Google’s Data Center Construction Program team uses Achilles to scale its global data center construction program to deliver consistent supplier risk management. The platform streamlines supplier intake, prequalification, and risk visibility, enabling faster, data-driven procurement decisions while supporting sustainability, DEI, and multi-region growth.
“The Achilles platform strengthens our Data Center Construction Program by delivering a more comprehensive and structured prequalification process, even as the volume of contractors entering the program continues to grow. By incorporating broader supplier data, expanded risk metrics, and centralized platform capabilities—including reporting and insights—we have enhanced compliance visibility and consistency in our contractor evaluations while maintaining strong governance and controls.”
Erick Hudtwalcker, Program Manager, Strategic Risk Management, Google Data Centers Business Controls
Scaling Data Center Construction Through Consistent Supplier Risk Management
As Google continues to expand its global data center footprint to support growing demand for cloud services and artificial intelligence, the Data Center Construction Program organization is evolving how it engages, qualifies, and manages its data center construction suppliers and wider supplier ecosystem. Scaling delivery across regions, delivery models, and supplier types requires a more consistent, transparent, and data-driven approach to supplier risk management.
Vision: A Single System of Record for Data Center Construction Suppliers
Achilles serves as a single, consolidated system of record for data center construction supplier information, supporting the full vendor lifecycle, from intake and prequalification through readiness for project award. The platform provides the construction program team with regional and global visibility into supplier capacity, risk indicators, and qualification status, enabling more informed and consistent procurement decisions.
The Challenge: Limited Visibility, Manual Processes, and Rising Supplier Risk
Prior to implementing Achilles, the construction program team faced several structural challenges as the scale and complexity of data center delivery increased:
- Limited visibility into regional supplier capacity and supplier risk, particularly across Tier II and owner-furnished equipment (OFE) suppliers
- No standardized system to manage vendor relationships across the full lifecycle, from intake through project award
- Manual, fragmented intake and prequalification processes that increased end-to-end (E2E) contracting timelines
- Increasing operational expenditure (OPEX) required to maintain accurate supplier data as the vendor pool expanded to support a multi-prime delivery model
As the construction program team expanded its vendor base to meet new contracting models and DEI objectives, these constraints risked creating bottlenecks in supplier qualification and contract award, with potential impact on delivery timelines and program-level Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). Together, these challenges limited the construction program team’s ability to scale data center construction efficiently while maintaining consistent supplier qualification, risk management, and governance.
Objectives: Risk-Based Supplier Prequalification and Faster Contracting
Achilles was selected to function as the construction program team’s supplier relationship management and prequalification tool, informing and enabling data-driven, risk-based procurement decisions.
Specifically, Achilles supports the construction program team by:
- Providing a near real-time view of supplier capacity, incorporating financial health indicators and critical personnel information to support risk-aware contractor selection
- Streamlining supplier intake and prequalification through validated vendor data used in qualification decisions related to financial health, EHSQ, governance, legal compliance, sustainability, experience, and capacity
- Enabling users to identify available and qualified suppliers by commodity code, geographic region, and DEI status
- Supporting consistent access to comprehensive, multi-dimensional supplier information to enable more informed and defensible risk-based decisions from intake through contract award.
The Achilles Solution: Supplier Management for Data Center Construction
Achilles provides a supplier management platform designed to meet the construction program team’s functional and operational requirements while maintaining clear data boundaries. Key elements of the solution include:
Consolidated supplier data management: Achilles serves as the centralized repository for vendor-provided and third-party risk data, reducing duplication and improving consistency across regions and projects.
Validated supplier intake and prequalification: Suppliers submit information once, which is validated and reused across qualification workflows, supporting faster and more consistent prequalification decisions.
Supplier capacity and regional risk visibility: The platform provides insight into supplier capacity and risk indicators at a regional level, supporting planning and procurement decisions across a multi-prime delivery model.
Support for scalable supplier ecosystem growth: By reducing manual effort and duplicated data management, Achilles helps limit the proportional increase in OPEX as the supplier ecosystem grows.
Clear data governance and system boundaries: To maintain data security and governance, Achilles manages only vendor-provided and third-party risk data. Google-generated information, including spend data, project opportunities, and internal performance assessments remains within Google systems, with references linked where appropriate.
Outcomes: Improved Supplier Visibility, Reduced Risk, and Scalable Growth
With Achilles in place, the construction program team achieved measurable compliance improvements in supplier visibility, risk management, and data center construction scalability.
The platform:
- Enhanced supplier intake with broader risk visibility and standardized data capture to support more informed evaluation decisions.Improved transparency into regional and sub-tier supplier capacity and risk
- Delivered more consistent, risk-informed procurement decisions
- Lowered incremental OPEX required to manage an expanding vendor pool
- Enabled a scalable foundation that supports evolving delivery models, sustainability objectives, and DEI initiatives in 31 countries across 15 regions
By standardizing supplier data management and enabling near real-time insight into supplier readiness and risk, Achilles helps Google achieve a more responsible and efficient expansion of its global data center construction program.