by Josh Seawell, director of product management, Sumitomo Electric Lightwave
The data center construction boom is historic in scale. U.S. spending exceeded $60 billion in 2025 – up nearly fivefold in just four years – and five major tech companies alone have announced nearly $700 billion in capital expenditures for 2026. The race is on, and the stakes are enormous. Bloomberg reports that roughly half of the data centers slated to open in the U.S. in 2026 will face delays or outright cancellations.
The difference between the projects that deliver and the ones that don't often comes down to one thing: planning.
The instinct to break ground immediately is financially motivated and logical on its face. Every day a facility isn't generating revenue is a day of losses on a massive investment. But rushing out of the gate without complete planning often costs more time, not less.
Changes made after design approval ripple into procurement delays, contractor rescheduling, and wasted materials. Some operators are effectively problem-solving their builds in real time, with costly consequences. More than 60% of data center outages trace back to power, cooling, or cabling failures – decisions made during construction that are extremely difficult and expensive to fix later. The numbers make the case: a little more time at the planning table is worth it.
The pressure to move fast collides directly with a supply chain that simply cannot respond to urgency on demand. Lightreading reported in December that fiber optic cable lead times have ballooned from 8-12 weeks to a year or more, with at least one major manufacturer having already sold all of its fiber inventory through 2026.
AI-ready data centers can require roughly 36 times more fiber than traditional CPU-based racks. As one industry observer put it: "If one piece of your supply chain is delayed, your whole project can't deliver." Equipment procurement must be treated as a first critical path item in any project plan, not a parallel track to civil construction.
You cannot plan for X terminations by Y date if the workforce to complete them is already committed somewhere else. The U.S. construction industry is short an estimated 439,000 workers, with the sharpest shortages among skilled electricians and fiber technicians. Commissioning specialists are being locked into builds 12-18 months in advance, and many contractors now cite labor availability as their main growth constraint. The operators who secure skilled labor and contractor commitments early will have a real advantage.
One of the most important strategic shifts data center developers can make is moving from project-based execution to portfolio-level orchestration – planning supplier relationships, contractor commitments, and procurement timelines across multiple builds rather than one at a time. This portfolio approach enables faster, more predictable outcomes by treating supply chain readiness as an ongoing discipline rather than a per-project scramble.
The solution isn't slower; it is smarter. Bringing engineers, contractors, manufacturers, consultants, and suppliers into the planning process earlier actually compresses timelines by surfacing constraints before they become crises.
The theme that keeps emerging across the industry: get your partners involved early, and a realistic, viable plan will move faster than an optimistic one that hits a wall.
At the scale of an AI factory, no infrastructure decision is truly small. Overhead cable management may seem like a minor detail – until it's wrong, and you're pulling it out mid-build at a cost of millions before a single server goes online. A manufacturer or contractor who understands the full scope of a project can flag these kinds of issues before they halt progress.
At Sumitomo Electric Lightwave, collaboration is built into the way we operate, and our customers' successful deployments are our measure of success. If you are planning a data center build or upgrade and would like a partner invested in your outcome from day one, connect with us.
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About the author: Josh Seawell, director of product management, oversees the development and distribution of Sumitomo Electric Lightwave’s optical fiber and connectivity portfolio in North America and CALA.
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