Large Airport, Hospital & Data Center Projects Support Overall Construction Activity

Although the full potential impact of tariffs on the cost of construction materials is still to be determined, the new construction projects showed steady year-over-year growth through March 2025. Total construction spending through the first three months of the year was down slightly from Feb. 2025 at $2,196.1 billion but remained +2.9% above March 2024 spending levels.  And over the past three months, spending on mega-projects doesn't appear to have slowed down much at all.

As has been the case in recent years, spending on mega-projects often props up overall construction data, and that is again the case. EM’s editors were able to locate no less than 15 mega-projects valued at $1 billion or more that entered the pipeline since March. Many of these jobs were in three project categories: airports, hospitals and data centers.

Airports

Electrical Marketing’s editors found spending on airport construction to be particularly robust with 10 projects in the pipeline accounting for $8.2 billion in combined total contract value. The largest of these projects is the planned $2.2-billion expansion of the Palm Springs International Airport now in the planning stages. Other notable airport projects are the $1.8-billion John Glenn Columbus Airport that broke ground in Feb. 2025; the $1.6-billion plan for a new main terminal at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport; and the $1.1-billion renovation of Terminal E at Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers, FL, that broke ground in March.

Hospitals

Construction of hospitals, clinics and related medical facilities appears to be particularly robust, and over the past three months, EM staffers logged roughly $4 billion in new projects in the planning stage or underway. The $1.5-billion Kaiser Permanente Railyards Campus in Sacramento, CA, that broke ground in March dwarfs most of the other hospital projects in the table below, but the $880-million Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, PA, that broke ground this month and the $650-million Mercy Hospital now underway in the St. Louis suburb of Wentzville, MO, are sizeable jobs as well.

Data centers

No analysis of megaprojects in the pipeline would be complete without mention of data centers, and EM located no less than $3.5 billion in new projects now in the pipeline since March 2025. The largest of these is the Realty Data Center campus in Dulles, VA, with five data centers, and the $900-million Powhatan Data Center campus in Powhatan, VA.
When you think about active construction markets, it’s easy to focus on hot spots like Dallas, Houston or Austin, TX; southwest Florida or Miami, FL, the Carolinas or New York. But one smaller market area that has impressed EM’s editors with the amount of construction activity over the past year or two is Indianapolis, IN.  A post at www.fox59.com said there’s $9 billion dollars in construction investment either in the pipeline or underway in Indianapolis’ downtown. Two of these projects in the city are in EM’s picks for the largest mega-projects now in the pipeline: the $571-million Signia Hotel now being built; and the $187-million Purdue University Academic Success Building that broke ground in April. 

When you figure that electrical work typically accounts for an estimated 10% of a construction job, there’s lots of potential in these mega-projects for electrical manufacturers, distributors, independent reps, electrical contractors and other electrical professionals.