ModelVersion 0.1Compiling data

Datacenter MEP Cost Table

Capex per MW by component on the Turner & Townsend and JLL baselines, air-cooled and liquid-cooled, with each line's lead time from the Lead-Time Monitor and the carrying cost of delay.

$9.8M per MWall-in datacenter build cost, Phoenix and Columbus, Turner & Townsend Data Centre Construction Cost Index 2025. Public headline as of March 13, 2026.

$9.8M per MW
Build cost, Phoenix and Columbus ($9.8 per W); Atlanta $9.9, Silicon Valley $13.3, Tokyo $15.2. Turner & Townsend DCCI 2025
54%
Electrical including equipment as a share of an air-cooled US build; 48% liquid-cooled. Turner & Townsend DCCI 2025
22% to 33%
Mechanical including equipment, air-cooled to liquid-cooled. At $9.8 per W that is $2.2M to $3.2M per MW
7 to 10%
Cost premium for a liquid-cooled US build over air-cooled, Turner & Townsend DCCI 2025

What it covers

Capex per MW from utility fence to rack, by component: MV service and substation, transformers, MV and LV switchgear, UPS or BESS, gensets, busway and PDUs, chillers, CDUs, piping and controls. Air-cooled and liquid-cooled baselines on the Turner & Townsend cost allocation and the JLL and CBRE $/W by market, each line carrying its published lead time from the Lead-Time Monitor and a carrying-cost-of-delay figure at the 10-year Treasury rate.

Cadence
Quarterly, after the Lead-Time Monitor's quarter-end edition; baselines refreshed when Turner & Townsend and JLL publish
Compiled from
Turner & Townsend Data Centre Construction Cost Index 2025 (cost per W by market, US cost allocation by category); JLL Global Data Center Outlook 2026 and CBRE North America reports (as reported by the trade press where paywalled); vendor filings for equipment share; Open Factory Lead-Time Monitor; FRED GS10 for the carrying-cost rate
Delivered as
Excel workbook, Web dashboard
Updates
Quarterly updates, one year included
Onboarding
Onboarding call
Support
Ad hoc analyst calls
Tier
Pro; workbook Institutional

Who uses it and what it decides

  • Datacenter developers and owner's repsA component-level budget per MW for a market, and which three lines drive the schedule.
  • MEP engineers and EPCsWhether a design estimate sits inside the published range for its cooling type.
  • Investors and lendersCapex per MW by cooling type and market for underwriting, with the source beside each line.

Methodology

What the headline is

$9.8 million per MW is the all-in construction cost for a datacenter in Phoenix or Columbus in Turner & Townsend’s Data Centre Construction Cost Index 2025, printed there as $9.8 per watt. The same index puts Atlanta at $9.9, Silicon Valley at $13.3 and Tokyo at $15.2, and allocates a US air-cooled build 54% to electrical including equipment, 22% to mechanical including equipment, 14% to core, shell and architectural and 10% to GC fees. A liquid-cooled build shifts to 48% electrical and 33% mechanical at a 7 to 10% premium. The allocation rows are in 06-mep-cost-shares.csv.

The headline is the Turner & Townsend figure for the lowest-cost US Tier 1 market and moves when the index is republished.

What it is compiled from

Version 0.1 is published baselines and arithmetic. No contributed quotes.

Every line prints its source and whether it is a published figure, a derived split or a trade estimate.

What is free and what is paid

  • Free: the headline, this page, and the cost-share chart in Chillers Are the 60-Week Problem.
  • Pro: the component table per MW for air-cooled and liquid-cooled builds, by market, with lead times and carrying cost.
  • Institutional: the workbook with the split arithmetic exposed, the dashboard, quarterly updates for a year, an onboarding call and ad hoc calls.

Articles built on it

Chillers Are the 60-Week Problem and The $60 Million Deposit: How Equipment Slots Became Datacenter Currency. Forward assumptions on density, 800 VDC and cooling type sit on the Datacenter Electrical Roadmap and the Cooling Roadmap.

Version history

  • 0.1 (March 2026). Turner & Townsend 2025 index, JLL 2026 outlook, Lead-Time Monitor September 2026 edition for lead times.

What version 1 adds

Bid-tab awards for chillers, gensets and switchgear from the Public Bid-Tab Price Book replace the derived splits line by line as cells fill, and contributed MEP quotes from the Equipment Price Benchmark enter under the cell-size rules. Each replaced line will say which version replaced it.

Known gaps

The component split below the electrical and mechanical totals is derived, not published, and is marked derived. CDU and chiller unit prices are trade estimates until awards accumulate. Turner & Townsend’s index is annual; between editions the table ages and says so.

Questions

Is this a cost estimate for my site?

No. It is a table of published baselines with the arithmetic shown. A site estimate against your design is an advisory engagement.

Why Turner & Townsend and not an OEM price list?

No OEM publishes a $/MW price for switchgear, UPS or chillers at datacenter scale. The consultancies publish the only dated, market-level baselines. Transaction prices arrive through the Public Bid-Tab Price Book as awards accumulate.

What is the carrying cost of delay?

The interest on capex already spent while the longest-lead item is outstanding, at the 10-year Treasury rate on the date of the edition (4.80% on September 8 2026), per MW per month.

Articles built on this model