Why Contractors Are Losing Time (and Jobs) Waiting on Materials in the Data Center Boom

As nearly $700 billion is poured into data center construction, contractors racing to deliver these projects are hitting an unexpected bottleneck: receiving timely, accurate responses on the materials they need. And while much of the attention has focused on electrical infrastructure, data centers also rely heavily on complex cooling and water systems, meaning plumbing contractors are facing many of the same pressures.

Because critical procurement workflows are still running on manual, outdated processes, decision-making has become drastically slowed at the worst possible moment.

The data center surge is exposing cracks in the foundation of legacy processes, and old ways of working cannot meet new demand. For contractors, fragmented sales orders and delayed responses aren’t just causing inefficiencies—they’re impacting the ability to schedule crews, commit to timelines, and keep projects moving.

The interdependencies inherent to data center projects are deep, and the consequences of a misstep are dire: When materials constitute up to 70% of total project costs, any delay carries the risk of serious financial ramifications.

In addition to procurement delays, contractors are also managing growing administrative burdens on the back end, from reconciling invoices to tracking purchase orders across multiple suppliers. While volume increases, manual workflows create major blind spots for cash flow—limiting the working capital required to take on new projects.

Workflow automation has emerged as a critical lever for contractors and distributors navigating the pressures of accelerating project timelines and rising demand, and modernizing is no longer optional. To understand why, the sector must confront how data center growth is overwhelming manual workflows, where bottlenecks are compounding across the construction ecosystem, and how AI-driven automation is becoming the engine of efficiency and visibility.

The Limits of Manual Workflows

Looking ahead in 2026, 65% of contractors expect the available dollar value of data center projects to increase. This is playing out in real time as distributors are receiving double or even triple the inbound volume of sales orders. Plumbing supply is a prime example, with cooling infrastructure materials like piping, valves, and fittings seeing surging demand as data centers scale.

From the contractor’s perspective, this means sending out dozens of requests for quotes, often across a wide network of suppliers, while working against tight deadlines on active job sites. Not only are they sending more orders to keep up with their projects, but they often fire off requests in whichever format makes the most sense at the moment—whether that’s a PDF, a photo of a handwritten note, or text in the body of an email.

Each of these requests might include dozens or even hundreds of line items, many on tight deadlines, putting immense pressure on sales reps at distributors to decipher them quickly. For plumbing contractors in particular, these requests often have highly specific configurations for cooling and water systems, adding another layer of complexity to already time-sensitive orders.

Reading, interpreting, and entering each request into the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning software) are still manual processes for distributors, taking sales teams hours or even days to complete. For contractors, those delays compound quickly. Without timely responses, order confirmations stall, delivery timelines become uncertain, and the project schedule is put at risk.

Invoice processing adds another layer of friction. Contractors must manually match invoices against purchase orders and delivery confirmations, and rising order volumes only increase the risk of delayed payments and eroded visibility into real-time project costs.

Taken together, these inefficiencies slow down back-office workflows on both sides, putting project deadlines at risk and undermining the visibility both contractors and distributors need to run a healthy business.

Bottlenecks in the Construction Ecosystem

Visibility gaps extend beyond the back office. Order entry breakdowns put immense pressure on sales reps who already have limited bandwidth, and rising project volumes have exposed other critical gaps across the construction supply chain.

For contractors any delay is damaging, but uncertainty may be worse. When requests and communications move between contractors, distributors, and manufacturers, even minor slowdowns in quoting, inventory checks, and order processing can unravel planned timelines.

This is especially true for plumbing scopes tied to cooling systems, where installation must be tightly coordinated with electrical and mechanical work, and any slip in material coordination ripples across the entire schedule.

Even when materials are successfully ordered, contractors rarely have a clear, real-time view into whether those orders are on track. Without consistent updates from suppliers, teams are left reconciling emails, spreadsheets, and PDFs to piece together whether pricing or delivery timelines have changed.

Across dozens of open requests at any given time, those information gaps add up to significant schedule risk. The result is reactive decision-making: adjusting schedules, reallocating crews, or paying premium prices to expedite orders after the damage is already done.

Just last year, the construction industry required 439,000 additional workers. That number has now climbed to 499,000 for 2026 as construction spending increases. With the industry already squeezed for hands, every hour spent on manual order processing creates bottlenecks that hinder entire projects and send costs soaring.

Any solution that adds coordination congestion on top of an already stretched workforce only deepens the problem—what distributors and contractors need is visibility, simplicity, and speed.

Speeding Workflows with AI Automation

In construction, inputs are rarely standardized. Distributors, contractors, and manufacturers often describe the same product in entirely different ways, and traditional software has never been able to reconcile those differences. At today's volumes, requiring human interpretation on every line of every sales order simply doesn't scale.

AI solutions give distribution sales teams the ability to analyze incoming emails and attachments regardless of format, automatically matching them to the right products and populating orders directly into the ERP. When models are trained to parse messy, inconsistent inputs and understand context regardless of how a product is described, unstructured data becomes a clean, automated workflow—giving sales reps the ability to respond to contractors faster than ever before.

On the contractor side, that speed has a direct impact on how work gets done. Quicker, more accurate order processing means fewer errors, fewer incorrect shipments, and fewer costly returns that stall progress on-site. In plumbing-heavy scopes, where an incorrect fitting or delayed component can hold up system installation entirely, that accuracy is not just an efficiency gain. It is a project risk mitigation tool.

Boosting Cash Flow Visibility

Growing project complexity demands more than speed at the point of order entry. Contractors need continuous visibility into what happens after an order is placed.

Today, that visibility is fragmented. Purchase orders, delivery updates, and invoices live in different systems or arrive through different channels, making it difficult to pin down the true status of any given order.

AI workflow automation helps bridge this gap by connecting these workflows and validating them in real time. Order acknowledgments and supplier update emails can be automatically analyzed and matched against purchase orders, helping contractor teams confirm what was ordered and proactively catch any changes, errors, or uncommunicated delays.

This same level of visibility can extend into accounts payable workflows with automation. Instead of manually processing invoices, AI tools can extract, match, and validate invoice data, while also tracking approval status and payment timelines across the pipeline.

For contractors, this creates a much clearer view of cash flow without all the error-prone manual data entry. With real-time insight into outstanding invoices, upcoming payments, and exceptions that need attention, teams can better forecast costs, capture early payment discounts, and avoid unfortunate surprises that put pressure on already tight project margins. 

These capabilities give contractors a real-time view of order status and financial obligations, freeing teams from chasing down updates and enabling proactive project management instead of reactive damage control.

Looking Ahead 

Manual data entry has always been an inefficiency, but at today's project volumes it is now a competitive liability. As more companies automate, those that don’t will become the weakest link in the construction supply chain.

For contractors, the practical stakes are clear: securing materials quickly, tracking order status in real time, and managing associated financial workflows has become the baseline for staying competitive on modern data center builds.

With over $3 trillion in global spending over the next five years flowing into data center expansion, the gap between connected and disconnected workflows will only widen. Contractors who align with responsive, technology-enabled partners and adopt tools that provide visibility across materials and payments will be better positioned to win work, control costs, and deliver on time. Those who wait will find themselves playing catch-up in a market that has already moved on.