Summary
- Balfour Beatty contracted around $350m of US data-centre orders in the first half of 2026.
- A further roughly $1bn of awarded data-centre work is expected to enter contract over the next 12 months.
- UK power transmission is simultaneously driving growth in the contractor’s support-services business.
Balfour Beatty has contracted around $350m of new US data-centre orders and says a further $1bn of awarded work is expected to enter contract over the next 12 months, exposing the scale of digital-infrastructure demand now flowing into major construction groups.
Balfour Beatty disclosed the figures in its half-year results for the period ended 26 June 2026. The contracted data-centre orders are located across the US Northwest and Mid-Atlantic regions.
The contractor reported group revenue, including joint ventures and associates, of £5.56bn in the first half, up from £5.15bn a year earlier. Its order book stood at £22.9bn.
Underlying profit from operations in the earnings-based businesses rose to £153m from £108m. The group attributed the improvement to stronger support services, growth in US Buildings, and a reduced loss in US Civils.
Data centres are part of a broader US Buildings strategy weighted towards institutional, public-sector, and technology-driven work. Balfour Beatty said strong demand in specialist markets had helped offset weaker conditions in conventional commercial and residential construction.
The additional $1bn of data-centre work that has been awarded but is not yet contracted indicates that the sector could become a larger contributor to the buildings order book as those projects convert over the coming year.
The same results also show the other side of the data-centre capacity equation: electricity infrastructure. Balfour Beatty’s Support Services revenue rose 10% to £727m, with growth driven by power transmission activity, while underlying profit from operations in the division rose 43% to £66m.
The group is working across major National Grid and Scottish network programmes, including Bramford to Twinstead, Eastern Green Link 2 cabling, substation projects, and the East Coast 400kV Upgrade. It also secured a £325m contract for the Netherton Hub in Aberdeenshire and a £121m National Grid contract for an extension to Bramford 400kV substation.
Those projects are not being built solely for data centres, but they illustrate the scale of network construction taking place as the UK electricity system accommodates new generation, electrification, and large sources of demand.
For data-centre developers, the overlap is increasingly direct. New campuses cannot be delivered without substations, high-voltage equipment, cabling, civil works, and wider transmission and distribution investment. The same contractor base may therefore benefit both from construction of facilities and from expansion of the networks required to power them.
That creates a different risk profile from a conventional commercial-property cycle. Demand may be strong, but delivery depends on specialised trades, equipment lead times, network programmes, and disciplined project selection. Balfour Beatty said it continues to apply a selective bidding approach intended to maintain an appropriate balance of return and risk.
The approach is particularly relevant to data-centre construction, where project sizes have risen quickly and accelerated AI programmes can create pressure to shorten delivery schedules. Fixed-price exposure, late design changes, equipment delays, and commissioning problems can turn high revenue growth into poor contractor economics if risk is not controlled.
Balfour Beatty’s first-half figures show that the company is seeing demand on both sides of the power meter. In the US, data-centre buildings are adding to the order pipeline. In the UK, major transmission programmes are helping lift support-services revenue and profit.
The connection between the two is likely to become closer as data-centre development moves further into the infrastructure market. Securing a site and a customer is only part of the programme; delivering the electrical networks, substations, and M&E systems required to energise capacity is becoming an equally important part of the construction opportunity.
