Rodents. Dust and overgrown brush. Faulty irrigation. You wouldn’t want these issues in your home, and you certainly don’t want them in your data center.

Yet, while everyone focuses on fixing power outages and weighing up energy-usage risks, these innocuous building maintenance issues are flying under the radar. They could prove catastrophic blind spots.

Despite construction spending slowing down elsewhere, the data center boom is in full swing. From fully operational to construction-approved, there are more than 3,000 sites across the US. That number climbs every week and shows no signs of slowing.

With greater scale, though, come bigger setbacks. As the buildout continues to gain momentum, the big question on investors' and operators’ minds has been: can the power grids keep up? But they are forgetting a far simpler one: can the buildings?

Right now, demand for data centers is so high that investors are throwing cash at getting sites built as quickly as possible. That haste is a breeding ground for facilities management troubles that could create huge issues in the future, like mislaid irrigation lines.

Since these facilities, in their current form at least, are a relatively new phenomenon, the teams behind them know less about what's needed to make them a success. Building and site managers, too, don't tend to have as much experience managing them. Generally, everyone involved is underprepared for how maintenance issues can stack on top of each other with serious consequences for a data center's operational efficiency.

I’ve seen it time and time again: industrial and commercial units that quickly fall into disrepair as basic maintenance needs aren’t met, posing a serious risk to the sites themselves.

Something as simple as the build-up of dry leaves can be particularly dangerous in wildfire-prone areas, for example. Unmanaged trees and overgrown brush can obstruct HVAC airways, too. And in hotter states, like Texas – which currently has more than 300 active data centers – these seemingly small problems can quickly spin out of control.

Data center fires are already a problem, responsible for more than 50 percent of the $800 million in losses and claims related to the AI infrastructure buildout across North America. In fact, nearly 80 percent of all data centers globally are at acute risk from extreme weather conditions, including wildfires and floods.

In flood-prone areas, like Virginia, faulty irrigation systems can also exacerbate risk. And if a data center’s wires are a foot underwater, then all the talk about how the site will access enough power falls away into insignificance.

Building maintenance risks aren’t just limited to natural disasters, either. Rodents love warm environments, and data centers offer plenty of ideal nesting spots. A rat infestation gnawing through cable fiber trunks, wire insulation, and plastic conduits can easily cause serious outages and major delays.

These challenges might sound mundane, but maintenance issues compound if they're not kept under control. And the reality is that firms are focusing on connecting to the grid so much that these other important factors in a data center's success are falling by the wayside. Considering the amount of money being poured into this sector right now, that could have serious financial ramifications.

Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft alone invested a staggering $400 billion in 2025 – a figure that is sure to increase again this year. With so much cash on the line, the operational success of these sites is not optional. It is expected. Perhaps even non-negotiable, as far as US GDP is concerned.

Just an hour of unexpected downtime can cost a business $540,000, and for large enterprises the total cost can climb into the millions. Multiply that across the US' 3,000 data centers, and the knock-on effects could be significant.

As the demand for AI grows, the stakes keep rising – and with data centers so critical to this technology, no risk can go underappreciated. Site managers, investors, AI firms, and so on cannot wait until rats chew through critical cables, or fires and floods shut down centers. They must weigh up all the risks that could affect site output and performance, or critical failures may be just around the corner.