A friend of mine is an independent electrician in the Columbus, OH area. Last summer he told me he was getting plenty of datacenter construction work, albeit it was in the form of subcontracted jobs from the larger firms who were awarded the contracts.

Local shops will absolutely be contracted to work on the project. A datacenter project like this can't find enough qualified electricians.

I work for an electrical contractor that does large data center projects and we almost always partner with a local contractor to provide labor from the local union(s).

>Yeah and that type of work bid usually goes to huge conglomerates.

Which are exactly the kinds of entities that the trades unions and industry interest groups are most deeply in bed with.