Telecom Revenue Is Up 87%. Where AEC Pursuits Should Aim Next.

What ENR's 2026 Top 500 Ledger Just Confirmed

ENR released the 2026 Top 500 Design Firms on April 27. Of the 475 firms that filed comparable surveys both years, 83.2% reported revenue increases — but the line item that mattered most ran far ahead of every other category.

Telecommunications revenue for the Top 500 increased 31.3% between 2024 and 2025. Stretched out two years, that line is up roughly 87% since 2023. The label is "telecom," but inside ENR's category accounting it captures data centers and the infrastructure that surrounds them — fiber, edge facilities, hyperscale campuses, and the substation, transmission, and distribution work that sits between a data hall and the grid.

Total domestic design revenue for the Top 500 grew 8.1% to $136.3 billion. Median firm revenue grew 6.4%. The data-center category grew at four to five times the median rate. That gap is the story.

For AEC firms that compete for federal A/E work, state DOT consultant selections, and locally-funded civil and utility projects, the Top 500 is the broadest, most credible benchmark available for "where the work is going" in 2026. The answer is on one line of the ledger.

The Spread Is Widening Faster Than the Average

A 6.4% median growth number means roughly half of the Top 500 firms grew slower than that. Some firms grew much faster. The same survey that produced the 6.4% median produced the 31.3% telecom number — meaning the firms that captured telecom and data-center revenue grew far above median, and the firms that did not pulled the median down.

ACEC's Q1 2026 Engineering Business Sentiment survey, drawn from 628 firm leaders, sharpens the same observation. Industry sentiment is highest in Energy and Utilities (+47), Water/Wastewater (+39), Roads and Bridges (+37), and Data Centers (+37). Sector sentiment is especially strong in data centers (+60), energy/utilities (+56), and industrial/manufacturing (+50). Sentiment in government buildings, education, and transit has softened. The market is bifurcating, not slowing.

The practical read for a mid-market civil or transportation firm is straightforward: the firms that positioned for data-center-adjacent civil, utility, environmental, and transmission work two years ago are the ones now reporting above-median growth. The firms that stayed in their traditional pursuit lanes are the ones reporting below-median growth.

The next two quarters are the window in which firms not yet positioned can still get there.

What Changed at FERC Last Week

The federal mechanism behind the data-center surge has its own clock, and that clock just shifted.

In October 2025, the Department of Energy directed FERC to take final action by April 30, 2026 on a proposed rulemaking to standardize how large electricity loads — particularly data centers — interconnect to the interstate transmission grid. As of late April 2026, FERC has now publicly committed to act by the end of June 2026 instead. Two months past DOE's requested date.

The reason is not that the issue lost urgency. It is that the rule needs to navigate a federal-state jurisdictional split that's harder than DOE acknowledged. Under the Federal Power Act, transmission interconnection is federally regulated. Retail load — the load served at the data hall meter — is regulated by the state public utility commission. The proposed rule attempts to standardize what happens at the federal-state boundary. Multiple state utility commissions have flagged jurisdictional concerns. FERC is taking the additional time to deliver a rule that is "fast enough to meet surging demand yet legally durable."

For A/E firms, the practical effect is that the pursuit window did not close on April 30 — it extended by approximately 60 days. PJM's interconnection Cycle #1 opened in April 2026 on schedule. Data-center developers, transmission owners, and large industrial users are all still filing interconnection requests. The federal rule that governs how those requests are processed is now expected to land at the end of June.

What this means for proposal teams: the categories of A/E work driven by large-load interconnection — utility coordination, transmission line studies, substation civil, reliability modeling, environmental review for grid infrastructure — are operational right now and will accelerate after the rule lands.

Which A/E Scopes Activate Now vs. After the Rule

Not every data-center-adjacent scope is on the same clock. Some categories of work are active before the FERC rule lands; some firm up after.

Active right now

Utility coordination. Every data-center site requires coordination with the serving utility — load forecast, distribution upgrade, easements, customer-funded distribution work. Utilities are already engaged.
Transmission line studies. Routing studies, environmental review, structural design for new transmission to serve large loads. Transmission owners are filing under existing interconnection procedures while the rule is pending.
Site civil and stormwater. Data-center sites require pad-ready engineering — grading, drainage, water/sewer service, permitting. This work is independent of the federal interconnection clock.
Environmental review. NEPA, state environmental policy review, wetlands permitting, threatened-and-endangered-species coordination. Required regardless of how the FERC rule ultimately structures interconnection timelines.
Geotechnical and survey. Site-specific work that proceeds in parallel with all other engineering.

Firms up after the FERC rule

Substation civil and structural. Substation siting and civil design depends on which interconnection pathway the project ultimately uses. Firms with substation experience are building pipeline now; specific project assignments will firm up after the rule.
Reliability modeling. Load-flow studies, stability studies, harmonics. The methodology will respond to whatever standardized procedures FERC adopts.
Co-located generation siting. The proposed rule contemplates joint load-and-generation interconnection requests. The civil and environmental work for co-located gas, battery, or renewable generation tied to a data-center load is a category that did not exist in scale before this rulemaking.

Straddles both

Permitting strategy. State and local permitting timelines are independent of FERC, but the federal rule will affect what's required at the interconnection boundary.
Public engagement and stakeholder management. Required throughout, with intensity scaling around the federal-state-local jurisdiction friction the rule highlights.

For a mid-market firm with transmission, utility, or power-adjacent experience, the practical posture for the next 60 days is to compete actively for the categories in column one while preparing teaming and qualifications for the categories in column two.

How Mid-Market Firms Position SOQs Without a Data-Center Portfolio

The most common question from civil and transportation firms looking at this market is not "should we pursue this work" but "how do we qualify for it without a single data-center logo on our project sheet."

The honest answer is that you do not qualify by claiming data-center experience. You qualify by translating the experience your firm already has into the language the data-center procurement uses.

Section E — staff qualifications

Every data-center procurement is going to ask for senior personnel with relevant transmission, substation, utility coordination, or large-site civil experience. Most firms have those credentials buried in resumes written for state DOT or municipal pursuits.

Specific moves:

Identify your senior engineers with substation, transmission, or utility-coordination experience. Even if they did the work for a different end user, the technical scope qualifies.
Reorganize the project bullets in their SF330 Section E resumes to lead with the technical scope (substation civil, transmission routing, utility coordination) rather than the end-client agency (state DOT, municipality).
Pull project values, MW served, and acreage forward into the bullets where applicable. Data-center procurement evaluates scale, not just scope.

Section F — project experience

Project experience sheets for data-center pursuits look different than project sheets for state DOT pursuits. Specifically:

Site civil work for industrial, manufacturing, or large institutional clients translates more cleanly than site civil work for transportation projects. The closer the project is to "large pad-ready site with utility coordination," the more it qualifies.
Substation and transmission projects qualify directly, regardless of whether the original client was a utility, a generation owner, or a transit agency.
Stormwater design for large impervious sites — distribution centers, manufacturing campuses, sports facilities — translates because the engineering math is the same.

The realignment exercise is the same one federal proposal libraries are going through right now: reorganizing existing experience around the categories the current market is buying, rather than the categories your firm has historically chased.

Section H — approach narratives

Section H for data-center adjacent pursuits should make three points clearly:

The firm understands the federal-state interconnection split and how to navigate it.
The firm has a defensible approach to the specific scope being procured (utility coordination, transmission, substation civil, environmental review, etc.) that is grounded in delivered work.
The firm has the staff capacity to execute on the timeline the project requires.

The trap to avoid is writing Section H as if your firm is a data-center specialist when it is not. Procurement evaluators read a lot of proposals; they can identify a firm overstating data-center expertise quickly. The stronger position is to write as a firm with deep, transferable experience that fits the specific scope being procured.

Teaming as a positioning strategy

If your firm has strong transmission or utility experience but no civil scale to match a 200-acre hyperscale site — or strong large-site civil experience but no transmission credentials — teaming is the way in. The interconnection rulemaking specifically contemplates joint load-and-generation interconnection requests, which is a teaming pattern that did not exist at scale before. Mid-market firms that build the teaming arrangements before the FERC rule lands will be positioned when the post-rule procurement wave starts.

What Proposal Teams Should Be Doing in the Next 60 Days

Five concrete moves between now and the end of June:

Identify your firm's three closest-fit projects. Not data-center projects — projects where the technical scope translates. Substation civil, transmission routing, large-site civil with utility coordination, environmental review for grid infrastructure. If you do not have three, the gap is what to address through teaming.
Realign your senior personnel resumes. Lead with technical scope, not historical client agency. Pull MW, acreage, and project value into the bullets.
Build a teaming list. Identify two or three firms with complementary experience whose qualifications round out yours for a target pursuit category. Have the teaming conversation now, not when an RFQ drops.
Track the FERC docket. When the rule lands at the end of June, the procurement language in subsequent solicitations will reflect it. Firms that are tracking the rule will be positioned to respond to the first wave; firms that are not will play catch-up through the back half of 2026.
Audit your boilerplate library. The structured proposal content your firm reuses across pursuits was built for the markets your firm chased two years ago. The content reuse infrastructure that worked for state DOT and federal building work is not the same content reuse infrastructure that supports data-center-adjacent pursuits.

What Did Not Change

It is worth being clear about what the FERC delay does not mean.

It does not mean the data-center surge has slowed. Dodge Construction Network's March Momentum Index increased 1.8% to 250.5, with commercial planning growth concentrated almost entirely in data-center projects. Planetizen reported in April 2026 that without data centers, nonresidential construction would be down 12.7%. ENR's 2026 Top 500 confirmed at the revenue level what Dodge confirmed at the planning level: data centers are now the dominant non-residential design category.

It does not mean the federal-state jurisdictional issue is going away. The rule that lands in June will not resolve every state utility commission concern, and the procurement structures that emerge will continue to reflect the tension. AEC firms positioning for this market need to understand both pathways — federal under the Federal Power Act, state under retail-rate regulation — because most data-center projects will involve both.

It does not mean traditional A/E markets disappear. State DOT, federal building, education, transit, and water/wastewater work all continue. ACEC's Q1 sentiment data shows softening in some categories, not collapse. The narrative is not "abandon traditional markets" — it is "the firms growing fastest are the ones who added data-center-adjacent capacity to their existing pursuit mix."

The Practical Frame

The 87% telecom growth number on the ENR Top 500 ledger is not a forecast. It is the past tense — what already happened. The forward question for AEC firms is whether the next two years look like the last two years.

Two pieces of evidence point to yes. ACEC's forward sentiment is highest in data centers and energy/utilities. Dodge's forward planning index is concentrated in the same categories. The FERC rule that lands in June is going to make pursuit procurement more, not less, formalized — which favors firms with structured proposal content and clean qualification libraries over firms whose source-of-truth content lives in scattered Word documents.

The firms positioned to compete for this market two years from now are the ones putting the qualifications work in over the next 60 days. The 87% is the headline. The positioning is the work.