The build takes 18 months. The approvals take four years.
PowerPMIS puts every requirement your project has to satisfy — zoning, environmental, utility, lender, tenant — into one register tied to your construction schedule. You see what stands between today and groundbreaking, who owns it, and which requirements you can push back on.
Houses, factories, towers, transit, data centers. Same bottleneck, same fix.Elapsed time on a typical large project, from site control to opening
Where the time actually goes
Construction productivity has been flat since the 1970s. The reason isn't concrete or labor. It's the layers of process that were added over decades and never subtracted — and the fact that nobody keeps the whole requirement set in one place.
One register. Every requirement. On the schedule.
Today a project's requirements live in a code consultant's binder, an expediter's tracker, a utility portal, a lender's checklist and a lease exhibit. None of them talk to each other, so no one can answer the two questions that matter: what still blocks us, and which requirements cost more time than they earn.
Capture with provenance
Every requirement is recorded with its source clause, the trigger that applies it to your project, the evidence it needs, an owner and a deadline.
Put approvals on the critical path
Permits, reviews and interconnection steps become scheduled activities with predecessors, so float and slippage show up where they really happen.
Flag what you can challenge
Duplicate studies requested by two agencies, conflicting definitions, requirements that trace to no outcome — surfaced for consolidation, waiver or pushback.
Learn from every project
Observed durations flow back into jurisdiction playbooks, so the next project in that county starts with better estimates.
| Requirement | Source | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Special exception hearing — notice published 14 days prior | County code §15-4.2 | Land-use counsel | Blocks filing |
| Traffic impact study | Site plan regs §7.1 | Civil | Also required by utility — consolidate |
| Large-load capacity study, 50 MW+ | Utility tariff Sched. LL | Owner | Blocks equipment order |
| Section 404 nationwide permit verification | 33 CFR 330 | Environmental | Satisfied — evidence attached |
| Air permit — synthetic minor, generator fleet | State DEQ 9VAC5-80 | Air consultant | Reopens on density change |
| Lender condition precedent — appeal period expired | Loan agreement §4.1(c) | Owner | Satisfied |
Estimate it from public evidence before you bid it.
The same register carries the cost side. Every figure traces to a published source or to your own closeouts; nothing is a black box.
Benchmarks you can cite
Cost per watt and per MW by scope (shell and core, powered shell, turnkey, AI-ready), build months, equipment lead times and prevailing wages, each row with its publisher and link. Secondary figures are marked for verification.
Bottom-up, not just $/MW
Quantities per IT MW, per square foot and per acre for every UniFormat element, priced at installed unit rates with a location factor, so a Class 4 estimate shows generators, UPS, chillers and sitework as lines you can argue with.
Your WBS, mapped
Upload a budget, bid tab or closeout in your own layout. Each line is matched to a standard element you confirm, so it compares like for like and your bids are leveled against the benchmark, with unrealistic bids flagged.
Your actuals stay yours
Closeouts feed your private library. Only anonymized, aggregated bands reach the cross-owner pool: dimensions kept (size band, region, cooling, delivery), identifiers dropped, never fewer than three projects from two owners.
Public benchmark sources include Turner & Townsend, JLL, Cushman & Wakefield, Davis-Bacon wage determinations and county land-use records. Estimate classes follow ASTM E2516.
Start with the entitlement gate
A fixed-fee engagement, delivered in two to three weeks, that builds the register for one live project and hands you the approval critical path. It stands on its own. If you continue into permitting and construction, the register is already loaded.
Half at kickoff, half on delivery.
Half at kickoff, half on delivery.
Capped. Half at kickoff, half on delivery.
What you get
- Every requirement sourced, sequenced and owned — local, state, federal, utility, lender, tenant, incentive
- The approval critical path merged with your P6 or MS Project schedule
- A list of duplicate, conflicting and challengeable requirements with a pushback plan
- Jurisdiction playbook: hearing calendar, notice rules, shot-clock eligibility, moratorium watch
- Unlimited users on the project — GC, design team, expediter, counsel, lender's consultant
- Weekly "what blocks us" export for owner meetings
- Optional: a Class 4 cost estimate by UniFormat element against public benchmarks, and bid leveling at buyout
Jurisdictions and utilities not yet in PowerPMIS carry a one-time onboarding fee of $5–10K, waived once that authority has been loaded. Agency filing fees are pass-through.
Book a requirements auditJurisdiction guides
How approvals work, market by market, from public sources: zoning path, hearings, notice rules, moratorium status and typical durations.
The evidence
We publish our sources. Every number on this page traces to one of these.
- JLL, Global Data Center Outlook 2026 — 18-month build, four-plus years to power, equipment lead times
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up 2026 — median 61 months from interconnection request to operation
- Council on Environmental Quality, EIS Timeline Report, Jan 2025 — median 2.2 years to a final EIS
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 2026 Nationwide Permit rule — 55-day vs 253-day Section 404 averages
- Virginia Business, Prince William Digital Gateway — 37-building campus rezoning voided over defective hearing notices, project abandoned April 2026
- Montgomery County, MD, 18-month data center moratorium — applied to pending applications
- Federal Permitting Council, first data center under FAST-41 — April 2026
- Becker, Florida HB 803 — permit shot clocks with fee penalties and deemed approval
Talk to the PowerPMIS team
Thirty minutes. Bring one live project — the parcel, the program and where it sits in approvals — and we'll tell you what the entitlement gate would surface for it.
Book a requirements auditPrefer email? hello@powerpmis.com
Not ready to book?
Get the two-page brief, Why your project will take four years — and what to do about it, plus one note a month on permitting and entitlement timelines. No sales sequence.