Risk in data center development once flowed predictably: developers delivered facilities, contractors managed construction risk, and vendors supplied equipment against defined standards. AI-driven demand has disrupted that logic. Power, equipment and specialist labor are scarce, and the parties best able to control delays may also have the leverage to refuse responsibility for them or charge heavily for accepting it.

Exposure is therefore accumulating on developer-operators’ balance sheets. The solution is not purely contractual. It requires aligning contractual obligations with the parties, insurance programs and sources of capital capable of bearing them.

What is changing

1. Larger and more frequent delay remedies. Delivery provisions that once reflected modest rent abatements may now include daily liquidated damages, milestone penalties and termination rights tied to customer impacts. Contractors and suppliers may be asked to backstop those obligations.
2. Broader performance guarantees. Power availability, energization, commissioning, equipment lead times and operational-readiness dates are increasingly contractual commitments with significant financial consequences.
3. More property and casualty risk in indemnities. Developers are seeking greater protection from contractors and vendors for damage events historically addressed through project insurance. Builder’s risk coverage, consequential-damage exclusions, subrogation waivers and insurance limits are becoming central negotiation issues.

The economic driver is clear. For hyperscale and large neocloud tenants, a delayed facility can mean lost revenue, stranded capital, missed customer commitments and competitive disadvantage. They may seek to transfer substantial risk to developers. Aggressive demands can come from newer counterparties whose negotiating leverage exceeds their credit strength.

Owners and sponsors should test both sides of that asymmetry – not just the headline rent.

The liability-cap disconnect

A growing problem is the gap between customer-facing liability and the caps accepted by the parties delivering the project.

Consider a spec-built data center whose lease allows termination if completion and commissioning miss the scheduled date after a short grace period. The developer may face the loss of the entire lease and future rent, while the contractor offers limited delay recovery and critical equipment vendors offer none.

The conventional response is “flow-down” contracting: pass risk from the tenant to the developer, general contractor, EPC firm, equipment suppliers and commissioning providers. Necessary as that is, a project is not a chain. It is a stack of overlapping contracts that may respond to one event differently. Recovery can be limited by caps, exclusions, different triggers and procedural defenses.

For example, a primary transformer arrives months late. Utility energization slips, and the tenant’s service-commencement date is missed. The tenant’s remedy applies against the developer regardless of cause. The contractor invokes an excusable-delay provision. The manufacturer limits liability to repair, replacement or equipment value and excludes downstream delay and consequential loss. Insurance designed for physical damage may not respond to pure supply-chain or interconnection delay.

These are not necessarily drafting errors. Each counterparty may be acting reasonably within its bargain. The structural problem is that the measures do not match. Tenants may negotiate remedies worth tens of millions of dollars, while contractors cap liability at a percentage of contract value, equipment manufacturers at the affected equipment’s value, and design professionals at limits below the developer’s exposure. Vendors may exclude business interruption and delay damages altogether.

Addressing this disconnect requires evaluating liabilities and potential recoveries across the entire contractual stack, rather than reviewing each agreement in isolation.

Beyond flow-down: where does the risk go?

A developer’s exposure has three potential destinations: retention on the balance sheet, transfer through contracts, or transfer through insurance and capital markets. Each has limitations. Retention is constrained by financial capacity and risk appetite; contractual transfer by counterparty leverage and willingness to accept risk; and insurance transfer by coverage availability, triggers and policy terms.

One challenge is leverage inversion. In a market short of transformers, switchgear, generators and skilled trades, the party best able to control a delay may also be best able to refuse the risk or charge heavily for accepting it. Those that can demonstrate they can manage a defined risk, supported by appropriate security and insurance, may win work and command margin. The question is not who can be made to sign a clause, but who can genuinely hold the exposure.

Another challenge is insurability. Delay-in-start-up coverage generally responds only when delay results from insured physical damage. Pure schedule slippage, supply-chain disruption or a missed interconnection date without physical loss may fall outside the coverage trigger. Waiting periods and sublimits can further restrict recovery. A remedy may look acceptable on paper but remain unfunded in practice.

Contract drafting and insurance placement must therefore be designed together. Caps, triggers, indemnities and exclusions should be tested against the policy response and each counterparty’s financial capacity.

Looking ahead

The key question is whether risk has been allocated to the party best positioned to manage it – and whether residual exposure has been appropriately priced and funded. This reframes contractual risk allocation from a primarily legal exercise into a broader capital-allocation discipline.

Organizations should answer four questions:

• What is the largest uninsured delay exposure across the stack, and which failure could trigger it?
• If a critical supplier slipped two quarters, how much customer liability could be recovered, and how much would hit the balance sheet?
• Do delay remedies align with the insurance program’s triggers, limits and exclusions?
• Which risks are accepted because a powerful counterparty demanded them, rather than because the accepting party is best placed to manage them?

The leaders of the next phase may not negotiate the hardest clauses. They may be those who treat contract and insurance as one design, pricing residual risk deliberately rather than discovering it in a claim.

About this perspective

Marsh’s digital infrastructure contract advisory team works at the interface of contract drafting and risk transfer, stress-testing liability and delay provisions across the development stack and helping align them with insurance and capital solutions. For a confidential review of how a project’s contracts and program fit together, contact the team.