There's a famous quote by George Bernard Shaw that highlights the importance of strong communication and alignment. It goes, "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Of course, in order for communication to actually take place, teams need to speak the same technical and operational language.
Hantong Song, Infra DC Design, Engineering, Construction (DEC) Systems Operations Lead at Meta, has made it his #1 priority to make that possible.
In his role, Hantong strives to bridge the gap between the traditional construction industry and the fast-moving world of tech. He leads software governance and tooling for Meta's data center constructions and has spent the past few years helping builders and technologists speak the same language using data, metrics, and shared systems.
We recently caught up with Hantong to learn how he's driving standardization and collaboration across Meta's data center operations. Check out our conversation below.
I joined Meta in March 2018 as a BIM Coordinator, and I was the first—and only—one to bridge the gap between the traditional construction industry and the tech world. We created that role because we were seeing a large wave of construction coming, and the tech world had a very different mentality—one that focused on using data for data-driven decision-making. That approach was very different from what was happening in the construction industry. Meta needed someone who could understand both worlds and bridge them so we could speak the same language. That's why they created the role, and they found me on LinkedIn.
The funny thing is, when they first reached out, I said, "Hey, I'm an engineer—I don't know anything about programming," not realizing they were building a large team for construction. They asked me to hop on a call and described the position. I was really interested, and I thought it might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to switch industries. So, I accepted the offer.
My job title is a mouthful. By trade, I'm a civil engineer with a focus on construction management. I started my career with a construction tech startup, which Autodesk acquired in 2011.
After that, I moved on to a traditional GC company. I worked at Turner for four years, where I started in VDC and then transitioned into an MEP Assistant PM role on the project side. Those four years gave me deep knowledge of how construction works and a lot of hands-on field experience.
Then, I joined a general contractor called Plaza Construction, where I started my own VDC department and served as the head of that department. Those three years gave me valuable experience managing a team.
I believe the combination of field experience and team management has really prepared me for this role at Meta. I have a solid understanding of both construction work and construction data, and I believe that unique combination made me the best candidate to connect Meta's data center construction with the tech-driven world of management.
It's being able to help both the construction industry and the tech world understand each other. There was a huge gap between them. The two industries have very different mentalities when it comes to how work gets done. In construction, it's more like, "Hold my VR headset, let's fix this right now," whereas in the tech world, it's more "What does the data say, and what's the trajectory?"
At the time, the business need was to merge these two industries—to bring the experts from each side together and make sure they understood one another, especially the "why" behind their approaches. That's what I focused on. Through a lot of collaboration, training, and countless meetings, we were able to shift the culture.
We designed and implemented metrics and dashboards that became the common language between the two industries. That, to me, is my proudest accomplishment—they're finally speaking the same language and truly understanding each other.
That challenge is very similar to what I mentioned earlier—it's about bridging the gap, but in this case, it's more about helping the tech side understand the realities of construction.
I'll give you an example. Everyone is focused on AI right now, and data centers play an essential role as the underlying infrastructure. But a lot of people don't understand why we can't just build a data center in two seconds. That's one of the biggest challenges—everyone's under pressure, and there's a desire to complete physical infrastructure as soon as possible.
That's where data helps the team understand that what they're asking for is sometimes physically impossible. I can't share exact numbers, but to give you a general idea: we were working on the schedule for one of our largest data centers. And people were asking why we couldn't finish it in six months.
So, I used historical data from similar projects to show the reality. I said, "If we want to finish this project in six months, we'd need to move four truckloads of earth every single minute." That's just not physically possible.
So, we used what they're familiar with—i.e., data—to show them the physical constraints. This helped them understand the problem first and figured out a way around or to meet in the middle.
That, to me, was the biggest challenge. And we overcame it using data.
We're using ACC intensively. We actually have a long history with the product. I was the one who introduced BIM 360 to the Meta DC team, and that was the start of our construction data gathering. Based on that, we defined a matrix. Now, we know how to use the data to evaluate performance and quality.
We've collaborated a lot with the Autodesk team to provide feedback. We also share our matrices and dashboards, which have evolved into the Insight tool. We were probably the most intensive users of Checklists back then, with the highest number of checklists in the system. We provided feedback on it, and now it has become the Forms tool.
Our projects are always unique in terms of scope and challenging in terms of data needs—because every time, we need new data, new sets of metrics, new requirements, and continuous improvement. ACC has been our go-to tool for gathering construction data. Despite some software limitations, we're working together with Autodesk to influence future features and prepare the product for other similar construction projects of the same scale.
So, while I can't share specific project data, ACC—as I mentioned—has been the go-to tool. It helps us gather information, segregate and aggregate the data, provide insights, and support broader teams in understanding construction and making informed, data-driven decisions.
The ecosystem is very important, especially when everyone is onboarded with our mindset of using data. There are various types of information, and the different types of data often don't talk to each other. We need to streamline and standardize all tools to reduce the translation effort, because translation becomes the biggest source of misalignment.
One advantage of being the owner is that we can effectively leverage our relationships with partners, and we've been leading with a mindset of utilizing data. We share the dashboards and we use them as the primary tools for collaboration and communication. Gradually, our partners adapted. They realized that this was the language we were speaking, and they began speaking the same language to better collaborate with us.
We've gradually changed the culture and the way the infrastructure and construction industry manages projects. We have five—or maybe seven—of the top GCs in the U.S. working on our projects. And over the past few years, all of them have come on board with the way we manage things. They've even started managing their projects with different owners in the same way.
We've found a strong synergy rooted in data usage and a shared decision-making process. It has helped us quickly eliminate friction, reduce misunderstandings, and minimize the risk of misalignment—because data doesn't lie.
Since we have a large amount of data, we slice and dice it in the way we want and ensure that we design a set of metrics that make sense for construction. It's not just a summary—it provides deeper insights. There are two or more layers with calculations and formulas beyond a basic summary.
We then presented this to our partners: "Hey, look, we want to use this set of metrics to evaluate performance, and here's why we believe it's a fair and accurate measurement." We got them on board, and they realized this could be a valuable tool—not just for Meta projects, but for other projects they manage as well.
That's how the collaboration started—testing the waters. All our partners benefited from it. They realized its value, began to explore it more deeply, made tweaks, and gave us feedback. Collaboratively, we refined the metrics and the way we present the data to extract the most insights and prepare ourselves for any future risks.
We have a lot of innovations in the pipeline. In fact, innovation has become one of our OKRs for 2025.
There's a huge amount of work ahead of us, and doing things the same way we did before won't meet our business needs. We've initiated numerous discussions on new initiatives, exploring the current state of the industry and its future direction in terms of construction-related innovation.
We are also studying the various technologies available, both software and hardware, to determine how we can effectively integrate them and utilize other technology to tailor it for the construction industry. That way, we could benefit from boosted productivity and efficiency.
We actually have internal channels of communication processes to manage all innovation requests. Our ideas go through several layers of testing until we finally approve it and make it a programmatic implementation.
Construction is changing, and so is everyone else. Data, robotics, and automation will play a critical part in the traditional construction industry.
To be successful, people need to possess domain knowledge or experience from both construction and tech worlds to find the best balance and integrate them effectively. So my recommendation is to take advantage of both.
Construction is one of the oldest industries. It will be there for a long time. However, technology is changing and shaping the industry, which means we need to be equipped with the latest tech.
So, that's my advice. Don't just dive into one single industry; make sure that you have a broader view and always look for new ways to leverage one to help the other.
