The Dodge Momentum Index rose 2.4% in September to 288.0, Dodge Construction Network said Oct. 7, and the gain came from hospitals, schools and government buildings. Institutional planning jumped 9.4% in the month. Commercial planning, the side of the index where data centers sit, fell 1.3%.
The more telling number sits lower in the release. Year over year, the commercial component is down 3.0%. Take data centers out and Dodge says it would be down 14.9%.
What the September Dodge Momentum Index measured
The index tracks the three-month moving value of nonresidential building projects entering planning, benchmarked to 2000 at 100. Dodge says it leads nonresidential building spending by a year to 18 months, which puts September’s entries into put-in-place numbers in late 2027 or early 2028. August was revised down to 281.3. The release doesn’t restate the original figure.
Against September 2025, the overall index is up 3.7% and the institutional component is up 17.2%. Within commercial, Dodge reported stronger planning for retail stores, hotels, office buildings and parking garages. Data centers and warehouses slowed by more than those four gained.
Read it with the usual limits. These are Dodge’s own tallies from its project database, not a survey with a margin of error, and the release gives no index values by building type. A project entering planning also isn’t a project that starts. Some stall at financing, some at the utility interconnect, some at the zoning board.
Hospital planning carried the institutional gain
Forty-five projects valued at $100 million or more entered planning in September. The three largest institutional entries were all hospitals in the Carolinas: a $346 million addition at Duke Raleigh Hospital, the $325 million Spartanburg Regional Heart & Vascular Hospital in South Carolina and a $319 million WakeMed hospital in Wendell, North Carolina.
The biggest commercial entries were still data centers. Dodge lists the $480 million Project North in Jermyn, Pennsylvania, and two $473 million buildings in Bastrop, Texas, identified only as EDCAUS15 and EDCAUS16.
Sarah Martin, Dodge’s director of economic research, said institutional planning led the month and that spending in those sectors “should see a marginally stronger late 2027.” Marginally is the right word. One month of healthcare entries clustered in two states is a data point, and a three-month moving value can swing on a handful of nine-figure filings.
Commercial planning without data centers is shrinking
Dodge attributes the 14.9% decline to a hard comparison with a surge late last year. Maybe so. But the direction matches what other gauges have said since summer. Architects reported billings of 47.2 in August, a contraction reading, and Dodge’s own starts data showed megaprojects concentrating work in a few regions while others thinned.
For a general contractor that doesn’t build data halls, the headline overstates the pipeline. A reading of 288 says planning value is nearly three times its 2000 benchmark. It doesn’t say a retail or office builder has more to bid.
The September report does carry one useful signal for firms outside the data center trade. Healthcare and education owners are putting large projects into design faster than they were a year ago, and those projects are usually funded through bond issues and capital plans, which makes them slower to cancel than a speculative shell. Estimators chasing 2027 volume have more reason to watch hospital systems in the Southeast than the next hyperscale announcement.
Data center planning slowed in September and still supplied the three biggest commercial projects of the month. That’s how lopsided the commercial side has become.