Data Center Crew Curve: Underground to Commissioning

A crew curve drawn at bid time often looks like a hill. One slope up, a flat top somewhere in the middle, one slope down. On the biggest data center jobs of 2025 and 2026, the top of that hill kept moving, and the owners' own announcements show it.

In March 2025, Crusoe said its Abilene, Texas site had approximately 2,000 people working on the project daily and expected to reach nearly 5,000 once six more buildings were added to the first two. In November, when the eighth and final building topped out, the company thanked 7,000 electricians, construction pros and skilled tradespeople who come to Abilene every day, W.Media reported.

The forecast peak was passed by 2,000 people.

What three owners said about workforce size

Meta's numbers come from its December 2025 update and a July 2026 post announcing a bigger investment, so the peak moved when the scope moved. Microsoft's come from Brad Smith's September 2025 post and the completion announcement. At Mount Pleasant, Microsoft brought equipment online and ran startup activities in April 2026, and announced the facility fully operational on June 23. The Wisconsin ratio is the one to study. Nearly 10,000 people worked on a site that held more than 3,000 at its daily peak, which points to a long chain of handoffs from one trade to the next.

None of these owners published an electrician count by phase.

Union business agents do give rough numbers. Carmen Voso, business agent at IBEW Local 24, told The Electrical Worker in May 2025 that a Frederick, Maryland project would conservatively need 1,000 members on site by August, and that the peak could be double or triple that. "But we could have 2,000 on this portion of this one project," he says. His other worry is the ramp. "Our hope is that they ramp up slowly and it isn't 'We need 1,000 in six weeks, then another 1,000,'" Voso says.

Underground work uses a smaller crew, and precast is shrinking it

The first rise on the curve is duct bank, grounding and stub-ups. The 500-acre hyperscale campus Mortenson is building in Eagle Mountain City, Utah has 40-plus miles of duct bank, according to ENR's November 2025 report. Mortenson's manufacturing arm, BLUvera, now produces it in 20-foot sections weighing 17,000 lb in off-site shops, which ENR says cut onsite work hours by 56%. A company case study of the Eagle Mountain project found precast cut trench exposure by 60 to 70%.

"The idea spawned from the hyperscale Eagle Mountain data center," says Nate Haack, vice president and general manager of BLUvera. The shop crews get fast because the work repeats. "Every day, they're doing the same task, because they're pulling every formwork every day," he says. BLUvera also sets up mobile factories near the jobs, including one in Louisiana. "We've been there since January and we'll be there for another year," Haack says.

Whatever stays in the field still needs a competent person on the inspection side. OSHA's excavation rule, 29 CFR 1926.651(k)(1), requires daily inspections of excavations, the adjacent areas and protective systems by a competent person, prior to the start of work and as needed throughout the shift. Put that person on the plan by name.

The electrical peak comes late and runs about half again over average

One electrical benchmark is old. Hanna, Peterson and Lee benchmarked electrical and mechanical projects in 2002, and on the electrical jobs manpower peaked at 155% of the average total labor, near the 75% completion mark, as summarized in a 2017 University of Wisconsin-Madison master's thesis by Godwin Offiah (the original paper ran in ASCE's Journal of Construction Engineering and Management).

Pushing that peak higher costs productivity. A 2005 overmanning study by Hanna, Chang, Lackney and Sullivan measured productivity losses from 0% to 41% depending on the level of overmanning and the peak project manpower, though that sample was 54 mechanical and sheet metal projects, not electrical ones. That matters on data centers, where The Electrical Worker, the IBEW's newspaper, estimates 45% to 70% of construction cost goes to the electrical subcontractor. If you are sizing that peak now, this headcount walkthrough goes through the arithmetic.

Switchgear and transformer lead times decide when terminations start

EC&M's 2026 Top 50 report, published September 15, found respondents overwhelmingly named switchgear, transformers and generators as the equipment with especially long lead times. Reported labor shortages rose to 83%, nine points higher than the year before. Combined 2025 revenue for the 50 firms was $80.417 billion.

Wood Mackenzie's analysts put transformer lead times at around 50 weeks in 2021 and 120 weeks on average in 2024, with large substation and generator step-up units at 80 to 210 weeks. Equipment setting and terminations cannot start before the gear shows up. Rob Smith, CEO of Sargent Electric in Pittsburgh, told EC&M that some timelines were adjusted for product lead times, "but we've worked our schedules around it."

Start dates also move for reasons nobody on site controls. John Axelson, CEO of Hunt Electric in Eagan, Minnesota, told EC&M that $800 million of data center work was pushed back. "Peaking of revenues for us has gotten pushed out to 2027 or 2028," Axelson says.

Once gear is set, the tasks change. The 2023 NEC in section 110.14(D) requires terminal torque as indicated by the manufacturer and says "an approved means shall be used to achieve the indicated torque value." Torque verification, labeling and QA records grow while pull footage shrinks, so the total line can stay flat while the mix of tasks under it changes.

Energization limits who can work in a room

Greg Perruzzi, senior vice president of the construction vertical practice at Gallagher Bassett, wrote in CLM Magazine in July 2026 that commissioning and phased energization are among the highest-risk periods on these jobs, with live systems, temporary power conflicts, incomplete LOTO boundaries and overlapping trades all in play. The rules are plain. Under 29 CFR 1926.416(a)(1), nobody works where they could contact a power circuit unless it is deenergized and grounded or effectively guarded, and 1926.417(b) requires tags at every point where deenergized equipment can be energized.

So headcount in an energized hall can drop while remaining quantity is still high.

Commissioning runs in test levels, and a failed test repeats

Acceptance testing of components is typically a prerequisite for commissioning and happens before initial energization, Joel Gilley, director of commissioning services at Electrical Reliability Services, wrote in the NETA World Journal. The field tests themselves are spelled out in ANSI/NETA ATS-2025. Data center jobs organize the work into tagged levels, L1 red tag at the factory through L5 white tag for integrated systems testing, as CxPlanner lays them out, and the scope widens at each level. If one step of an IST fails, you stop, return to pretest conditions and "repeat the entire test once the issues are resolved," Chris Smith, commissioning and energy services principal at Jacobs, wrote in Consulting-Specifying Engineer.

Test method can change how long a level takes. On an Edged data center, Gaylor Electric general superintendent Jeff Rogers wrote in an ABC Field Tech case study, the crew used a whip cart that plugs into server whips and tests the path from panel to plug. The scope was (48) 400-amp panels each feeding 22 metered server whips, (24) 800-amp ATSs and (2) 3,000-amp reserve busways. A 6MW hall that normally takes three to six weeks to test was validated in two days, with fewer personnel and no live panel access.

Write the reason next to every bend

Print the curve and make someone write a short note at each rise, plateau and drop: two halls released, switchgear delivered, feeder pulls moved to nights, an energized boundary set up. If nobody can explain a bend with scope and evidence, the line is not yet a staffing forecast. Turning a labor-loaded schedule into a crew plan covers the weekly reforecast.

Keep the experienced leads through test-issue response. "Part of the challenge with some of these large hyperscale projects is we've got people working on them who have never done this before at this scale," says Katie Lane, chief talent officer at Clayco, speaking at a Construction Dive virtual event on August 26, 2026. When supplemental crews join, OSHA's temporary worker guidance says host employers and staffing agencies share responsibility for worker safety and health.

Sources

1. Crusoe expands AI data center campus in Abilene to 1.2 gigawatts, Crusoe, March 18, 2025.
2. Crusoe tops off final AI data center in Abilene, Texas, W.Media, November 18, 2025.
3. One Year In: Meta's Richland Parish Data Center Supports Louisiana Economy With $875M In Contracts, Meta, December 19, 2025.
4. Deepening our investment in Richland Parish, Louisiana, Meta Data Centers, July 13, 2026.
5. Made in Wisconsin: The world's most powerful AI datacenter, Brad Smith, Microsoft On the Issues, September 18, 2025.
6. Microsoft completes construction on first datacenter facility in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, Microsoft Source, June 23, 2026.
7. The Data Center Surge: A New Generation of IBEW Jobs, IBEW The Electrical Worker, May 1, 2025.
8. Mortenson Deposits a Wealth of Know-How in Data Center Duct Bank, ENR, November 7, 2025.
9. 29 CFR 1926.651, Specific Excavation Requirements, OSHA, accessed September 29, 2026.
10. Qualitative Analysis of Lost Labor Productivity in Electrical Construction from the Perspective of Field Personnel, Godwin Ashley Dilibe Offiah, University of Wisconsin-Madison master's thesis, Fall 2017.
11. Overmanning Impact on Construction Labor Productivity, Hanna, Chang, Lackney and Sullivan, Construction Research Congress 2005 proceedings, 2005.
12. Data Center Buildout Fuels Revenue Blowout: EC&M's 2026 Top 50 Electrical Contractors Special Report, EC&M, September 15, 2026.
13. Supply shortages and an inflexible market give rise to high power transformer lead times, Wood Mackenzie, April 2, 2024.
14. Test Your Code IQ, March 2024, EC&M, March 18, 2024.
15. Data Center Construction, Greg Perruzzi, CLM Magazine, July 21, 2026.
16. 29 CFR 1926.416, General Requirements, OSHA, accessed September 29, 2026.
17. 29 CFR 1926.417, Lockout and Tagging of Circuits, OSHA, accessed September 29, 2026.
18. Commissioning and Acceptance Testing: The Foundation of Electrical System Lifecycle Management, Joel Gilley, NETA World Journal, February 7, 2026.
19. Data center commissioning: The 5 levels of testing, Thomas T. Jarloev, CxPlanner, August 6, 2026.
20. Tips for performing integrated systems testing, Chris Smith, Consulting-Specifying Engineer, March 14, 2022.
21. The Gaylor Electric Whip Cart Advantage, Jeff Rogers, Associated Builders and Contractors Field Tech case study, October 6, 2025.
22. 'It's about taking care of people': How top contractors staff data center jobs, Construction Dive, September 2, 2026.
23. Protecting Temporary Workers, OSHA, accessed September 29, 2026.