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On 14 January, Aon raised its data centre lifecycle insurance programme from £1.1bn ($1.5bn, €1.3bn) to £1.9bn ($2.5bn, €2.2bn). Six days later, Procore announced it had bought Datagrid for £126m ($168m, €148m). Both spent on the same interval: the months between a facility being built and the facility working. In January the market had a name for that interval and a price for it. The name was lifecycle cover with delay in start-up. This analysis calls it the handover gap.
In July we wrote that the gap read like a line item. By 30 September it is one. A budget line, in this analysis, means money, or a contract term that prices or conditions the built-to-working interval. Three arrived in the second half of 2026. The European Union wrote an operations expectation into a tender. Singapore attached conditions to an allocation. A developer can now buy cover through testing and commissioning. Behind them sits a regulator layer. In London, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) set the terms for Britain's next construction regulator. It will run on information that is findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.
Aon lifted lifecycle cover to £3.8bn in July, then wrote commissioning into a gas-power programme
On 20 July, Aon took the programme to £3.8bn ($5bn, €4.4bn) of cover. It bundles four covers: construction damage, delay in start-up, property damage and business interruption. Delay in start-up is the cover for income lost when an insured event delays opening.
On 28 September, Aon launched a Power Lifecycle Program for gas plants, "including dedicated projects supporting data centres". Cover runs to £1.9bn ($2.5bn, €2.2bn) per project "for the construction, testing and commissioning periods". Joe Peiser, Aon's Chief Executive Officer, Risk Capital, called it a single lifecycle framework. The premium is the budget line. A developer now pays for the testing and commissioning months by name.
EuroHPC expects up to seven AI gigafactories to be running within 18 months of selection
On 30 July, the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking opened its tender for up to seven AI gigafactories. The count is up from the five first planned. The term is the European Union's own for its largest AI data centres. Bids close on 12 November. Selection follows in early 2027, and the winners "are expected to begin operations within 18 months". Public funding acts as the anchor customer.
That sentence is the category in procurement language. The buyer is not asking who pours concrete fastest. It states the period within which the asset is expected to work. Every bidder now prices the built-to-working interval inside a tender response.
Singapore allocated 200 MW to four operators on green-power and efficiency conditions
On 21 August, Singapore's Economic Development Board and Infocomm Media Development Authority provisionally allocated 200 MW. The allocation came under the second data centre call for application. Digital Realty, Equinix, Keppel Data Centres and ST Telemedia Global Data Centres took 50 MW each. More than 20 proposals had competed. All four sites sit on Jurong Island.
Each operator committed to draw more than half its power from green sources. Each will run liquid cooling and fully energy-efficient IT equipment. In July the call was open. In September the conditions are written into an allocation.
Where is the handover gap on your organisation's agenda?
Britain's next construction regulator is to run on findable, reusable information from 2028
On 9 July, MHCLG published its response to the single construction regulator prospectus. The regulator "will only be effective if it can rely on findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) information". That requirement spans "the whole building lifecycle". The department "will establish consistent information standards as part of the next phase of regulatory reform". Interoperable digital services form a core part of the operating model, with implementation expected from 2028.
The prospectus had asked, in section 2.4 question four, how human review should be retained when compliance checking is automated. The answer was plain. Automation "can improve speed, consistency and efficiency", and "human review, oversight, and final accountability must be maintained".
Dubai moved the same way in March. Law No. 3 of 2026 gives Dubai Municipality a digital management system and a unified building database. It applies to every building in the emirate. An information standard set by a regulator, not a vendor, is procurement language at regulator level.
The ISO 19650 draft merges delivery and operation into one lifecycle process
Standards moved in parallel. ISO 19650 is the information-management standard for built assets. On 10 March, BSI and nima opened the draft of its revision to comment. The draft removes the distinction between the delivery phase and the operational phase. One information process covers the whole life of the asset. Comments closed on 3 May, and ISO's catalogue now shows the draft returned for a second ballot. The 2018 editions remain in force.
The vendors followed the money to the same phase. Autodesk closed its purchase of MaintainX, a maintenance and operations platform, on 3 August, at about £2.7bn ($3.6bn, €3.2bn). The standard, the regulator and the acquirer now describe the same interval.
US data centre starts reached £74bn by August while PJM postponed its 6.8 GW power auction
The United States is funding the buildings at pace. ConstructConnect counted £10.8bn ($14.4bn, €12.7bn) of data centre starts in August across 17 projects. The year to date stands at £74bn ($98.5bn, €86.7bn), 24% of all non-residential building starts. Census data put construction spending up more than 73% on a year earlier.
The power to make those buildings work is contested before the regulator. On 29 September, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) partially approved PJM's backstop procurement, an emergency purchase of extra capacity. That is 6.8 GW of new capacity for 2028/29, driven by data centre load. It found the cost allocation may be unjust and unreasonable. PJM, the grid operator for 13 states and Washington DC, postponed the auction planned for 30 September. Chairman Laura Swett said the commission "will not be forced into accepting a deeply flawed, eleventh-hour procurement mechanism". One public tracker counts 13 nuclear supply deals by the largest cloud companies, totalling 9.8 GW to May. Built is funded. Working is still being procured.
More than half of operators struggle to hire, and new-build cost reaches £13.2m a megawatt
Labour sits inside the budget line. The Uptime Institute published its 2026 survey on 28 July. More than half of operators "report difficulties finding qualified candidates for open positions". One in ten outages is still serious or severe, and their cost keeps climbing.
Cushman & Wakefield published its cost guide on 3 September. The all-in cost of a new-build site in the United States and Canada averages £13.2m ($17.6m, €15.5m) a megawatt. That figure covers the most modern facilities and excludes chips. It is up 21% a megawatt since the previous edition in late 2024. Shortages in the mechanical, electrical and plumbing trades are named as a driver. A recruiter's estimate puts the cost of a 60 MW facility running late at about £10.7m ($14.2m, €12.5m) a month. The engineers who sign off a working facility are now a cost line of their own.
Three contract tests show who has closed the gap before the fourth quarter ends
Analysts named the gap. Procurement language now defines it, and a buyer can test for it in three places.
First, does the contract name the information standard, ISO 19650 at handover today and the UK regulator's standards once published? The buyer's information manager decides. Second, does the insurance run through testing and commissioning by name, as Aon's programmes now do? The project's risk lead decides. Third, is a working date written into the tender or the allocation, as EuroHPC's 18-month expectation is? The awarding authority decides.
Software can read a contract against these three tests and flag the gaps. The information manager, the risk lead and the awarding authority decide what to do with them. The fourth quarter narrows the window from naming the gap to closing it.
The bottom line
A category is named by its analysts and defined by its buyers. Between January and September the buyers took over. An insurer prices the commissioning months by name. A tender states the period within which the asset is expected to work. An allocation carries performance conditions, and a regulator commits to an information standard of its own. The handover gap is no longer an argument to win. It is a line in a document someone has to sign.
Next week: A data centre stores. An AI factory manufactures. The difference is priced in.
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