Summary
- YIT has been appointed to construct the FIN04A1 data centre building at atNorth’s Kouvola campus.
- The contract includes construction and MEP works, but its value has not been disclosed.
- It follows a separate July design-and-build contract worth about €300m at the same FIN04 campus.
atNorth has awarded YIT another construction package at its FIN04 campus in Kouvola, Finland, extending a delivery programme that already includes a separate data centre contract worth approximately €300m.
The latest agreement covers construction of the FIN04A1 building at Myllykoski. YIT will act as main contractor and take responsibility for the building works, including mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems. The parties have not disclosed the value of the new contract.
The award follows a July agreement under which YIT was appointed to design and construct another data centre at the same campus. That earlier package, valued at approximately €300m, covers design, civil, structural and architectural work, MEP systems, and commissioning, with completion expected by the end of 2027.
The two awards show FIN04 moving through multiple parallel work packages rather than being treated as a single building project. For large campuses, that approach allows individual halls or facilities to proceed on different design, procurement, and commissioning schedules while shared infrastructure develops around them.
YIT has not disclosed the power capacity, white-space area, or timetable for FIN04A1. The absence of those figures limits comparison with the July package, but the new contract confirms that another physical component of the campus has moved into the contractor-delivery phase.
MEP delivery becomes the critical path
Construction value in large data centres increasingly sits in the electrical and mechanical systems rather than the shell alone. Incoming power, medium- and low-voltage distribution, backup systems, cooling, controls, fire protection, and commissioning all have to be completed and tested against demanding resilience requirements before customer equipment can be installed.
YIT’s inclusion of MEP responsibility is therefore significant to the programme. The contractor is not simply delivering a building envelope; it is taking responsibility for much of the engineering infrastructure that will determine whether the facility can operate reliably at the required load.
Finland has attracted a growing share of Nordic data centre development because of its power system, cooler climate, industrial land, and connectivity to the rest of northern Europe. Those advantages can reduce some operating costs, but large projects still face the same practical constraints seen elsewhere: grid connection lead times, skilled construction labour, long-lead switchgear, generators, transformers, and increasingly specialised cooling equipment.
atNorth describes FIN04 as a “Mega Site” and lists Myllykoski as one of its principal Nordic locations. The operator is expanding across Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland as demand for large-scale and higher-density computing pushes developers towards markets where substantial power can still be assembled.
The Kouvola project is also an example of how Nordic capacity is moving from announcement into construction. Data centre pipelines across Europe are often measured in potential megawatts, but the transition to signed design-and-build and MEP contracts is a more concrete indicator of capacity progressing towards delivery.
The July €300m package is scheduled for completion by the end of 2027. YIT has not given an equivalent completion date for FIN04A1, so the sequencing between the two buildings remains unclear. Shared campus infrastructure may allow subsequent buildings to benefit from work already completed for roads, security, utility connections, and other common systems.
The new agreement also deepens the relationship between atNorth and YIT at a time when contractor capacity has become a strategic concern for major data centre programmes. Repeated packages with the same delivery team can reduce mobilisation and interface risk, particularly where engineering standards and commissioning procedures are common across multiple buildings.
FIN04A1 now joins the earlier facility as a live construction commitment at Myllykoski. The next useful disclosures will be the new building’s power capacity, delivery timetable, cooling design, and how the two YIT packages fit into the eventual scale and phasing of the wider Kouvola campus.
