AI Infrastructure / Data Center Construction Project Manager Simulation — Microsoft

The scenario

Microsoft's Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin campus runs three production datacenter halls today and has a fourth, DCX-04, sitting as a powered shell since the 2024 base-building package closed out. The shell was designed in the air-cooled era: raised floor, hot-aisle containment, chilled-water units at the perimeter. The workload it now has to hold is nothing like that. A 60MW block of NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 racks draws roughly 132kW per rack and rejects most of that heat into water, not air, which means the hall has to be re-plumbed with a direct-to-chip secondary loop, coolant distribution units, and leak detection before a single GPU is racked. The capacity behind DCX-04 is already sold. AI Platform Capacity Planning committed the block to a customer whose contract carries capacity penalties from the handover date forward, and that date is Day 27. Three chains have to converge on it and none of them are fully yours. We Energies will energize the new 138kV service inside a nine-day window they scheduled around their own system work, not around yours. Jacobs, the third-party commissioning authority, will not sign a Level 5 integrated systems test on a loop that has not passed Level 4. And the first GB200 convoy has already slipped once. You are the senior project manager on a $385.0M fit-out with a general contractor who has built eleven of these halls, an electrical subcontractor at 130 craft, and a campus operations organization whose only instruction to you is that their three live halls do not blink. Your job is to make the utility, the water, and the hardware arrive in the one order that works, on a date nobody will move for you.

What you'll do as the project manager

• →Achieve tenant capacity handover of all 60MW in DCX-04 on Day 27 with zero capacity-penalty days
• →Complete Level 1 through Level 5 commissioning on the electrical and liquid-cooling systems with a Jacobs-signed integrated systems test before handover
• →Energize the new 138kV service inside the nine-day We Energies window without a second window request
• →Deliver within the $385.0M capital authorization, holding change orders under the $7.7M formal change-request threshold
• →Rack, power, and burn-in 456 GB200 NVL72 racks across 12 rows with no more than 2% of racks held on punch at handover

Project management skills you'll build

The challenges you'll navigate

• •The nine-day We Energies energization window opening Day 16 is the single hardest constraint on the project, and the pre-energization checklist has open items with no named owner
• •The Vertiv coolant distribution units are the long pole on the mechanical side; the secondary loop cannot be filled, flushed, or leak-tested until they land and are set
• •The first GB200 convoy has already moved once, and rack delivery, energization, and freight access all compete for the same north corridor
• •Jacobs has not written liquid-cooling commissioning scripts before at this campus and is adapting air-cooled scripts from DCX-02
• •Campus Critical Operations has veto influence over any switching that touches the medium-voltage ring feeding the three live production halls

Technology & stakeholders

You'll manage 7 stakeholders, including Rosalind Villalobos (VP, Datacenter Capital Delivery), Aaron Feldkamp (Director, AI Platform Capacity Planning), Curt Sobieski (General Superintendent, Holder Construction), and more.

What you'll walk away with

A verified, shareable record of a completed enterprise project — plus the PMO deliverables you produced along the way (charter, project plan, SteerCo deck, closure document). It's real, demonstrable project management experience you can put on your resume and speak to in interviews.

Frequently asked questions

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