Every project DC Spotter tracks sits on one rung of this ladder. The stages are defined by verifiable events in public records, not by press releases.
The project exists only as market chatter: a land broker's whisper, a job posting, an unusual grid enquiry. Nothing is filed yet. Most rumours die here; the interesting ones leave a paper trail within months.
The developer controls a site, through purchase, option agreement or long lease. In most European countries this surfaces in land registries or notarial records long before any announcement. Land deals for data centres are almost never press-released.
Typical signal: land registry transaction, a new SPV taking title.
A planning or environmental application is filed with the local authority: outline or full planning in the UK and Ireland, VIA screening in Italy, UVP in Germany, ICPE in France. This is the first moment a project's true scale (site area, IT load, generator count) becomes public.
Typical timeline to decision: 6 to 24 months depending on country and authority.
Consent is granted, sometimes with conditions on noise, water, heat reuse or grid usage. Approval does not mean construction: many approved projects wait years for power or financing.
The project holds a firm grid connection agreement or shows up in a transmission operator's connection queue with a confirmed date. In power-constrained markets such as Dublin, Frankfurt and Amsterdam, this stage, not planning, is the real gate.
Typical signal: TSO connection register entries, substation works applications.
Groundworks begin. Cranes and concrete are hard to hide: construction shows up in satellite imagery, contractor awards and temporary works applications well before topping-out photos.
Typical build time for a first phase: 18 to 30 months.
The shell is complete and the expensive part begins: power trains, cooling, racks. Fit-out is where hiring for site engineers and commissioning managers spikes in job postings.
The facility serves customers. In our records a project is live only when there is operator confirmation or equivalent primary evidence, not marketing copy.
Most projects that fail do so between stages 3 and 5: planning refused, community opposition, or a grid queue that never clears. That gap is exactly where DC Spotter watches hardest.