Dive brief:
- L5 Mission Critical, a data center services company launched on September 16 by the construction company Walbridge to provide data center services, has hired Matt Landek as president and CEO, the company announced Wednesday.
- Landek served as Global President of Data Centers and Critical Environments at JLL Work Dynamics, where he led a global workforce of 2,500 employees in 340 data centers. Walbridge, headquartered in Detroit, is one of the nation’s largest privately held construction companies with more than 1,500 employees in North America.
- With Walbridge, L5 Mission Critical will provide operational services for data center customers in enterprise facilities as well as gigawatt-scale campuses, Landek said in a statement. “As more service providers continue to consolidate, our ability to offer a flexible, transparent and community-based approach to operational delivery will pay dividends for customers and the communities we serve,” he said.
Diving knowledge:
Data center capacity in the US is it is expected to double in the next three yearswith nearly 45 GW of additional capacity expected due to AI and cloud growth, according to Data Center Frontier. Capacity is currently extremely tight, with most tenants securing space in small, fragmented blocks and contracting for 2028 deliveries, according to JLL’s 2026. North America Data Center Mid-Year Report.
The challenge of acquiring and delivering new data center capacity is disrupting development channels and increasing reliance on existing stabilized data centers, which already have contractually reserved capacity, largely shielding them from network constraints and new interconnection moratoriums, Morningstar said in a commentary published on Aug. 5.
While many data centers may not be able to support the liquid cooling needed to support GPU AI storage compute, they can be upgraded or adapted to support this new demand, says Sean Farney, vice president of data center strategy at JLL.
L5 Mission Critical targets third-party data center customers by offering an integrated solution, with Walbridge providing construction and L5 providing operational support for customers looking for help transitioning from construction to facility management, the company said in a press release.
“L5 will differentiate itself by owning the transition from construction and commissioning to live operations — the gap where most new data centers struggle in their first 12 months, and no other provider has an incentive to close because each only touches a single link in the chain,” Landek told Facilities Dive in an email. “We’re pairing this property with 1) an operating model built for hyperscale from the ground up rather than adapting to legacy practice, 2) a century of Walbridge experience managing complex megafacilities, and 3) a workforce and community program that goes beyond what service providers typically offer.”
“As demand increases, our customers not only need to get their projects up and running quickly, but they need critical operations and value-added services that reduce risk, ensure uptime and educate communities,” said John Rakolta III, president and chief administrative officer of Walbridge.
At JLL, Landek led the company’s expansion into the data center market through acquisitions, internal initiatives and operations. He participated in the company’s acquisition of data center technical services and project management company SKAE Power Solutions in 2024, which was combined with other JLL operations. to form a new technical services division under Landek.
In November, JLL struck a deal with InfraPartners, a specialist in off-the-shelf AI data center solutions, to help. rapid AI data center development and operations to provide an end-to-end delivery model to hyperscalers, colocation providers and enterprise customers.
Prior to leading the company’s data center operations, Landek led JLL account teams across contracted services including facilities management, engineering, employee experience, white space services, procurement and project management. Prior to joining JLL in 2012, Landek worked as a facilities management professional for Cook County government, covering parts of Chicago and its suburbs.
“Matt’s experience will allow us to scale our data center construction practice to a complete build-to-operate model that our customers need in this challenging time,” Rakolta said.
To address workforce capacity constraints affecting the industry, L5 Mission Critical is also developing a data center workforce training curriculum that, according to the release, will create clear and accelerated pathways for skilled professionals.
“Managing the workload of high-density power and AI inference requires a different operator skill set than what most FM professionals were trained for,” said Landek. “The move from construction to the operations team is exposing new sets of problems for operations teams ill-equipped for the demands and pressure of these operations. The market has not caught up with the credentials, training or career paths for these environments, which is driving the demand for these experienced technicians.”
He said organizations that develop specific, hands-on training programs and provide greater turnaround time on onboarding will be successful.
