Raymond Hawkins is Chief Customer Officer at Compass Data Centers, discussing constraints on data center construction with host Shail Khan.
0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.7s
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“Power and is, is the biggie, and the community has raced up the list pretty quickly. You know, didn't think we'd be at the White House six months ago talking about who pays for infrastructure on the grid, but we are. And right after that would be labor.”
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More from Raymond Hawkins
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Developers build trailer camps for traveling electricians in smaller data center markets
“There's a lot of that at data center sites where you are bringing the labor especially in these tier three, tier four markets, and providing places for them to live and eat and stay so that they can be near the job. Because, you know, 40 miles outside Jackson,…”
Raymond HawkinsAug 6, 2026▶ 6:37The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
AssertionContradicted
Hawkins: Electrician costs have tripled over the last decade
“Without a doubt. Yeah, the electrician the cost for electricians You know, I'm going to give you a, you know, estimate has tripled in the time I've been in the business. Yeah. In the last decade.”
Raymond HawkinsAug 6, 2026▶ 11:20The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
Insight
Off-site data center manufacturing shifts travel jobs to local shifts, improving diversity
“And so by doing offsite manufacturing, putting together large components of our data centers offsite, it allows for a safer, more diverse, and more reliable product, right? Safer for the employees, more diverse, because giving somebody, hey, you can be here fr…”
Raymond HawkinsAug 6, 2026▶ 18:45The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Hawkins: Gigawatt-scale campuses are now standard in data center planning
“It is completely normal to talk about gigawatt campuses today.”
Raymond HawkinsAug 6, 2026▶ 24:44The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Hawkins: Data center industry secrecy originated purely from early security requirements
“Our industry grew up being secretive. Not secretive because we had anything to hide from anybody, but think about the first two significant customers for large-scale data centers. It was the financial institutions and it was the government, and they were secre…”
Raymond HawkinsAug 6, 2026▶ 26:47The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
PredictionHeld up
Hawkins: Most Data Centers Are Moving to Closed-Loop Cooling
“Frankly, most of the industry is going that way.”
Raymond HawkinsAug 6, 2026▶ 31:31The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
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