Campuses for the $10 billion project will be located at two sites in Madison County, one being the Megasite pictured. (Photo from Entergy)
- This second part of an in-depth analysis of the construction industry in Mississippi focuses on the $10 billion AWS data center campuses being built in Madison County.
In January when Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced its $10 billion investment in Madison County to build two data center campuses by mid-2027, Mississippi contractors were already on the job.
“Edmond Turnage of Southern Rock and Jeff Cox with Birdsong helped make things happen to help Mississippi shine in bringing the AWS project out of the ground,” said Chad Wages of Wages Civil LLC, who worked alongside both companies last fall when work began on the 927-acre Madison County Mega Site in Canton, and the second site, 786 acres in Ridgeland, located along the southern tip of Madison County.
“The first building is scheduled to come online this January,” said Ed Gardner, vice president of business and economic development for Entergy Mississippi. “That’s incredibly fast in our business.”
AWS isn’t being financially assisted by the state in the construction phase, but Governor Tate Reeves asked the company to consider using Mississippi contractors. AWS complied.
“Lots of Mississippi companies are taking part in the building process,” said Joey Deason, executive director of the Madison County Economic Development Authority (MCEDA). “Out of state firms are actively working on hiring local Mississippians for work, as well as Mississippi subcontractors.”
Contractors include Birdsong Construction, Brasfield & Gorrie, Canton Concrete, Delta Industries, Headwaters Inc., Hemphill Construction, Malouf Construction, MMC, Neel-Schaffer, Puckett Machinery, Shackelford Construction, Site Support Group, Southern Rock, Sunbelt Rentals, United Rentals, Wages Civil, Waggoner Engineering, and WGK Engineering.
Yates of Philadelphia is one of three general contractors selected by AWS through a bidding process. The other two are Gray Construction from Lexington, Kentucky, and Haskell from Jacksonville, Florida
“We welcome in other people,” said Lloyd Munn, executive director of Associated General Contractors (AGC) of Mississippi. “We never discourage someone from out of state because we have contractors from Mississippi that build projects all over the United States. That’s the fair trade of it. But they hire local people to do the work.”
With the influx of workers, Munn expressed concerns about sufficient housing “and all that goes with it.”
“A rising tide floats everybody’s boat, so there’s not a downside of a project like this because most of the money is spent on our local people and in our local economy,” he noted.
Lee Nations, president and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) for Mississippi, said the construction industry is “ecstatic” that AWS has decided to make an investment, and will continue to make an investment, in central Mississippi.
“While we know this will demand a large volume of skilled workers and tradespeople, it’s a problem the industry is continuing to address,” he said. “Unfortunately, there’s no ‘quick fix’ to fix the trades gap, but Mississippi contractors continue to work tirelessly to address this gap with the assistance of establishments like Build Mississippi and AccelerateMS.”
Brent Bean, president of the Mississippi Construction Education Foundation (MCEF), which administers Build Mississippi, said he’s happy the state and AWS leaders did a great job of planning in advance.
“Our foundation, along with other workforce development leaders from AccelerateMS, community colleges, and high schools from the central Mississippi area have been meeting and working with AWS for months to ensure we’d have the workforce needed to handle the construction of the AWS data centers and have a pipeline of trained individuals ready to fill the positions of the data centers upon their completion and opening.”
In the meantime, contractors are unified with meeting production schedules. A Birdsong Construction LinkedIn post in mid-August highlighted completion of 15,000+ tons of crushed limestone of a sizeable building pad.
“We’ve assisted with constructing five building pads at the Madison County Mega Site and are now working on four building pads at the Ridgeland campus,” Wages said, in late August. “We’re trying to complete those four by the end of September to middle of October to keep AWS moving on schedule.”
Wages emphasized the AWS challenge “has been all about schedule, thinking out of the box to first get things moving and how to keep things moving.”
“With a project of this magnitude, there’s always a hiccup, (aka) ‘Murphy’s Law,’ hiding around the corner,” he said. “You have to be quick on your feet, find a solution, just keep things moving. Nothing out of the ordinary has occurred that we haven’t experienced before, but there’s a lot more moving pieces at one time.”
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Part 3 of this construction industry impact series will continue September 11, with a profile of Chad Wages, a civil engineer from Canton who’s played a key role in Mississippi’s most significant economic development projects. Part 4, slated for September 15, will focus on workforce development required to accommodate increased construction activity.
Lynne Jeter
