Iron Mountain Data Centers is developing the Richmond Data Center Campus at White Oak Technology Park in Sandston, Henrico County, Virginia, a 66-acre, federally compliant colocation campus planned for more than 200 MW of total power capacity and well over one million square feet across four buildings. The project was first reported by Iron Mountain's own facility pages and picked up by Data Center Dynamics and Data Center Knowledge.

Iron Mountain has acquired the 66-acre White Oak Technology Park site and publicly detailed two buildings, with construction on the first underway by August 2026 and a billion-dollar total investment cited across the full campus.

Iron Mountain began as a records management company and has grown into a global REIT operating data centers across North America, Europe, and Latin America. Its data center division positions itself squarely at the intersection of colocation and federal compliance, holding certifications that most commercial operators do not pursue. The Richmond campus is designed to meet FISMA HIGH, FedRAMP, and NIST 800-53 requirements, making it one of the more stringent compliance environments currently under construction in the mid-Atlantic region.

Most colocation builds require experienced MEP trades and a commissioning team comfortable with ANSI/TIA-942 or Uptime Tier documentation. A FISMA HIGH environment layers on top of that: every system change must be documented against NIST 800-53 controls, commissioning engineers must produce artifacts that satisfy federal auditors, and facilities technicians operate under change-management disciplines closer to a government SCIF than a commercial colocation floor. That means Iron Mountain will not simply be competing with Equinix and QTS for the same technician pool. It will be competing for people who have worked in federal data centers, cleared facilities, or defense-adjacent mission-critical environments, and that pool is considerably smaller.

A four-building, 200 MW campus built in phases through 2029 is a sustained hiring event, not a single surge. Construction of RCH-1 is already underway, RCH-3 phases from August 2028 through April 2029, and the remaining buildings will follow on their own timelines. That sequencing means the region's trades will face overlapping demand for electricians, pipefitters, millwrights, and low-voltage specialists across multiple active fronts simultaneously. Richmond's industrial history produces real trades depth: paper, tobacco, chemical, and utility facilities have trained generations of skilled workers whose backgrounds transfer well to data center MEP work. Building trades unions are active on major industrial projects in the region, though commercial construction runs heavily open-shop, so Iron Mountain's delivery strategy will determine whether this campus is staffed through union agreements or large non-union contractors.

The sharper constraint is on the operations side. Commissioning engineers in the Richmond market are currently earning around $147,000 annually (ZipRecruiter/dcgeeks, 2026 figures). Critical facilities engineers run $117,000 to $147,000. Critical facilities technicians are around $89,000, and facilities technicians at approximately $54,000. Those figures reflect a national market tightened by the AI buildout cycle, and Henrico County competes directly with NoVA's data center cluster, which pulls the same profiles at similar or higher rates with shorter commutes for candidates already based in Loudoun or Prince William.

The single most actionable insight for staffing firms working this campus: Iron Mountain's federal compliance posture will favor candidates with prior experience in government or defense-related facilities, and documentation and QA/QC skills will carry a premium over general data center operational experience alone. Sourcing from Richmond's existing base of government-adjacent facilities, military contractors, and cleared-facility support staff is a more productive starting point than recycling candidates from purely commercial colocation backgrounds. For a full breakdown of roles, pay bands, and where to find qualified candidates in this market, see our guide to hiring data center talent in Henrico County. Sources: Iron Mountain Data Centers Richmond RCH-3 page, which provided primary project specifications; Iron Mountain Virginia overview; LinkedIn, Iron Mountain Data Centers campus progress post; Data Center Dynamics; Data Center Knowledge; and Colocation Scout.