Summary
- Keller has upgraded its 2026 expectations after stronger trading and a record order book of about £1.9bn.
- The geotechnical specialist cited increased demand for infrastructure and data centre projects, particularly in North America, alongside robust trading in Europe and the Middle East.
- The update shows data centre growth moving into foundations, ground improvement, remediation, and specialist construction capacity.
Keller Group has upgraded its full-year 2026 expectations after stronger trading and a record order book, with data centre projects among the areas lifting demand for the geotechnical specialist.
The company said momentum accelerated through the remainder of the second quarter, with North America materially outperforming management expectations. Keller cited record volumes and increased customer demand for infrastructure projects and data centres, offsetting softness in the south Florida residential market.
The group’s order book is now about £1.9 billion, supported by major infrastructure work, and Keller expects 2026 revenue and underlying operating profit to be materially ahead of current market consensus. The details are set out in the company’s trading update.
Capacity starts below slab level
Data centre demand is usually described through megawatts, leases, cloud regions, GPUs, or capital expenditure. Keller’s update shows the same demand reaching the ground layer: foundations, ground improvement, remediation, piling, retaining structures, and preparation for heavy technical plant.
That layer is easy to miss until it fails. A data centre site has to support large buildings, power rooms, cooling plant, generator yards, fuel systems, electrical yards, tanks, cable routes, and construction logistics. Former industrial land, constrained urban sites, and large campus plots can all bring ground risk that affects programme, cost, and design.
AI and hyperscale projects make those loads larger and timelines sharper. Heavier plant, denser electrical infrastructure, phased data halls, and larger campuses require early certainty on ground conditions. A piling delay or remediation problem can disrupt the sequence for structural works, MEP installation, equipment delivery, and commissioning. The data hall may be the visible product, but the delivery risk begins in the soil.
Keller’s strongest trading uplift is in North America, yet the European read-across is clear. The company said trading across Europe and the Middle East has been robust year to date, with projects in Scandinavia, central Europe, and the Middle East offsetting subdued conditions in western Europe. Those regions overlap with areas where data centre developers are chasing land, power, and cooler operating environments.
Specialist contractors become scarce capacity
The update also reflects a wider infrastructure competition. Data centres are now bidding for specialist construction capacity alongside highways, energy projects, industrial schemes, housing, and public infrastructure. Geotechnical contractors, MEP contractors, commissioning engineers, crane capacity, logistics teams, and specialist subcontractors all become part of the real capacity constraint.
Developers with secured power still need a credible ground strategy. That includes geotechnical investigation, remediation planning, foundation design, drainage, site access, heavy-load routes, and the interface between civil works and electrical infrastructure. Where sites are repurposed from industrial or defence uses, the uncertainty can be higher, and the need for early technical due diligence becomes sharper.
Keller’s order book suggests demand is flowing through the construction supply chain rather than staying confined to the operator and investor layer. A data centre pipeline only becomes buildable when enough specialist firms can deliver the packages required at the right time. If contractor capacity tightens, costs rise and programmes stretch, even when land and power are available.
Investors tracking data centre development increasingly need to look beyond site acquisition and grid capacity. Ground risk, contractor availability, remediation cost, foundation strategy, and sequencing discipline can all change the economics of a project. The earliest physical packages set the tone for the rest of the build.
Keller’s upgraded outlook is not a data centre capacity announcement, but it shows where the sector’s growth is landing. The cloud build-out has a foundations bill, and specialist ground engineering is now part of the infrastructure base supporting AI and digital capacity.
