Prefabricated Data Center Enclosures: Building Faster Through Off-Site Construction

How Klover is using prefabrication, BIM coordination and manufacturing to help data center developers overcome labor shortages, accelerate enclosure schedules and bring greater certainty to complex projects.

The data center construction market is moving at a pace few sectors have experienced before. Hyperscale facilities are growing larger, power demands are increasing and developers are under enormous pressure to bring new capacity online. Yet one of the biggest obstacles to meeting those schedules is surprisingly straightforward: there are not enough skilled construction workers available to build everything the traditional way.

For Klover President and Partner Kristian Fields, the answer is not simply adding more people to the jobsite. It is changing where and how portions of the building are constructed.

Klover is increasingly using prefabricated data center enclosures, off-site construction and BIM coordination to move labor away from the jobsite and into a controlled manufacturing environment. The result is a construction model designed around repeatability, coordination and schedule certainty.

Why Data Center Construction Is Moving Off-Site

The shift toward data center prefabrication is being driven in large part by the construction labor shortage.

The article notes that Associated Builders and Contractors estimates the U.S. construction industry needs 349,000 net-new workers in 2026 and another 456,000 in 2027. It also cites the AGC and Sage 2026 outlook, which found that 82 percent of construction firms are struggling to fill hourly craft positions.

For data center construction, this challenge becomes even more complicated because sites are increasingly selected according to factors such as power availability rather than proximity to large construction labor pools.

Klover still recruits, trains and mobilizes field teams, but prefabrication provides another option. Instead of asking every component to be assembled in field conditions, significant portions of the building enclosure can be manufactured in Klover’s facility and delivered to the site ready for installation.

That changes the labor equation while also creating opportunities for greater consistency and efficiency.

How Klover Prefabricates Data Center Enclosures

Klover’s approach begins well before panels arrive at a project.

On hyperscale projects in Northern Virginia, Klover’s scope includes exterior framing, wall panels and building enclosure systems for three-story data center facilities. The process starts with detailed 3D modeling and BIM coordination, allowing panel dimensions and interfaces with other trades to be coordinated before manufacturing begins.

Steel studs can then be roll-formed from coil to the exact lengths required for each panel. Panels are assembled in the shop and can receive components such as weather barriers before being transported to the project.

Some panels have grown from approximately 20 feet to more than 45 feet tall, requiring structural steel to accommodate their size.

According to Fields, this approach can reduce the exterior enclosure installation timeline by at least half. The original article appropriately notes that this figure represents Fields’ assessment rather than an independently verified industry benchmark.

Klover is applying similar principles to interior construction. On an Eastern Pennsylvania data center retrofit, the company is prefabricating roughly 200,000 square feet of interior wall panels for electrical room enclosures. Panels measuring approximately 24 feet by 12 feet leave the shop with framing and the first layer of fire-treated gypsum board already installed.

The goal is simple: complete as much work as practical in a controlled environment before the product reaches the field.

BIM Coordination Makes Prefabrication Possible

Prefabrication is not simply traditional construction performed indoors. Successful off-site data center construction requires decisions to happen earlier.

Fields describes Klover becoming involved roughly eight months before product is required on site. During that period, teams model, coordinate, manufacture and stage the enclosure system.

That early involvement is critical because manufacturing depends on accurate information. Once a panel is fabricated, late design changes can transform a controlled manufacturing process back into a field coordination problem.

For hyperscale owners, developers, general contractors and trade partners, this means design stability becomes an important part of schedule acceleration.

The workflow illustrated in the article moves from design lock to 3D coordination, steel roll-forming, panel assembly, quality inspection and delivery to site. Each step depends on the accuracy and stability of the step before it.

Where Prefabrication Creates the Most Value

Prefabrication delivers the greatest benefit when it is paired with repeatable data center designs. As designs are reused across projects, they can refine the process with each cycle. Work becomes more predictable. Production planning improves. Quality can be monitored in a controlled environment, and the amount of work required in the field can be reduced.

That distinction is important.

Simply moving construction indoors does not automatically create efficiency. If every panel is entirely different or designs continue changing after production begins, many of the advantages of manufacturing disappear.

The greatest opportunity comes when standardized data center designs and prefabricated construction systems work together.

Prefabrication Creates Schedule Certainty, Not Just Cost Savings

Data center construction is often discussed in terms of cost per megawatt, but schedule may be the more important metric.

The article cites Goldman Sachs Research indicating that historically about 72 percent of data centers scheduled for activation within the following four quarters were delivered on time. That figure is forecast to decline to approximately 60 percent over the next year and roughly 50 percent over the next two years, with labor and supply-chain constraints among the factors affecting delivery.

For owners investing significant capital into new capacity, the question therefore becomes more than how much does a data center cost to build?

It becomes: Can we build it when we said we would?

Prefabrication cannot eliminate every risk. Electrical capacity, permitting, community approvals, changing designs, regional building requirements and power availability can still affect a project. But it can help address one of construction’s most persistent uncertainties: whether sufficient skilled labor will be available at the right place and time.

Building the Next Generation of Data Centers Differently

The growth of hyperscale and mission-critical construction is forcing the industry to reconsider traditional building methods.

For Klover, data center prefabrication is not about eliminating field construction. It is about determining which work can be coordinated earlier, manufactured more efficiently off-site and installed faster once it reaches the project.

As demand for data center capacity continues to grow, the companies that succeed will increasingly be those that connect design, BIM coordination, manufacturing and field installation into one integrated process.

The future of data center construction may not be defined by how many more people can be placed on a jobsite. It may be defined by how much work no longer needs to happen there at all.