In 2021, I bought a home in Florida. The closing was in August, so imagine the hot summer days with temperatures over 100 degrees and humidity over 80%.

When we selected the builder, I noted 2 things: HVAC with 15 SEER and insulation R-39. My house would be minimally energy efficient. I had no option to upgrade the HVAC, but 15 SEER is “good enough”.

First week in the house, my wife realized I was getting bothered every time the compressor kicked in - there was a subtle, almost imperceptible, hit on the lights - nobody realized it, but I did. Battle-proven engineer with experience in thermal and power transiency. What could happen?

Long story short, three days later, there I was, with my Fluke amperimeter measuring the inrush current every time the compressor started. They were out of range. So, the odyssey begins. BTW, I won’t cover the efficiency discussion for the sake of the reader. The builder involved the 3rd-party contractor, who involved the manufacturing engineers, to explain to me that the “isolated” parts don’t achieve 15 SEER, but together they do. At the end, after a written letter from the manufacturer, I couldn’t argue anymore.

Back to the center of the story, Buyer → Builder’s Sales Team → Builder’s Delivery Team → 3rd party HVAC contractor → HVAC manufacturer. This was the loop. In the middle, a lot of subcontractors, one responsible for providing the correctly sized cabling, another for installing the ducts and vents, another for installing the machinery, and another for creating the vacuum lines. My family and friends were checking on me and trying to convince me that it wasn’t a fight worth fighting. OK, could I handle this? I should.

I’d seen this movie before - but my wife didn’t have the scar tissue to understand it. Requirement, buyer, sales team, pre-sales team, pre-sales engineer, post-sales project manager, engineering delivery, execution briefing, on-site execution, project acceptance (in the middle of the chaos), and a working demonstration that feels like someone from the 50’s is delivering to you a TV with a remote - click here to power it on and that’s it.

Shortening my not-so-boring personal story, after the laundry lights went south just after 2 weeks - great collateral, manageable, severity 3 - my wife understood that it could create long-term issues in our facilities, I mean, home. After 3 weeks living in the house, one of the HVAC compressors just blew - it had an execution issue, the subcontractor didn’t install a filter-drier on the liquid line, and it was messing with the pressure dynamic.

Whenever you have multiple teams working together, you’ll have gaps between “designed” and “installed” (hello, project managers!). In this story, there were at least a half-dozen people and phone numbers involved, but what happened at the end? The manufacturer replaced the compressor (at their own expense), but I’m pretty confident that the HVAC contractor didn’t mention the missing filter-drier. That was a subcontractor problem. Except it was my problem. The spilled blood? I spent 2 weeks in the Florida summer without AC on the first floor of my brand-new house.

Less than one month ago, CoreWeave filed an SEC disclosure about data center delivery delays. The blame? The Texas rains. Very likely, the contractor is covered under a contract that covers natural disasters, and the law firms are discussing what the threshold is between “it rained a lot” and “it’s a disaster, the concrete-loaded truck is waiting for 2 weeks”. CoreWeave’s stock price dropped 16% after Q3 earnings, when the company vaguely disclosed delays. By December, when the WSJ reported the details — 60 days of rain delays, concrete trucks waiting — the stock was down 62% from its peak. $33 billion in market cap, gone. The CEO wouldn’t even name the contractor on the earnings call. Where was the MEP? Billion-dollar-range landslide; loss of momentum; loss of brand reputation; meetings with investors; loss of focus on the business. Again, where was the MEP? Not in the room. Never in the room.

The “neo-cloud” is uncharted territory. A contractor can claim “I’ve built for Meta/Google/Amazon,” but this is another league. I take on the risk of being wrong, but I doubt that in the past decade any engineer in the world had to design a facility for hundreds of racks at 50kW per rack — and its required cooling. It’s uncharted territory for everyone. When something goes wrong, you’ll want someone who owns the whole infrastructure in the room — not a chain of contracts pointing at each other. Whether at home or at hyperscale, reliability starts with owning the details—and making sure the right people are always in the room.