German construction firm Hochtief is planning to develop another wooden Edge data center outside Dortmund.

The city of Herne this week said Hochtief was to build a data center in the Funkenberg Quartier.

The 2MW facility will be built under the Yexio name using timber and feature a ‘direct water cooling system’ and be connected to the local district heating network. The facility – expandable to 4MW – will also have a living green wall.

Construction is scheduled to begin in 2025, with commissioning planned for mid-2027.

“Herne is sending a strong signal for the interplay of digital infrastructure. The Yexio data center will be a central component of a smart city that brings concrete benefits to people, from modern data processing and clean transportation to a secure and future-proof infrastructure. Together with the city of Herne, we are actively shaping this transformation,” said Bernd Holtwick, CFO and COO of Hochtief PPP Solutions.

Herne is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, located between Dortmund and Essen and north of Düsseldorf. Funkenberg Quartier is a new 14-hectare district built on a former industrial site north of Herne railway station.

Herne’s Mayor, Dr. Frank Dudda, added: “Universities and knowledge-based workplaces are being created here. Knowledge requires storage and, increasingly, capacity for artificial intelligence. In this respect, the new data center is the ideal addition to the district – also from an architectural point of view.”

Hochtief is owned by Spanish construction firm ACS, which is best known in the US as the owner of Turner Construction. Hochtief is now moving into developing and operating its own data centers – with a network of 15 liquid-cooled, wooden frame Edge data centers planned across Germany under the Yexio name.

Yexio is also backed by Palladio Partners, a German pension fund investor. The facilities are set to be largely leased to Yexio Cloud, a new venture between Hochtief and server manufacturer Thomas-Krenn AG.

Hochtief has broken ground on Yexio data centers in Bad Lippspringe and Essen, with the latter due live this year. Another is reportedly in the works in Brake and Dorfen, and sites are potentially planned in Austria and Switzerland.

The company’s debut facility, in the Heilingenhaus Innovation Park near Düsseldorf, launched earlier this month.

In June, Hochtief took the venture international, launching a data center division in the UK under the name Hochtief Data Center Partner Limited.

ACS owns or has stakes in Hochtief, Turner Construction, Dragados, CIMIC, Leighton Asia, Ventia, and numerous others. Data center clients include Meta and Vantage.

Traditionally known as a construction firm serving clients, the company has recently pivoted to developing its own data centers that can be leased or sold to customers. The company has acquired land and/or filed for data center campuses in Spain and the US, and Hochtief has suggested it has a potential development pipeline totaling around 5GW globally.