Arcova, a leading U.S.-based cybersecurity and AI consulting firm, is introducing an end-to-end data center development offering that brings engineering, cybersecurity, regulatory compliance, and grid-planning coordination under one accountable team.
According to the company, the offering is designed to take data center programs from site selection through day-two operations, reducing the average development timeline by 18 months and eliminating $60–200M in transition costs created by fragmented vendor coordination.
Data center demand driven by AI has created a structural gap between what developers need and what the grid can deliver.
Grid interconnection adds three to four years to construction timelines, transformer and transmission equipment carry lead times of 66 to 120 months, and interconnection studies can consume up to 18-27 months when conducted manually.
"AI has made data center development one of the most pressing infrastructure problems the energy sector has faced in a generation,” said Jerome Farquharson, managing director and senior executive advisor at Arcova. “Developers target a build window of 18 to 24 months, and the grid, the supply chain and the firms managing each phase are all working against that timeline. The only way to close that gap is to have one firm serve as the spine of the program, owning full accountability from site selection through day-two operations. No other firm is managing that full lifecycle today. When the build runs under one team, the seams disappear, and what comes out at commissioning is a certified, finance-ready asset."
Arcova addresses these constraints through three integrated capabilities, applied as one program:
- Speed to power targets the primary bottleneck: energized capacity. Rather than sequencing interconnection permitting, behind-the-meter generation options and long-lead equipment procurement after construction decisions are made, Arcova runs those workstreams in parallel across its partner ecosystem.
- Secure-by-design engineering embeds cybersecurity and regulatory compliance into the engineering phase from the start, aligned to ISA/IEC 62443, NERC CIP, and applicable federal directives. Network segmentation, identity and access governance, secure remote access, and monitoring are designed into reference architecture before construction begins.
- AI-accelerated grid planning compresses the interconnection study cycle—work that can run 18–27 months under manual methods. By modeling interconnection scenarios, transmission constraints, and grid-impact analysis at machine speed, Arcova gives developers higher-confidence answers earlier on where and how capacity can come online.
Together, these capabilities enable Arcova to orchestrate a single program from site identification through energization and certification. This replaces the serial handoffs among six to eight firms that often cause multi-year delays, while ensuring complete compliance documentation and a finance-ready asset at close, the company said.
The offering is available now and delivered on a per-program basis, with engagements scoped to each data center program’s size, stage and power strategy.
To learn more, visit www.arcova.com.