Scaling Owner-Side Controls Across 15 Mission-Critical Data Center Projects

ABOUT ROWAN DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE

Rowan Digital Infrastructure develops and operates mission-critical data centers for large-scale cloud providers, often referred to in the industry as hyperscalers.
The company operates on the owner's side. They acquire land, manage permitting and preconstruction, hire general contractors, and oversee schedules throughout construction.

As Bryan Marston, Project Scheduler, explains:

“We’ll hire the GCs to build these and then we manage their schedules. We report to the hyperscalers.”

Today, Rowan is managing roughly 15 active data center projects. Each schedule contains between 5,000 and 15,000 activities.

At that scale, schedule oversight cannot rely on manual review. It has to be structured, consistent, and repeatable.

CHALLENGE

Auditing Massive Schedules as an Owner

Bryan came to Rowan from the contractor side. His role shifted significantly once his own view shifted.

“From the owner’s perspective, I’m a scheduling auditor. I’m looking at a schedule given to us and assessing its quality, its accuracy, and assigning a level of confidence.”

That meant reviewing enormous schedules across a growing portfolio. Updates came in weekly or biweekly. Executives and hyperscalers expected clear answers.
The workload quickly became unsustainable.

“There’s no way that one person could do all that analysis weekly. It’s impossible.”

Manual review simply did not scale with the company’s growth.

The Consistency Problem

Bryan could manually review schedules. He could look at logic, float, and the critical path. But there was one major issue: consistency. Without a standardized rubric, schedule quality came down to experience and instinct.

“If I didn’t have a rubric like this or a score, it would just be kind of a gut feeling, and it wouldn’t really be consistent.”

For an owner managing multiple contractors, gut feel was not enough. Rowan needed a defensible, repeatable way to measure schedule quality across every project.

THE SOLUTION

Redefining Owner-Side Schedule Control at Hyperscale

"Within two hours of reviewing the SmartPM website, I was confident in its capabilities to improve our scheduling processes and practices. I quickly approached my boss about purchasing this tool and was given immediate approval." 

To support its growing portfolio, Rowan needed more than incremental improvements. The team needed a structured system that could evaluate schedule quality, surface risk, and scale across dozens of complex updates each month. SmartPM became that system.

1) Quality Grade and Rubric

The quality grade quickly became one of the most valuable features for Rowan.

“The quality grade and the quality metrics, that has been a huge help.”

Instead of manually filtering activities and building reports from scratch, Bryan could generate a complete quality review in minutes.

“It would take me an entire day to put together a report like that, and now it takes five minutes.”

He now exports the report and sends it directly to the contractor.

“I just export that, send it off to the GC and say, ‘Fix these main issues.’ It just saves so much time.”

Rowan established an internal quality benchmark so that contractors now understand the standard. Expectations are clear and consistent across the portfolio.  Several of the GC’s Rowan works with use SmartPM themselves, making the entire relationship more collaborative and amiable.

2) Analyzing Massive Schedules at Scale

SmartPM made it possible to routinely analyze extremely detailed schedules across 15 projects.

“It allows you to analyze these massive detailed schedules and multiple of them every week. You wouldn’t be able to do that routinely without this program.”

Instead of rebuilding the same analysis each week, Bryan can review trends, identify risk, and move forward.

The scale that once felt overwhelming became manageable.

3) Executive Reporting That Drives Decisions

Before SmartPM, month-end reporting was largely narrative. Updates were verbal. Trends were difficult to demonstrate.

“We went from nothing but words to trend graphs and metrics in our month-end reports.”

Now Rowan presents clear, historical data including:

• End date movement over time
• Hit rate metrics
• Compression trends
• Acceleration progress

“The amount of reporting capabilities is insane. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Executive conversations shifted. Instead of explaining what happened, the team now focuses on what to do next. Acceleration is a core priority for Rowan. Delivering earlier creates value for hyperscalers and protects financial commitments.

SmartPM did not stay confined to the scheduling function.

Bryan trained more than 20 internal team members across project management, construction directors, commissioning, procurement, finance, and executive leadership.

“SmartPM provided eight training sessions, and by the end I was very confident using the software. I’ve already trained 20 people in my company how to use it.”

Instead of flipping through 150-page schedule PDFs, teams can filter, search, and analyze directly inside the platform. Operations and Project Teams that work directly with schedules and trade management find SmartPM significantly easier to read and more actionable than PDF Gantt charts.

Schedule intelligence became accessible across the organization.

THE RESULTS
From Overwhelming to Scalable

Time Savings That Changed the Equation

For Bryan, the most immediate impact was time.

What once required a full day of analysis now takes minutes. More importantly, the team can manage 10 to 15 large projects without expanding the scheduling department.

“Because of SmartPM, I was able to handle 10 to 15 jobs by myself. That almost certainly wouldn’t have been possible without it.”

On a Personal Level

The impact goes beyond efficiency. SmartPM has made the workload more manageable and significantly reduced day-to-day stress.

“I’m not working weekends or putting in 60-hour weeks. The workday is steady. When something urgent comes up, I can handle it without worrying that everything else is going to fall behind. It really frees you up to focus on what matters.”

Proactive Risk Control

With visibility into compression and performance trends, Rowan identifies risk earlier. Conversations with contractors are grounded in objective data rather than opinion.

Oversight moved from being reactive to proactive.

Executive Confidence

Leadership now sees consistent trend data across the portfolio. They can track performance over time and understand risk exposure clearly.

Schedule reporting is no longer a narrative update. It is a decision-making tool.

Growth Without Headcount Growth

Rowan expanded from three projects to approximately fifteen active data center developments. “It’s scalable.”

SmartPM enabled that growth without requiring proportional increases in scheduling staff.

CONCLUSION

Owner-Level Schedule Control at Data Center Scale

Rowan did not implement SmartPM to fix a reporting problem. They implemented it to build a scalable, forward-looking controls framework capable of supporting hyperscale growth.

By standardizing schedule quality, automating massive schedule analysis, and transforming executive reporting into trend-driven insight, Rowan has moved beyond traditional owner oversight. They have built a system designed to anticipate risk, enforce accountability, and accelerate delivery.

In a market where scale and speed define success, Rowan Digital Infrastructure is not just keeping pace. They are setting the standard for owner-side schedule control in mission-critical data center development.