fluor was making similarly positive noises about the prospects for increasing data centre infrastructure demand.

Jim Breuer, who is set to take over as Fluor’s CEO from 1 May this year, as incumbent David E Constable takes up the role of executive chairman, noted that Fluor is either in conversations or has agreements with the “top four� data centre developers.

“We continue to see this market as a significant contributor to the grow and execute phase of our strategy,� Breuer said.

Jim Breuer (Image: Businesswire)

“Data centres are a market we’re focusing on very strongly, and we’ve already had some recent success on that in addition to building on our experience that we have in Europe and Asia,� he told investors.

He said that he regarded the data centre market as still being in its “early phases� but he added, “If you look at the projections by just the big five data centre hyperscalers here in the United States, they’re talking about several hundred billion dollars� worth of announced investments.

“And I think given that the size of these projects is growing, they lend themselves to Fluor’s project delivery expertise and model. Now, we’re going to remain diligent and methodical in taking on this work, but building on our track record of recent data centre projects in Europe and Asia, we believe we’re well-positioned for this big wave of data centres that is projected for the United States.�

He pointed to the fact that Fluor has signed a master agreement with a data centre provider in the US and that Fluor is kicking off the initial stages of the first project under that agreement � a smaller-scale co-location data centre worth in the region of $500 million to $1 billion.

“But this agreement allows you to build and work on data centers of all sizes, including hyperscalers, and now you’re talking about multiple billions of dollars. Those jobs take a little more time to mature and develop. But the neat thing about this agreement is that it allows us to build a longer-term relationship with this client on multiple projects and therefore, take advantage of the benefits of replication of efficiencies, lessons learned on previous projects,� Breuer added.

Power-hungry data centres create further opportunities

Meanwhile, Constable noted that there were opportunities for Fluor when it came to providing energy-hungry data centres with power too. “We can add value on the power demand side of the equation,� he said.

“Our expertise in power generation, both thermal and nuclear, is going to play a key role in supporting our clients� needs. The numbers are just astronomical for power demand for data centres. We’ve got 26,000 megawatts installed in the US right now. They say 92,000 megawatts is required by the end of the decade and the numbers are even larger globally. But the US is about 40% of the market, so there is a big focus here on data centres combined with power generation, which is obviously in our wheelhouse.�

And Constable noted that although it would take time for a full picture to emerge, the new administration under US President Donald Trump looked set to create a favourable environment for data centre investment and construction.

“We’re tracking the [US administration’s] executive orders closely. While it’s still too early to be definitive about the long-term impacts, we are focusing on the broad economic themes of the administration’s agenda, which are to promote capital investment and job creation,� he said.

“Considering the underlying themes of pro-domestic energy, key minerals production and AI infrastructure development in the executive orders, we see these directives as favourable to nuclear and thermal sources of energy, favourable to LNG exports and expedited permitting, favourable to increasing domestic mineral production, and favourable to significant data centre build-outs.�