Press reports through mid-2026 describe a wave of very large AI and hyperscale campuses across Texas, the Midwest, the Southeast and the Mississippi Valley. Stargate sites in Texas, New Mexico and Ohio, Microsoft's Fairwater buildings in Wisconsin and Georgia, xAI's Memphis and Southaven facilities, and Google's Ohio, Iowa and Nebraska expansions are the most cited examples. Their schedules, and the crews they will need, do not line up neatly.
Why the timing varies by campus
A campus that is still in permitting or early site work needs earthwork and structural labor first. A campus near commissioning needs final clean, underfloor and subfloor work, and rack-level cleaning before IT equipment arrives. The same operator can have one site in each phase at once, so a single regional crew plan rarely fits every project.
What to plan for at each phase
- Construction phase: dust control, debris removal and temporary protection of raised floors and white space.
- Pre-commissioning: detailed final clean of data halls, plenums and mechanical rooms, sequenced around inspections.
- Operations: recurring maintenance cleaning, usually with off-hours or multi-shift coverage.
Local and travel crews on the same campus
Large sites often draw on both local hiring and travel crews. Local personnel handle ongoing work and familiarity with the site, while travel crews cover compressed final-clean windows. Our local versus travel crews guide walks through that tradeoff, and our projects hub lists the target campuses we are pursuing.
If you are scoping a campus or a multi-site program, start with the phase each site is in, then decide how many people and which shifts that phase needs. Our data center cleaning page describes the scope we typically cover.