Photo courtesy of Amazon
AWS investments will create at least 1,000 jobs and support new educational trainings in the Magnolia State.
When Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced in January that it intended to make a $10 billion investment in Madison County, Miss., to build two data center campuses by mid-2027, Mississippi contractors were already on the job.
"Edmond Turnage of Southern Rock [Construction in Brandon] and Jeff Cox with Birdsong [Construction in Clinton] helped make things happen to help Mississippi shine in bringing the AWS project out of the ground," said Chad Wages of Wages Civil LLC in Canton.
Wages worked alongside both companies last fall when work began on the 927-acre Madison County Megasite in Canton, and the second, 786-acre AWS site in Ridgeland, located along the county's southern tip.
"The first building is scheduled to come online this January," Ed Gardner, vice president of business and economic development for Entergy Mississippi, told the Magnolia Tribune. "That's incredibly fast in our business."
AWS is not being financially assisted by the state in the construction phase, but when Gov. Tate Reeves asked the company to consider using Mississippi contractors, Amazon complied.
"Lots of Mississippi companies are taking part in the building process," said Joey Deason, executive director of the Madison County Economic Development Authority (MCEDA). "Out of state firms are actively working on hiring local Mississippians for work, as well as Mississippi subcontractors."
In addition to Southern Rock, Birdsong and Wages Civil, other contractors working on the two AWS sites include Brasfield & Gorrie, Canton Concrete, Delta Industries, Headwaters Inc., Hemphill Construction, Malouf Construction, MMC, Neel-Schaffer, Puckett Machinery, Shackelford Construction, Site Support Group, Sunbelt Rentals, United Rentals, Waggoner Engineering and WGK Engineering.
Yates Construction, based in Philadelphia, Miss., is one of three general contractors selected by AWS through a bidding process. The other two are Gray Construction in Lexington, Ky., and Haskell Construction, located in Jacksonville, Fla.
"We welcome in other people," explained Lloyd Munn, executive director of Associated General Contractors (AGC) of Mississippi. "We never discourage someone from out of state because we have contractors from Mississippi that build projects all over the United States. That's the fair trade of it. But they hire local people to do the work."
With the influx of workers, though, Munn expressed concerns about sufficient housing "and all that goes with it."
"A rising tide floats everybody's boat, so there's not a downside [to] a project like this because most of the money is spent on our local people and in our local economy," he noted.
Reeves has said that AWS will need at least 6,000 construction workers — and possibly more than double that number — to finish the massive construction effort.
Among the jobs needed are those from the skilled trades, such as electricians, fiber-optic experts and HVAC technicians.
Lee Nations, president and CEO of Associated Builders and Contractors Mississippi (ABC), said the construction industry is "ecstatic" that AWS has decided to make and continue such a big investment in central Mississippi.
"While we know this will demand a large volume of skilled workers and tradespeople, it's a problem the industry is continuing to address," he said. "Unfortunately, there's no ‘quick fix' to fix the trades gap, but Mississippi contractors continue to work tirelessly to address this gap with the assistance of establishments like Build Mississippi and AccelerateMS."
Brent Bean, president of the Mississippi Construction Education Foundation (MCEF), which administers Build Mississippi, said he is happy the state and AWS leaders did a great job of planning in advance.
"Our foundation, along with other workforce development leaders from AccelerateMS, community colleges, and high schools from the central Mississippi area have been meeting and working with AWS for months to ensure we'd have the workforce needed to handle the construction of the AWS data centers and have a pipeline of trained individuals ready to fill the positions of the data centers upon their completion and opening," Bean noted.
Working Together to Keep AWS Projects On Schedule
In the meantime, contractors at the site are united in meeting the AWS production schedules, the Tribune reported Sept. 15.
For instance, a Birdsong Construction LinkedIn post in mid-August highlighted completion of a sizable building pad made up of more than 15,000 tons of crushed limestone.
"We've assisted with constructing five building pads at the Madison County Mega Site and are now working on four building pads at the Ridgeland campus," Wages told the local news source in late August. "We're trying to complete those four by the end of September to middle of October to keep AWS moving on schedule."
Wages emphasized the AWS challenge has been all about keeping to the schedule and thinking out of the box on how to keep things moving.
"With a project of this magnitude, there's always a hiccup … hiding around the corner," he said. "You have to be quick on your feet, find a solution, just keep things moving. Nothing out of the ordinary has occurred that we haven't experienced before, but there's a lot more moving pieces at one time."
The AWS facilities will take up 1,713 acres of land in two separate areas of Madison County, north of Jackson.
One site is located on the remaining 927 acres of the megasite in the center of the county, off Mississippi Highway 22 and Nissan Parkway in Canton. An Amazon distribution center is the business park's anchor tenant, and Clark Beverage Co. is also being built there, according to the Magnolia Tribune.
In total, that site will include approximately 16 buildings between 200,000 and 300,000 sq. ft. of space.
The second AWS facility is on an additional 786 acres in nearby Ridgeland, located along the southern tip of Madison County near Tougaloo College, at the corner of Highland Colony Parkway and West County Line Road.
AWS is purchasing construction labor, materials, and services from U.S. supply chains to support both new data centers.
AWS Investment Is Largest in Mississippi's History
The AWS data center campuses in Madison County represent the greatest singular investment in Mississippi.
Since 2011, AWS has invested more than $108 billion in its infrastructure across the U.S. to support all kinds of customers and industries in their digital transformation, said Roger Wehner, the AWS director of economic development.
"Building on this, we're excited to expand our operations into Mississippi through this planned $10 billion investment, which will tap into the burgeoning tech sector across the state to create new, well-paying jobs and boost the state's Gross Domestic Product each year," he continued. "We look forward to delivering new workforce development opportunities and educational programs that support the next generation of talent across the Magnolia State."
Amazon's commitment includes the creation of at least 1,000 jobs paying an annual average wage of $80,000. The tech and retail giant said its commitment will generate a ripple effect across the Mississippi economy, accelerating productivity gains, empowering digital transformation, upskilling the workforce and creating other employment opportunities.
Madison County itself has experienced 14.6 percent growth in the last decade, the Tribune reported, and the megasite's regional population draw is 592,294 people.
Amazon ranks second on the Fortune 500 list, only behind Wal-Mart, and AWS is its fastest-growing and most profitable segment.
Adam Selipsky, a former CEO of AWS, wrote in 2023 that the company "envisioned a world where any person with a computer, an internet connection, and an idea could access the same advanced technology as the world's largest enterprises or most well-funded research institutes.
"This new way of thinking gave birth to a never-before-seen technology we all now know as ‘cloud computing.' Today, AWS is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud, offering more than 240 fully featured services from our global network of data centers. Our infrastructure delivers the most reliable, secure, and scalable computing technology to millions of customers, 24 hours a day."
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