Explore the Agenda
7:50 am Chair’s Opening Remarks
Unlocking Faster Approvals
8:00 am Panel: Pinpointing the Midwest’s Next Growth Markets to Enable Faster, More Strategic Site Selection
- Evaluating where hyperscalers, colocators and developers are looking next: when does our attention shift to new Midwest locations?
- Weighing up rural vs urban development: understanding why proximity to urban hubs is still shaping location decisions
- Identifying major county and state-level hurdles including locating viable properties, verifying power-ready land, and determining whether jurisdictions are open to hybrid or supplemental power solutions to bridge capacity gaps
8:30 am Navigating Municipal Permitting Realities to Accelerate Project Approvals in the Midwest
- Identifying regional biases and differing state approaches: how do renewable energy, hyperscale development or political dynamics shape permitting outcomes across the Midwest?
- Assessing how state and local tax incentives factor into municipal decision-making and influence project speed, approval likelihood and community expectations within regionally competitive development environments
- Learning from government leaders who have successfully removed barriers by hearing how they navigated state or municipal requirements, overcome resistance and advanced data center development despite challenging local dynamics
9:30 am Morning Refreshments & Speed Networking
Track 1: Strategic Planning & Project Set-up
Entering New Markets With Confidence
10:30 am Navigating New Regional Markets to Accelerate Permitting, Partner Selection & Project Readiness
- Evaluating the unique permitting processes, inspection requirements, environmental expectations and regulatory nuances when entering a new market
- Understanding environmental and energy-policy variations across different states and utility territories in the Midwest to ensure compliance and anticipate site-specific requirements early
- Building relationships with new city officials and code authorities to identify the key decision-makers: who can support progress, who may create delays, and how can we partner effectively to accelerate approvals?
11:00 am Panel: Redefining Our Community Engagement Strategy to Reduce Public Pushback Across Midwestern States
Addressing common public misconceptions, including outdated water-use concerns and fears about resource strain, to improve trust and understanding
Engaging local government officials to align expectations, secure support and negotiate infrastructure contributions
Navigating the differences between rural towns and major metro areas within the same region, to anticipate approval challenges and tailor engagement strategies
Sharing how city leaders and data center owners collaborated to overcome early concerns, address unexpected challenges, and build long-term community support
11:30 am Audience Discussion: Transforming Cross-Team Collaboration Across Midwest Data Center Projects to Reduce Rework & Drive Smarter Project Decision-Making
- Examining how Midwest-specific permitting processes, utility requirements, and municipal review cycles can amplify misalignment as project intent moves from owner to designer to contractor – where do hand-offs most commonly break down?
- Identifying how early contractor involvement can improve clarity, reduce translation errors, and align design intent with constructability from the start in fast-moving, multi-market programs
- Evaluating different contract structures used across Midwest states that distribute early-stage risk and examining how each may shape team behavior under extreme speed-to-market pressure
- Clarifying decision timelines and approval pathways so each project partner knows exactly when information will be locked, preventing late-stage changes that destabilize sequencing across geographically dispersed teams
Track 2: Innovative Project Delivery
Strengthening Your Mission Critical Workforce
10:30 am Panel: Advancing Talent Strategies to Grow the Construction Workforce Pipeline in a Heavily Unionized Region
- Understanding how unions are attracting talent, meeting long-term labor needs and scaling skilled electrical and mechanical trades
- Identifying ongoing barriers to union entry and discussing what unions are doing to make recruitment easier
- Exploring how union and non-union teams can better work together on data center projects, the pain points they face and what’s working best
11:00 am Choosing the Right Data Center Projects to Stay Competitive While Aligning With Your Firm’s Capacity in New & Existing Markets
- Clarifying how power, water and land availability shape project viability, and how contractors can assess whether a site is truly ready or likely to face delays beyond their control
- Examining how regional capacity constraints shift decision-making, especially in hot markets like Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana where multiple hyperscale builds compete for the same resource
- Identifying red flags and green flags in an RFP: when are timelines realistic, when do they signal risk and how can start dates affect your ability to deliver?
11:30 am Audience Discussion: Optimizing Resource Planning Across Midwest Data Center Projects to Sustain Productivity as Projects Scale Across the Region
- Examining how Midwest labor availability, union agreements, and regional safety expectations influence PM, field supervision, QA/QC, and safety staffing
- Identifying hidden cost and staffing impacts that inexperienced contractors often miss in bids
- Clarifying resource demands unique to Midwest delivery, including phased turnover, integrated systems testing, and simultaneous workstreams unique to mission-critical delivery
12:30 pm Lunch Break
Track 1: Strategic Planning & Project Set-up
Standardizing Workforce & Construction Methods to Accelerate Delivery
1:30 pm Case Study: Integrating Multi-Trade Prefab & Modular Into Design to Increase Quality & Accelerate Schedules
- Embedding prefabrication into designs: what and when do decisions need to be made?
- Overcoming cultural and workflow barriers by aligning teams early on a unified, prefab-ready design approach that can be consistently executed across different project teams
- Defining how integrated design affects MEP roles, risk allocation, and coordination requirements to ensure teams can deliver multi-trade prefab successfully under compressed schedules and constrained labor conditions
- Determining which design elements must be standardized and fixed early to maximize downstream modular efficiency, reduce redesign cycles, and support repeatable data center products
2:00 pm Audience Discussion: Driving Consistency in Labor Resource for Efficient & Low-Risk Project Delivery
- Understanding how project partners allocate and prioritize resources when the same foremen, project managers, or trade teams are requested on multiple simultaneous builds
- Supporting your workforce to balance demand, avoid burnout, and manage workload and staffing limits without slowing delivery as build volume and geographic reach increase
- Improving communication about constraints, regional differences, and realistic capacity so both sides can navigate pressures to “be everywhere at once” more effectively
Track 2: Innovative Project Delivery
Optimizing Preconstruction Strategy
1:30 pm Fireside Chat: Mitigating Procurement Delays to Protect Schedules & Ensure Reliable Equipment Support
- Forecasting long-lead equipment risks by mapping Midwest-specific manufacturing bottlenecks, regional transportation constraints, and carrier availability that intensify during peak build seasons
- Building redundancy into critical equipment procurement by vetting supplier depth across the Midwest, validating viable secondary sourcing options, and confirming regional spare-part availability to prevent schedule slips driven by local supply chain limitations
- Confirming technical support and serviceability across all equipment packages by assessing Midwest technician availability for commissioning, maintenance, and warranty work to ensure reliable lifecycle support once systems are online
2:00 pm Case Study: Accelerating Schedules Without Sacrificing Safety, Quality or Labor Capacity
- Using rigorous preconstruction analysis to evaluate owner expectations with actual labor, procurement and sequencing realities within regionally constrained labor markets to prevent unsafe or unbuildable accelerated schedules
- Identifying how to adapt safety protocols for harsh weather, manage fatigue in multi-shift operations and maintain predictable performance while moving fast
- Leveraging six-week look-ahead planning to stay ahead of schedule impacts and taking corrective action before delays stack across scopes on fast-track, multi-scope projects
2:40 pm Afternoon Refreshments
Strengthening Collaboration From the Jobsite to the Region
3:40 pm Case Study: Building Contractor Joint Ventures to Expand Labor Capacity & Accelerate Delivery Across Projects in the Midwest
- Understanding how a seasoned contractors mentor smaller, regional firms within unfamiliar delivery environments to increase their workforce
- Identifying strategies for selecting trade contractors in new regions that have no prior experience working on data center projects
- Evaluating contracting structures that de-risk scopes and how upfront expectationsetting, and a collaborative estimating process prevented scope and pricing gaps
- Breaking down what worked and what didn’t in the JV
4:10 pm Audience Breakout: Examining System & Infrastructure Differences Across Data Center Scales
Join peers from across the Midwest to compare how data center scale fundamentally reshapes system design and infrastructure strategy – from edge to mid-sized facilities to hyperscale campuses. Explore where traditional approaches break down as projects scale and how teams adapt systems early to support long-term growth and reliability.