For years, the hard parts of building a data center were finding land, securing power and getting the building up fast enough to meet demand. Those problems haven't gone away. But as projects move out of the established hubs and into smaller places, developers also have to find people to run the buildings once construction ends.
Matt Landek is building a company around that problem. A longtime leader in data center and critical environment operations, he is president and CEO of L5 Mission Critical, a Chicago-based operations company powered by Detroit construction firm Walbridge. L5 launched in September with a plan to close the handover gap between commissioning and daily operations, and to train local workers to staff the facilities it runs.
"I didn't want to do it if we didn't have a community engagement pillar as part of the offer," Landek told Location Decision.
The pitch arrives as data center developers face hard questions about power, water, tax breaks and how few permanent jobs some of the largest campuses create. For economic developers in the markets these projects are moving into, Landek's argument offers another way to count the benefit. The number of jobs inside one building matters, and so does whether a project leaves behind a technical workforce that other employers can draw on.
Five or six handoffs
Over his career, Landek saw a crowded market for outsourced operations. Large real estate services firms brought client management and deep resources, and smaller specialists brought technical expertise. He thought there was room for a company that had both.
Walbridge, which has been building since 1916 and already designs and builds data centers, came at it from the other end. It could deliver a facility but had no way to stay with it through years of operation. Customers, Landek said, were tired of the handoffs between developers, general contractors, commissioning agents, operators and owners.
"There could be five, six handoffs between organizations, between commissioning agents, operators, owners, developers, GCs," he said. "How do you streamline that?"
L5's answer is to close that handover gap. Its services include commissioning, site readiness, critical operations, project management and retrofits. On a new build, it can come in as construction winds down and stay through commissioning and operations. L5 also works with owners of existing facilities independently of any new construction, on modernization, equipment upgrades and ongoing operations, and its embedded commissioning model applies to any facility moving into operations, not only projects Walbridge delivers. Landek argues the moments between those phases are where things go wrong, and he said a large share of data center failures happen in a facility's first year of operation. Keeping one team responsible across that stretch is the point of the model.
Training for the next markets
Northern Virginia, Dallas and Phoenix remain the industry's centers, but power limits, land needs and the size of new campuses are pushing development elsewhere. Landek named Louisiana, Oklahoma, West Texas and West Virginia as places drawing attention.
Those places often have plenty of industrial know-how and few people trained for mission-critical facilities. Landek sees that gap as L5's opening. Workers from manufacturing, auto plants, agriculture and energy already have mechanical and electrical skills that can carry over with more training.
"If we're going to make positive change in the communities, some of those tertiary markets are ones that we think we really can win today," Landek said.
L5 plans local training academies, possibly tied to large campuses, and its launch announcement described a curriculum with accelerated paths from entry-level critical facility technician to infrastructure engineering and operations leadership. Landek also wants workers trained across disciplines, including mechanical and electrical systems, IT services and onsite power generation. L5 doesn't plan to procure power, but as more campuses generate their own, he expects operators who understand those systems to be in demand. He said more details on the academies are coming.
He is realistic about what a training program can do on its own. He blames decades of steering young people toward four-year degrees, and he doesn't think awareness campaigns will undo that by themselves.
"Let's actually spend the money, because if we think that we're just gonna open a trade school and think that 500 people are just gonna come flooding in the doors, we're kidding ourselves," Landek said.
That means scholarships and a clear line from the certificate to a job, which matters most in small markets with only a few employers. Instructors are another bottleneck. People who can turn decades of operating experience into classroom teaching are scarce, and they rarely live where the new campuses are going.
A factory workforce for a digital industry
Landek grew up in the Midwest and sees the most potential in places with deep manufacturing roots, where technicians who keep complex machinery running could move into data center operations with the right training. The first test will be the academy announcement he says is coming.
"We're happy to go to Omaha, Nebraska, and bring that level of expertise and job creation into all those communities," he said.