Explore the Agenda
8:20 am Chair’s Opening Remarks
Understanding the Evolving Midwest Data Center Landscape
8:30 am Panel: From Trends to Transformation: Reflecting on the Past 12 Months of Project Delivery & Preparing for What’s Next
- Examining how Midwest project conditions have shifted over the past year and what teams must know now to stay ahead in 2026
- Pinpointing new regional pinch points, emerging cost drivers and state-by-state risks across the Midwest to adjust scope, contracts and schedules accordingly
- Discussing the latest on mechanical loads, electrical demand, site layout and build sequencing: what does this mean for compressing or extending Midwest project timelines?
9:00 am Midwest Market Breakouts: Unlocking Regional Potential in Data Center Project Execution
Join this interactive, problem-solving session and explore how regional differences in permitting, utility coordination, labor availability, and supply chain conditions impact schedules, risk, and outcomes, while sharing practical lessons, common pitfalls, and strategies for successfully delivering projects in new or expanding Midwest regions.
10:00 am Morning Refreshments
Track 1: Strategic Planning & Project Set-up
Designing Next-Gen Data Centers
11:00 am Redefining Water as a Strategic Asset to Optimize Cooling, Power Efficiency & Long-Term Data Centers Sustainability
- Examining how Midwest climate conditions, ambient temperatures, and water availability can support hybrid and water-assisted cooling strategies
- Exploring the full lifecycle of water use in data center cooling, and evaluating where non-potable, reclaimed, or greywater sources can responsibly offset potable demand while improving power efficiency
- Discussing water system durability, upgrade timelines, and why infrastructure life expectancy must be considered early in project planning
- Highlighting how early engagement with municipalities can unlock infrastructure upgrades, shared investment, and long-term water resilience
11:30 am Preparing Facilities for Midwest Winters to Ensure Reliable, Year-Round Operations
- Identifying the Midwest-specific environmental risks such as freeze/thaw cycles, moisture intrusion, corrosion, snow loading and underground water movement, that must be addressed during design to prevent long-term degradation and seasonal failures
- Determining how national standards, enclosure requirements and material specifications should be adapted for Midwest winter conditions, and clarifying where design must deviate from coastal or southern benchmarks to ensure all-season operability
- Outlining how trade partners should inform early design decisions by flagging installation constraints, material behaviors in extreme cold and field realities that impact durability, maintenance access and life-cycle performance
Track 2: Innovative Project Delivery
Accelerating Field Performance
11:00 am Case Study: Delivering Multi-Trade Prefab at Scale to Reduce Labor Demand & Deliver Projects Faster
- Calculating when multi-trade prefab meaningfully reduces onsite labor and peak manpower, and identifying the project conditions where offsite work delivers the greatest advantage
- Streamlining the BIM-to-shop-to-field process by defining handoff expectations, locking design earlier, and creating consistent workflows that support efficient fabrication and installation across geographically distributed fabrication and field teams
- Driving coordinated multi-trade execution by aligning tolerances, sequencing needs, and collaboration rhythms to ensure assemblies fit, perform, and install smoothly in the field despite site-specific access, weather, or logistics constraints
11:30 am Case Study: Expediting Commissioning Without Compromising on Safety Standards to Deliver Faster While Reducing On-Site Risk
- Mapping an iterative commissioning process to determine which practices, documentation standards and field coordination strategies most effectively reduce delays during final testing and turnover when commissioning across different regional utility authorities, grid requirements, and AHJ expectations
- Establishing elevated safety expectations for commissioning environments where high-energy electrical work, live system testing, and dense trade interaction create significantly higher risk than typical commercial construction in regions where weather volatility intensify risk
- Reinforcing accountability during fast-paced commissioning windows by ensuring the full project team understand critical procedures, preventing skipped steps and identifying field champions who consistently uphold the standard
12:00 pm Lunch & Networking
Shaping the Data Centers of Tomorrow
1:00 pm Delivering Next-Generation Cooling Systems at Scale to Meet Compute Demands
- Evaluating the efficiency and performance tradeoffs between air cooling, liquid cooling and hybrid systems to determine which solutions deliver the best end-user performance at the lowest energy cost across regions with varying climate conditions, utility rate structures, and grid constraints
- Analyzing current and future chip-level cooling requirements by reviewing today’s rack-level and chip-level liquid cooling with CDU skids and exploring what the next iteration may require as density and heat generation continue to climb
- Assessing which next-generation technologies will impact construction sequencing, trade coordination and long-lead procurement as cooling demands evolve based on regional contractor familiarity, commissioning expertise, and supplier availability
1:30 pm Panel: Defining the Next Generation Data Centers to Build More Efficient & Scalable Facilities
- Exploring how rapid technology evolution is reshaping facility design and the speed at which new chip prototypes become standard
- Projecting what data centers will look like in the next 3–5 years, including shifts in compute demand, rack density, modularity, and AI-driven operational models
- Identifying the internal strategies owners are using to reduce total power demand, from chip-level efficiency to cooling innovation and smarter load management
- Understanding how operators are preparing for limited-power geographies, and what design or operational changes will allow builds to expand into regions with minimal grid capacity