Dive Brief:
- Amid the surge of advanced technology investment and construction in the U.S. and globally, project and cost management advisory firm Cumming Group has launched a new division targeting the sector.
- New York City-based Cumming has established a global Advanced Technologies business, which will help the firm support clients delivering high-tech facilities around the world, according to an announcement sent to Construction Dive.
- The new unit will bring together Cumming’s experts in its data center and research and manufacturing teams, with more than 600 specialists working on the team.
Dive Insight:
Cumming Group flagged the red-hot data center segment alongside the historic reshoring effort in advanced manufacturing as the impetus for the launch. The move follows Cumming Group’s merger with WWPS, a semiconductor advisory firm, in April 2025.
Per the announcement, the division will be led by:
- Kevin Klein, who previously held senior life sciences leadership roles at general contractor McCarthy and biotech firm Amgen.
- Paul Logan, PCM Consulting’s cofounder, which grew to more than 100 team members that supported advanced technology clients before it was acquired by Cumming Group in 2023.
- Jeff Leeper, who held global leadership roles at tech giant Microsoft’s data center arm and Intel.
- Jeff Grillo, who held global leadership roles at Intel and co-founded World Wide Professional Services before last year’s merger with Cumming.
- Peter Millett, who led tech research and advisory firm ISG’s hyperscale business.
Cumming Group said its current projects include data centers, life science research facilities, manufacturing builds, the world’s largest semiconductor facility, the U.K.’s largest electric vehicle battery factory, and the Flight Electronic Integration Facility at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, California.
“We are the biggest pure play in the U.S., but our market share is still relatively small, and therefore we're always taking market share,” Stephen Coulthard, chief business officer for Cumming Group, told Construction Dive. “We're growing quicker than the market,” Coulthard said.
Data centers in particular have been one of the only bright spots in an otherwise languishing construction industry, though some metrics in the sector softened late last year.
Coulthard told Construction Dive that the company has been piloting the new division since the beginning of the year, and it’s already yielded results — the alignment has helped the firm land a significant microprocessor project and data center campuses for work.
“It just makes sure that we’ve got all our best people working together, it’s almost as simple as that,” Coulthard said.
General contractors have also made similar moves to capitalize on demand for mission critical and other tech-focused construction. PCL Construction, for example, created its Manufacturing Center of Excellence in January 2025, which brings its manufacturing experts together under one integrated team. One month later, general contractor Skanska USA established Skanska Advanced Technology, which specializes in high-tech and semiconductor manufacturing.
Going forward, Coulthard expects, based on market projections from management consultant firms such as FMI Corp., for the data center market to grow 20% to 30% annually. He ballparked the financial impact of the firm’s data center and advanced manufacturing business to 25% of its $700 million in revenue in 2025, or approximately $175 million.
