DPR Construction, one of the nation’s top technical builders and a leading builder of data centers, has been awarded a $121 million contract from Facebook to construct a data center in Lulea, Sweden. The project will be constructed in a joint venture between NCC Construction Sweden and Fortis Construction in Portland. This is the first of three data centers planned for the area.

With construction commencing this month, the 300,000-square-foot project is scheduled for completion in December 2012. Facebook has imposed stringent energy-classification requirements, and the data center will be certified in accordance with LEED Gold-level certification.

“As one of the nation’s leading data center builders, we’re excited to be a part of the team to deliver Facebook’s first data center outside of the U.S.,” said Eric Lamb, executive vice president for DPR Construction. DPR, along with joint venture partner Fortis Construction, is currently building data centers for Facebook in Prineville, Ore., and Forest City, N.C. (part of the Open Compute Project). DPR also has completed and fully commissioned more than $1.8 billion worth of data center projects since 2006.