Per-MW pricing, regional variance, and cost drivers for owners scoping hyperscale & AI builds.
Salary benchmarks across the 14 mission-critical disciplines.
Arsenal-1 shows a simple point: on a 5 million sq. ft. defense plant, the build schedule and hiring plan have to move together from day one. I see this project as a clear example of what happens when a manufacturer pushes for early production while the rest of the campus is still being built.
Here’s the short version:
If you work in construction, the lesson is direct: this type of project is not just a big building job. It is a phased manufacturing ramp where one late transformer, one switchgear delay, or one missing commissioning lead can push production back.
A few facts make that plain:
That means I would treat Arsenal-1 as a staffing and sequencing case study more than a headline about factory size. The main issue is control: control of phase gates, utilities, secure-area turnover, long-lead buying, and labor timing.
For me, the article boils down to four things:
If you want one takeaway, it’s this: Arsenal-1 is a reminder that defense factory projects are won or lost long before the last walls go up. They depend on early procurement, phased execution, and a hiring plan built around the job’s actual milestones.
Arsenal-1 Megafactory: Key Stats, Lead Times & Labor Pressures
On a job this big, location isn't just a real estate choice. It's a delivery choice.
The Arsenal-1 site in Pickaway County sits next to Rickenbacker International Airport, with access to two 12,000-foot runways and a 75-acre private aircraft apron.[4][5][7] That matters when a project needs a steady flow of steel, precast, mechanical equipment, and process tools. Rickenbacker's air, rail, and interstate connections make that flow easier to manage.
The site itself is 500 acres, which gives Anduril room to build the campus in phases behind a secure perimeter.[3][6][10] That's the part that matters most here. Arsenal-1 isn't being delivered as one finished, all-at-once megaproject. It's being built in steps, and the site gives the team room to do that.
Anduril didn't wait for the full 5-million-square-foot campus to come online before starting production. The plan was simple: get the first production building running, then keep building the rest of the campus in waves.
Building 1 was the key first move. It includes about 775,000 sq. ft. of production space and 120,000 sq. ft. of office and support space. Anduril first aimed for early 2027 to begin operations, then moved that target up to mid-2026. That shift tightened the design-build and commissioning timeline in a big way. The first Ohio-built Fury (YFQ-44A) rolled off the line in 2026, while Building 2 - roughly 924,000+ sq. ft. - was still under construction next door.[8][9][1]
That kind of early occupancy puts a lot of pressure on Building 1. It also makes coordination much harder.
Long-lead equipment has to be timed with care, including:
The team can't just ask, "When does this get installed?" They also have to ask, "Which zone has to be ready first?" Field leaders are managing commissioning and startup in early-occupancy areas while heavy construction continues in later phases, all while design needs keep shifting with production demands. To keep those tracks from crashing into each other, teams use pull-planning and area-by-area work plans.
Phasing is only one part of the schedule problem. On projects like Arsenal-1, utilities and MEP systems usually set the pace.
The building shell often isn't the main risk. Power and utilities are.
A secure manufacturing megafactory carries heavy electrical demand from production equipment, environmental controls, data systems, and backup generation. That means medium-voltage feeds, primary transformers, and main distribution have to be in place early. In central Ohio, that requires early coordination with local utilities and grid operators so capacity is locked in and any offsite upgrades are finished before they land on the critical path.
MEP systems make the job even tougher. This isn't a standard logistics facility. A secure defense manufacturing campus needs redundant ventilation, controlled environments, classified areas with restricted penetrations, and separate electrical panels for secure equipment. Those systems then have to be commissioned zone by zone, in step with security approval milestones, before any area can be used for production.
The lead times alone show how tight the window is:
Miss the purchase order window for any one of those items, and the commissioning schedule moves to the right. When that happens on Arsenal-1, production moves with it.
Defense projects don't hire in one straight line. They hire in two lanes.
Arsenal-1 is a good example. The campus is opening in stages, which means the labor demand also arrives in stages. First comes the construction surge. Then comes the slower, longer operations build. Those are two different talent curves, and they need two different hiring plans.
The construction side is front-loaded and staff-heavy. Teams need project executives, senior project managers, superintendents, MEP leads, schedulers, QA/QC staff, and commissioning managers before the critical path starts to move. That hiring window lasts about 24 to 48 months, with demand peaking during structural work, MEP rough-in, and fit-out.
Operations hiring works on a much longer clock. JobsOhio has linked Arsenal-1 to more than 4,000 jobs by 2035, plus another 4,500 indirect and induced jobs over the same period.[2] Those jobs include manufacturing engineers, process technicians, maintenance and reliability technicians, and automation specialists. They don't all show up at once. They come online in waves as each production module is commissioned.
That creates a plain staffing problem: if a firm treats construction and operations as one pipeline, it will either overhire too soon or end up scrambling later. On a project this size, labor planning matters just as much as the build schedule.
Central Ohio is already tight, and Arsenal-1 won't be hiring into a soft market.
The biggest pressure will land on mission-critical roles that are also in demand across data centers, semiconductor fabs, and advanced manufacturing plants. That includes superintendents, MEP managers, schedulers, QA/QC leads, commissioning specialists, electricians, instrumentation techs, and controls talent.
The numbers help explain why. ABC Ohio Valley is tracking an estimated 60,000-worker construction labor shortage across its footprint.[14][16] Ohio's construction unemployment rate was just 3.7% in July 2026.[15] Intel's Ohio project alone has been cited as needing up to 2,500 electricians at peak.[12]
Stack Arsenal-1 on top of that, and the strain on electrical, instrumentation, and controls labor in the Columbus metro gets sharp fast. Some roles will be especially hard to fill. Commissioning engineers and QA/QC managers with backgrounds in semiconductor, pharmaceutical, and data center work will be heavily contested because that experience lines up closely with defense manufacturing needs.[18]
Contractors can't wait until the schedule slips to start hiring. By then, the best people are already gone.
Ohio had 22,849 active apprentices in 2024.[17] That gives contractors one clear path: work with the state's electrical, mechanical, HVAC, millwright, and industrial maintenance apprenticeship programs early. Not halfway through the job. Training should cover mission-critical MEP coordination and basic commissioning so crews are better prepared before demand spikes.
Veterans are another channel that deserves more attention. People with military backgrounds in engineering, logistics, and maintenance often fit well into superintendent, field engineer, QA/QC, and commissioning roles on secure facilities. Anduril has said it wants to hire veterans, students, and local residents, and it has also noted that many roles do not require college degrees.[11][13]
For senior positions such as project executives, MEP directors, and commissioning managers, firms will likely need to look past Ohio. Leaders from data center, semiconductor, and pharmaceutical builds in Phoenix, Austin, and Northern Virginia bring skills that transfer well to this kind of work.[18] Relocation and retention packages should be tied to campus milestones instead of one-phase assignments.
Those channels matter because Arsenal-scale projects don't just need workers. They need a leadership bench that can carry a long, phased build without running out of steam.
Once the hiring crunch is clear, the next step is simple: fill the roles that keep the whole job moving. For Arsenal-1, that starts with three leadership positions: the project executive, the senior PM, and the superintendent. Each one runs a different part of the build, and if one seat is empty, the rest of the project feels it.
Project executives manage owner coordination and contract strategy. They help keep owner decisions lined up with the production ramp. Senior PMs run the phased delivery plan, from shell construction and MEP fit-out to tool installation and later expansion. They also handle long-lead technical procurement, cost and schedule control, and change management as production needs shift. Superintendents lead the field. That means site logistics, trade sequencing, badge control, access enforcement, and major milestones like equipment setting and controlled-area turnover.
The bar for these hires is high. Hiring teams should focus on leaders who have already run large, phased industrial programs such as semiconductor fabs, hyperscale data centers, and aerospace assembly plants. The strongest candidates have owned the full project lifecycle, from site prep through commissioning and handoff to operations. Experience leading $250 million-plus projects, managing multi-building campuses, and working with complex owner teams stands out most. Prior time in classified or controlled settings is also a strong plus for a project like Arsenal-1.[19][21][22]
These people need to be hired before procurement and fit-out hit their busiest stretch.
This is usually where the first hiring jams show up on technical megaprojects.
MEP directors and MEP superintendents need deep knowledge of high-reliability power, industrial HVAC, process cooling, and tool integration, all while meeting strict uptime demands. At the field level, the MEP superintendent also has to manage prefabrication logistics and coordinate with tool vendors inside security-controlled areas. Project controls and scheduling leads must build and maintain fully linked schedules in tools like Primavera P6, map construction phasing, and measure the impact of design changes or late equipment deliveries. Then they need to turn that analysis into recovery plans the field team can actually use.[20]
QA/QC managers own the quality plan across civil, architectural, structural, and MEP/process systems. Their documentation often ties back to military or aerospace specs. That work feeds straight into turnover packages, which means slow QA/QC paperwork can create commissioning problems later. Commissioning managers should be involved early, during design and early construction, not dropped in at the last minute. They define the turnover plan, build integrated commissioning schedules, and coordinate functional and integrated systems testing around Anduril's tool installation and qualification timeline.[19][20][23]
When screening for these roles, hiring managers should look for people with ASHRAE commissioning experience and a record of delivering systems under regulatory or security review similar to defense facilities.
Without these hires, fixing a slipping schedule gets much tougher than stopping the slip in the first place.
These campuses have more in common with semiconductor fabs, battery plants, pharma facilities, and hyperscale data centers than many people assume. The best crossover talent usually comes from industries with tight controls, heavy documentation, and complex MEP systems.
Good candidates often come from nearby sectors, but screening still needs to be strict. Here's where the strongest skill transfer tends to come from, and what hiring teams should test for:
Across all of these backgrounds, a few traits matter most: comfort with tightly controlled and heavily documented workflows, disciplined change management, and careful handling of controlled technical information. Under schedule pressure, hiring teams should look for people who still make disciplined, compliant calls.
Once the labor gap comes into focus, timing becomes the issue: how do you build the bench before the project even hits the market?
Arsenal-1 makes one thing plain: defense megaprojects rise or fall on pre-award planning, phased staffing, and early technical hiring.
Workforce planning should be handled like preconstruction. Start before award, map each phase, and tie roles directly to the schedule. Incentives, zoning, and utility timelines need early tracking because they shape the actual schedule. And since these projects move in stages, staffing has to follow phase gates, not standard HR cycles.
A phase-based staffing roadmap should connect hiring to each major step of the job: site selection and entitlement, sitework and foundations, structural and envelope, MEP and process infrastructure, tool installation and commissioning, and ramp-up and turnover. It also helps to split the construction bench from the operations bench and staff each on its own clock. Those are two different hiring tracks, and treating them as one can cause trouble fast.
Firms should also build a pre-award bench of project executives and senior PMs with semiconductor, data center, or pharmaceutical experience. Key MEP and security subs should be prequalified early. The strongest outcomes usually come from a shared workforce planning rhythm that starts in concept and preconstruction and carries through commissioning. Owners, contractors, and talent partners need to share phasing, risk hotspots, and schedule milestones early so recruiting stays tied to the job schedule. Security vetting, regulated-facility experience, and relocation to markets like central Ohio can slow a search, so the leadership bench needs to be in motion well before peak field activity.
That same pre-award discipline should shape how firms go after scarce leadership talent.
When roles are specialized and the timeline is tight, recruiting support stops being a side function. It becomes part of project delivery.
Commissioning managers, MEP leads, and QA/QC specialists with regulated-environment experience are usually the toughest roles to fill. At this scale, reactive hiring falls flat.
iRecruit.co supports defense and advanced manufacturing buildouts through targeted search, RPO, and executive recruiting across the roles that matter most: project executives, senior PMs, superintendents, MEP leaders, schedulers, QA/QC, commissioning managers, and manufacturing-facility specialists. Their team verifies ITAR status, clearance currency, and AS9100 fluency during initial screening to avoid late-stage disqualifications.[24] For direct-hire roles, iRecruit.co works on a 20% success fee with no upfront cost. Retained executive searches run at 30% of first-year compensation. iRecruit.co offers direct-hire search, retained executive search, and RPO support for full plant ramps.[24] Bringing them in during preconstruction - not after mobilization - can help firms build a pre-qualified bench tied to award dates and phase gates before the market gets tighter.
The key takeaway isn't just size. It's staffing discipline.
Arsenal-1 is a model for how defense production capacity will be built in the U.S. The fact that Anduril started Fury production roughly three months ahead of its originally announced July 2026 target[25] shows what can happen when delivery strategy and workforce buildout are treated as top priorities from day one.
The U.S. defense ramp is producing more projects like Arsenal-1. And Arsenal-1 makes the pattern clear: defense construction rewards teams that staff early, hire by phase, and treat recruiting as part of delivery.
Phased delivery matters at Arsenal-1 because it allows construction and production to run at the same time.
By finishing the first 775,000-square-foot production building ahead of schedule, the project makes room for Fury aircraft production in 2026 even as work continues on the rest of the site. That means the company can start building output sooner, instead of sitting idle until the full 5,000,000-square-foot campus is done.
Put simply, Arsenal-1 doesn’t have to wait for every building to be finished before it starts doing its job. The first facility comes online, production begins, and the rest of the campus keeps rising in the background.
The hardest roles to fill are commissioning managers, commissioning engineers, and MEP-focused estimators. These jobs call for deep, specialized knowledge of mission-critical systems, and that kind of skill set takes years to build.
There’s heavy demand for project managers, senior superintendents, and Primavera P6 schedulers too. Hiring often moves more slowly because of security-clearance requirements, plus the need for people who’ve worked on fast-track, high-density construction projects.
Start early so you have the right leaders and hard-to-fill roles in place before the schedule starts to slip.
Lock in project executives, project controls, and schedulers during planning. Bring in MEP and commissioning leaders during design. Then hire superintendents, QA/QC, and safety staff before site mobilization.
It helps to look ahead by phase. Forecast labor needs 9–12 months out. For constrained roles, start searches 6–9 months early. At the same time, tie procurement milestones to the project schedule so long-lead equipment orders don’t drift and create avoidable delays.
