Skanska Lands $238 Million Contract to Build Second Data Center Building on Virginia Campus
Skanska Lands USD 238M Contract to Build Second Data Center Building on Virginia Campus Skanska has secured an additional contract worth USD 238 million to construct a data center in Virginia, USA, the
Swedish construction giant announced on August 13, 2026. The deal, struck with an existing client, will be recorded in the company's US order bookings for the third quarter of 2026.
Project Scope and Scale
The contract covers the construction of a 22,000 square-meter, or 237,000 square-foot, data center facility.
The building will house five data halls alongside associated site work and underground site utilities. According to Skanska, this structure will be the second building completed on the campus, indicating an ongoing development relationship with the unnamed client at the Virginia location.
The scale of the project places it among the more substantial individual data center construction contracts in the current market.
At 237,000 square feet, the facility represents a significant physical footprint, with the five-data-hall configuration suggesting a design oriented toward high-density compute or colocation use, though the client's intended operational purpose has not been disclosed.
Timeline and Construction Start
Construction is scheduled to begin in August 2026, with completion targeted for May 2028.
The roughly 21-month build timeline reflects the complexity typically associated with large-scale data center construction, which involves not only the physical structure but also the extensive mechanical, electrical, and plumbing infrastructure required to support high-powered computing environments.
The project's start date aligns with the announcement itself, suggesting mobilization efforts were either already underway or imminent at the time of the press release.
Skanska did not disclose the specific location within Virginia where the campus is situated, nor did it identify the client by name.
Expanding an Existing Client Relationship
Skanska described the contract as an "additional" agreement with an "existing client," language that points to a deepening commercial relationship rather than a new customer acquisition.
The characterization of the new building as the second on the campus further reinforces that Skanska has an established presence on the site, having presumably delivered or currently delivering the first structure under a prior arrangement.
Virginia has become one of the most concentrated data center markets in the world, particularly in the northern part of the state in areas such as Loudoun County, sometimes referred to as "Data Center Alley."
The region's combination of fiber infrastructure, available land, and favorable power access has drawn sustained investment from hyperscale operators, colocation providers, and enterprise users alike.
Skanska's repeated engagement on this particular campus reflects the broader industry trend of phased campus development, where clients build out capacity incrementally as demand grows.
Financial Impact and Order Bookings
The USD 238 million contract value will be included in Skanska's US order bookings for the third quarter of 2026. For a company that operates across multiple geographies and sectors, order bookings serve as a key indicator of near-term revenue pipeline and construction activity.
Adding a contract of this size to a single quarter's bookings represents a meaningful contribution to Skanska USA Building's backlog.
Skanska operates across the United States through its building and civil construction divisions, taking on projects ranging from healthcare and education facilities to transportation infrastructure and, increasingly, data centers.
The data center sector has emerged as one of the most active construction verticals in recent years, driven by accelerating demand for cloud computing capacity, artificial intelligence workloads, and enterprise digitization.
Broader Construction Activity
The Virginia data center contract is one of several projects Skanska has announced in the United States in recent months.
Separately, the company signed an additional contract with UNC Health for the construction of a new medical office building and parking deck in Durham, North Carolina, valued at USD 68 million.
Skanska also announced a USD 64 million contract with the City of Vancouver to build a Public Works Operations Campus in Vancouver, Washington.
Taken together, these announcements reflect Skanska's active pursuit of contracts across diverse sectors of the US construction market, from data infrastructure to healthcare and municipal facilities.
The data center contract in Virginia, however, stands out in terms of dollar value, coming in at more than three times the size of the next largest of the recently announced deals.