The (Almost) Daily Brief

Subcontractor Sues Over Concrete Stronger Than Specified on $819 Million Tunnel

By Megan Dayton · 10/22/2026

ENG  MISO has asked federal regulators to set reliability conditions on loads above 50 MW. The grid operator filed an interconnection reliability requirements framework at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Aug. 28, answering show cause orders the commission issued in June. It covers four areas: visibility, including modeling data and day-ahead and real-time load forecasts; phasor measurement unit monitoring for computational loads; limits on how fast computational loads may ramp up or down through stable-state transitions; and minimum ride-through performance during voltage and frequency disturbances. Computational loads are large loads carrying at least 25 MW of information technology equipment demand. MISO asked that the framework take effect Dec. 4 and said further proposals would follow by Nov. 16. A separate Oct. 2 filing would create a 120-day Large Load Addition Resource Study for loads above 200 MW paired with new generation in the same local resource zone, carrying non-refundable deposits, a 15-year pairing requirement, and commercial operation within three years of application. MISO asked for a decision by Dec. 2. Minnesota sits inside the MISO footprint.

Sources: Utility Dive, Sept. 1; Utility Dive, Oct. 5

POLICY  Northfield has put a power efficiency floor and a water-cooling trigger on new data centers. The city council held the second reading on Oct. 20 of Ordinance 1098, which adds data processing performance standards to the city’s land development code. An operation must document and certify that its buildings are designed to an average power usage effectiveness of 1.4 or better, and must document a water usage effectiveness ratio at start-up. Free cooling, direct liquid, rack, or room cooling may be permitted without a conditional use permit; water cooling requires one, and the water use must then meet at least two of four conditions, among them recycled and non-potable water making up at least 60 percent of withdrawals, and operation at or near the ASHRAE-recommended upper temperature limit. No more than 20 percent of dissipated heat may be released directly outside when the average daily temperature is under 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Buildings must stand at least 25 feet tall, and the 65-foot maximum applies only where all setbacks increase one foot for every two feet of height above 50 feet. A site must hold at least 25 acres at a floor area ratio of 0.5. No grid-connected system receives a certificate of occupancy until the operator shows that the electrical utility has approved the installation, and systems demonstrating use of as close to 100 percent renewable energy as possible are exempt from that requirement. Noise testing is required before occupancy. The ordinance also cuts the setback from an existing or planned park, trail, or other recreation feature from 3,950 feet to 200 feet, matching the setback already required from any residential dwelling. The first reading passed unanimously on Oct. 6. Publication is set for Oct. 28 and the ordinance takes effect Nov. 27.

Sources: Northfield Ordinance 1098; Northfield.org, Oct. 21

PROJECTS  Eagan has approved a $500 million rebuild of Ecolab’s research campus. The city announced on Oct. 21 that its council approved Ecolab’s development plans for the Allan L. Schuman campus at 655 Lone Oak Drive. The work spans 2027 through 2030 and adds 105,000 square feet, carrying the building total to 725,000 square feet on an 89-acre site developed in 1989 as Cray Research’s headquarters and bought by Ecolab in 2004. Plans cover laboratories, customer experience areas, and employee amenities. The city’s announcement also names revitalized outdoor and gathering spaces, infrastructure improvements, and regenerative systems including geothermal energy and provisions for future solar capability. Ecolab reported $16.1 billion in 2025 revenue and operates in 170 countries.

Source: Twin Cities Business, Oct. 21

BIZ  Architecture firms now put this year’s revenue below last year’s. The Architecture Billings Index registered 44.7 in September, down from 47.2 in August, on the AIA and Deltek survey of architecture firm billings. A score below 50 means more firms reported falling billings than rising ones. Project inquiries held at 53.2 while the design contracts index came in at 43.7, so firms are still being asked to price work that is not converting to signed contracts. On a three-month moving average, billings read 50.6 in the Midwest and 50.7 in the West, against 43.1 in the South and 39.1 in the Northeast. By specialization, commercial and industrial firms registered 50.9, institutional firms 47.6, and multifamily residential firms 42.9. Firms put their own 2026 net revenue at an average of -2.9 percent against 2025, with 45.2 percent expecting a decline of 5 percent or deeper. For 2027 they project -0.9 percent, with 35.5 percent expecting revenue to hold within 5 percent of this year.

Sources: AIA and Deltek Architecture Billings Index, September 2026; Archinect, Oct. 21

POLICY  Verizon is arguing that federal approval lets it retire copper lines without state consent. The carrier has notified Minnesota customers that it may begin decommissioning its copper network as soon as mid-November, offering a cellular hotspot in place of the landline. The company counts 20,000 Minnesota customers on traditional telephone service. Verizon absorbed Frontier’s legacy Minnesota network in January under a $20 billion acquisition, inheriting lines running from the Twin Cities metro to northern lake country. The Federal Communications Commission opened the path in a rule issued in March that revised what qualifies as an adequate replacement service and added wireless to the approved list. Verizon filed suit last month to proceed without the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission’s sign-off, and the commission has logged two dozen protest letters, including one from the Saint Louis County sheriff. The company puts the cost of running the Minnesota copper network at $20 million per year. It says it will wait for the case to resolve before setting a disconnection timeline and will maintain copper voice service where no adequate replacement exists. In Scandia, where the mayor estimates 100 properties sit outside the fiber network, a MidCo broadband build-out funded through infrastructure grants may not finish before the proposed cutoff.

Source: Minnesota Star Tribune, Oct. 22

ENG  Preservation work is expected to add 25 years of service life to Minneapolis concrete streets, carrying total pavement life to 65 to 70 years. The Minneapolis Public Works Department launched a concrete pavement preservation strategy in 2016 and has since expanded it citywide, most recently in the Kenwood neighborhood along Lake of the Isles and Cedar Lake. First-year work covered six to eight miles of concrete streets in Waite Park, using diamond grinding, partial-depth and full-depth repairs, joint and crack sealing, and ADA ramp construction. The city now targets three to four miles per year and uses indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts to flex scope and budget allocation. Techniques include slab stabilization to fill voids beneath slabs, dowel bar retrofitting to distribute loads across joints, and cross-stitching to reinforce low-severity cracks. Dan Labo, executive director of the Concrete Pavement Association of Minnesota, credited the city with “prioritizing long-term strategies over short-term fixes.”

Source: Roads & Bridges, Oct. 19

FUNDING  The University of Minnesota is cutting every campus, college and unit over two fiscal years. Officials for the major institution circulated a chart on Oct. 14 putting total cost reductions across the five campuses at $230.3 million to $261.8 million over two fiscal years, above the $225 million announced in late September. The Twin Cities campus would carry $131 million to $146 million of that. Crookston and Duluth would see the largest percentage reductions at 10 to 11 percent, with Morris and Rochester at 6 to 8 percent. The College of Liberal Arts, the unit with the largest budget, would take 9 to 10 percent, or $25 million to $26.5 million. The agriculture and natural resources college would take 11 percent, or $11.4 million to $11.7 million; a graduate student there described refrigerators and freezers in the Crop Research Building going out of service and Saint Paul campus buildings already needing maintenance. Deans, chancellors and vice presidents will decide how the reductions fall inside their units. President Rebecca Cunningham said the final figure will depend on state and federal funding but will not fall below $225 million.

Source: Minnesota Star Tribune, Oct. 16

PROJECTS  Hermantown redrew a transmission route to avoid a shoreland impact zone. The City Council voted 5 to 0 on Oct. 19 to approve a route permit for the lines that would feed a proposed data center, after 90 minutes of public comment that largely opposed it. Minnesota Power plans two 1.6-mile lines rated to 230 kV connecting its Arrowhead Substation, which adjoins the site, to Google’s proposed 1.7-million-square-foot campus near Morris Thomas and Midway roads. Google would pay for the $23 million project. The original alignment would have crossed an intermittent stream in the southwest corner of the site, and the city determined that the revised route no longer enters a shoreland impact zone, so its shoreland ordinance does not apply. That ordinance had expired. Opponents questioned at the meeting whether the data center’s alternative urban areawide review and the line’s environmental assessment were stringent enough.

Source: Duluth News Tribune, Oct. 20

BIZ  3M is moving two product lines out of Minnesota and closing the Fairmont plant that makes them. An April notification letter from the company’s Industrial Adhesives and Tapes Division put Dual-Lock production moving to Knoxville, Iowa, and Hook and Loop production to Aberdeen, South Dakota, with the transition beginning in the fourth quarter of 2026 and manufacturing at Fairmont discontinued by early 2027. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported on Oct. 22 that 3M has filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification covering 62 jobs at the 145,000-square-foot plant, with layoffs falling between Dec. 18 and Dec. 31. The company has closed 16 sites this year under a manufacturing and supply-chain efficiency program and told analysts on Oct. 20 that restructuring and factory consolidation are lifting gross margin, with further gains anticipated through 2028.

Sources: 3M, Industrial Adhesives and Tapes Division notification letter, April 2026; Minnesota Star Tribune print edition, Oct. 22

ENG  MnDOT has put 13 strategies behind its connected-vehicle program for the next three years. The agency released its Connected and Automated Vehicles Tactical Plan on Oct. 19, one of seven plans guiding its Transportation Systems Management and Operations work over that period. The September 2026 document groups them into three focus areas: policy, education and engagement; business operations; and research, development and implementation. The agency includes advancing legislation that supports safe connected and automated vehicle operations, defining data needs, sources, and management approaches, strengthening project management standards, updating future funding programs, and holding alignment with national standards. The plan builds on the agency’s 2019 strategic plan, and the program began in 2018.

Source: MnDOT, CAV Tactical Plan, Oct. 19

BIZ  U.S. industrial space under construction has reached its highest level since early 2024. JLL counted 33 speculative industrial buildings of at least 1 million square feet under construction in the third quarter, against 18 in the second. Space under construction rose 28.7 percent from a year earlier and 14.8 percent from the prior quarter. Build-to-suit and owner-user projects accounted for 100.1 million square feet, 32.4 percent of the pipeline against a five-year average of 26.8 percent. Advanced manufacturers are prioritizing available power and skilled labor, and newer buildings carry climate control, crane capability, and space for automation that existing stock lacks.

Source: Engineering News-Record, Oct. 20

POLICY  Virginia will issue its own coal-ash permits in place of the federal program. The Environmental Protection Agency approved the state’s coal combustion residuals permit program under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act on Oct. 22, effective Nov. 23. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality’s partial program will operate in lieu of the federal program except for provisions the rule reserves. Coal combustion residuals units are the ash ponds and landfills at coal-fired plants, and a state permit program sets the review path for their closure, capping, liner work, and groundwater monitoring. The rule runs at 91 FR 66643 under docket EPA-HQ-OLEM-2025-3325.

Source: Federal Register, Oct. 22

PROJECTS  Cirrus Aircraft has broken ground in Duluth on an enclosed engine test building. The $11 million Aircraft Engine Run-Up Center will run 15,000 square feet and give crews an indoor space to test engines and calibrate fuel systems, work now done on the ramp. Rosanna Hon, vice president of quality and process excellence, said the building “takes work off the ramp and out of the weather,” and dated the idea to three years ago. Kraus-Anderson is the contractor and completion is expected in the second quarter of 2027; no designer has been publicly identified. The center adds to 1.3 million square feet the manufacturer already holds in the Duluth area, where it employs 2,000 people.

Source: WDIO, Oct. 21

BIZ  Tariffs are showing up in the price a developer can sign for solar output. The average solar power purchase agreement rose 4.9 percent to $64.23 per megawatt-hour in the third quarter, 6 percent above a year earlier and 12.7 percent above the third quarter of 2024, on LevelTen Energy’s figures. Wind agreements held flat for the quarter and stand 13.8 percent above a year earlier and 27.5 percent above 2024. Sarah Wolf, LevelTen’s director of North America transactions, put the Section 232 tariffs announced in August at $3 to $7 per megawatt-hour once they take effect later this year, and said more than half of solar modules have been repriced. Buyers are contracting ahead of that date, and current rules bar developers from stockpiling modules. Hyperscalers took 99 percent of new-build agreements signed in the first quarter, and first-time buyers fell to their lowest count since 2016.

Source: Utility Dive, Oct. 21

WORKFORCE  One of 14 new state workforce grants lands inside a Minnesota civil engineering firm. The Department of Employment and Economic Development announced 14 Minnesota Jobs Skills Partnership grants on Oct. 20 totaling $2.5 million to eight educational institutions partnered with employers, with grantees expecting to train 2,000 workers. Anoka-Ramsey Community College took $49,625 to build a five-course, 48-hour program delivered on site over twelve months at PE Services of Eagan, whose work covers design and plan preparation, specification and plan review, construction oversight, schedule analysis, contract administration, project controls, and environmental compliance. Hennepin Technical College took $200,000 for a course with solar module maker Heliene USA at its Mountain Iron and Rogers plants, built with Minnesota North College. Since 2019 the program has awarded $47.5 million, trained 47,000 workers, and leveraged $79.1 million in private funding.

Source: Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, Oct. 20

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