THE DEMAND FOR DATA CENTERS HAS NEVER BEEN GREATER. Artificial intelligence, cloud services, high-performance computing, and digital transformation are fueling one of the largest construction booms the AEC industry has experienced in decades.
While headlines often focus on megawatt capacity, advanced cooling technologies, or construction costs, another challenge deserves equal attention: managing the information required to deliver these highly complex facilities.
Today’s data center projects involve hundreds of organizations, thousands of decisions, and millions of pieces of project information. Every design revision, meeting discussion, email, instant message, document, model update, and field observation contributes to the final outcome.
Unfortunately, many project teams still manage this information much as they did ten years ago. Documents live in one system. Emails remain in Outlook. Teams conversations are isolated from project records. Drawings are stored elsewhere. Decisions are documented inconsistently, if at all.
The result is not a lack of information. It is a lack of connected information.
Complexity Grows Faster Than Coordination
Data center projects differ from many commercial building projects because nearly every system is interconnected.
A modification to electrical distribution affects mechanical loads. Cooling strategies influence rack layouts. Security systems intersect with networking infrastructure. Owner requirements evolve as technology vendors introduce new hardware. Construction sequencing changes to accommodate equipment availability. Every decision creates downstream impacts.
Today’s data center projects involve hundreds of organizations, thousands of decisions, and millions of pieces of project information.
The challenge is ensuring every stakeholder understands not only what changed, but why it changed and how it affects the rest of the project. Traditional document management solves only part of this problem.
Project teams increasingly need access to the conversations, approvals, assumptions, and decisions that surround every project document. Context has become as valuable as the document itself.
Information Exists Everywhere
Few organizations expect project information to reside in a single platform anymore.
Architects collaborate in design applications. Contractors manage construction workflows through specialized project management software. Owners maintain operational systems. Microsoft Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, Autodesk Construction Cloud, Bluebeam, BIM applications, and numerous discipline-specific solutions all play important roles.
David Wagner, Product Marketing Leader, Newforma.
The challenge is not replacing these systems. The challenge is connecting them. When information remains fragmented across disconnected applications, teams spend valuable time searching for answers instead of solving problems.
Questions become surprisingly difficult to answer.
Which drawing revision was discussed during last week’s coordination meeting?
Why was this specification changed?
Who approved this design exception?
Was the contractor working from the latest version?
Which conversation led to this decision?
The information often exists. Finding it quickly is another matter entirely.
According to Autodesk and FMI’s research on construction data, poor data management continues to cost the industry billions of dollars annually through rework, poor decisions, and lost productivity.
Decisions Need an Audit Trail
As projects accelerate, decision-making becomes increasingly distributed. Design teams span multiple offices and time zones. Consultants work independently. Owners provide rapid feedback. Contractors identify field conditions requiring immediate resolution.
Many important project decisions now occur through email, instant messaging, virtual meetings, and collaborative platforms rather than formal meeting minutes. While this improves responsiveness, it also introduces risk.
Newforma Konekt is Newforma’s modern, cloud-centric, browser-based CDE for AEC/O with advanced project information management (PIM) capabilities that can tie data together from diverse sources into a single unified view and single source of truth for a project’s information. (see more images below)
Months later, teams often remember that a decision was made but struggle to reconstruct the reasoning behind it.
Without a complete project record, organizations lose valuable institutional knowledge. This becomes especially significant during disputes, warranty claims, commissioning, future renovations, or facility expansion. For complex infrastructure projects like data centers, preserving the decision history can be just as important as preserving the design itself.
Commissioning Depends on Trusted Information
Data centers undergo one of the most rigorous commissioning processes in the construction industry. Power redundancy, cooling systems, fire protection, networking infrastructure, security controls, monitoring systems, and backup generators all require extensive testing and documentation before facilities become operational.
MORE: Newforma Konekt—Cloud Solution Merges PIM and BIM Worlds
Commissioning teams depend on accurate information. Outdated documentation, missing approvals, incomplete submittals, or disconnected communication records create unnecessary delays. Owners ultimately inherit more than a physical facility. They inherit decades of operational responsibility supported by the information delivered during construction.
The quality of the project record directly influences future maintenance, upgrades, troubleshooting, and regulatory compliance.
Connected Information Creates Better Decisions
The industry’s digital transformation has focused heavily on digitizing individual workflows. Established building information management guidance reinforces the need to keep project information organized, accessible and useful throughout a facility’s lifecycle. The next opportunity lies in connecting those workflows.
Newforma Konekt features BIM issue tracking and workflows fully compatible with BCF standards.
Rather than forcing organizations to standardize on a single application, successful project teams are creating environments where information remains connected regardless of where it originated. An email discussing a design change should be discoverable alongside the drawing revision it references. A Teams conversation should provide context for an approved field change. A meeting decision should connect directly to the documents and issues it affects. This connected approach transforms isolated records into a comprehensive project narrative. Instead of searching multiple systems, teams gain a complete view of project activity with the context needed to make informed decisions.
Information Is Becoming Critical Infrastructure
Data centers exist to support the world’s digital infrastructure.
Ironically, many projects that build this infrastructure still struggle with fragmented project information.
As facilities become larger, schedules become shorter, and stakeholder ecosystems become more complex, project information management will increasingly determine project success. The firms that outperform their competitors will not necessarily produce more information. They will connect information more effectively.
When every document, communication, decision, and project activity contributes to a trusted project record, teams spend less time searching, less time resolving uncertainty, and more time delivering successful projects.
In an industry where every day of delay has significant financial implications, connected information is no longer an administrative advantage. It has become a strategic one.
About the Author
Dave Wagner is a Product Marketing leader at Newforma with more than two decades of experience helping architecture, engineering, construction, and owner (AECO) organizations improve project delivery through better information management, project collaboration, and digital workflows. His work focuses on helping firms reduce project risk by consolidating project communications, documents, and decisions into a complete, accessible project record. For more information, visit www.newforma.com/
