When WGNSTAR, the fab services company that specializes in staffing semiconductor operations, went up for sale, there were two private equity bidders and ABM . “When we met with ABM, we very quickly got that feel that it was the best fit,” said Geoffrey Stoddart, now VP of Europe and international business development at ABM. ABM closed the acquisition earlier this year. To explain where the combined company plays, Stoddart breaks a fab’s life cycle into six phases: facility construction, facility fit-out, equipment install and ramp, full-scale operations, process/node upgrades (where a tool or a line is swapped out while the fab keeps running) and, finally, fab decommissioning. ABM groups them into three themes: build, run and evolve ( FIGURE 1 ). Where the pieces fit WGNSTAR’s strength was in the middle. About 80% of its people worked in fab operations, roughly 15% supported OEMs with tool installs, and about 5% handled decommissioning. ABM is heavier in construction and facilities. Stoddart said he hadn’t realized that before a new cleanroom is commissioned, a crew of 300 or more people does a “super clean.” ABM’s acquisition of RavenVolt also brought electrical engineering and install capability, including connecting fab substations to the grid. ABM CEO Scott Salmirs described the combination as a dartboard, Stoddart said, with ABM around the edge and WGNSTAR toward the bullseye, whether measured by value, margin or technical expertise. People are the other half of the story. ABM has about 140,000 employees, predominantly in the U.S. In Arizona alone, Stoddart said, ABM has about 3,500 people, compared with a few hundred for WGNSTAR. Someone who can pass drug, background and site-access checks for construction-phase work could later be trained for technical operator roles. “We’re looking at ways we can train our own workforce to go on to higher-value opportunities,” he said, through training centers the company is building out. A decade of U.S. construction Stoddart sees the U.S. market alone as enough to drive growth for the next 10 years. He pointed to TSMC’s expanded Arizona commitment, which he expects to reach six to eight fabs plus two advanced packaging facilities; Intel’s Fab 62 in Chandler; Micron in Boise; Samsung’s Texas expansion; Elon Musk’s proposed Terafab; Texas Instruments; and Wolfspeed. He called Intel, TSMC, Samsung and Tesla “the big four” for new construction. Packaging is following the wafers, with Amkor and TSMC both committing to Arizona. On the gap between Taiwan and U.S. build times, Stoddart, who spent years in Taiwan, said he once saw a fab go from groundbreaking to first silicon in nine months. The difference, he said, is less about worker willingness than an ecosystem of subcontractors who know exactly what to do. TSMC’s first Arizona fab struggled with local code compliance and coordinating multiple general contractors, but he expects the next phases to come up much faster. “The U.S. has the capability to do it,” he said. “It just needs to be better managed.” Editor’s note: In the interest of efficiency and timeliness, this article was drafted with the help of AI (Claude, from Anthropic), working from a recording of an interview arranged by Bodewell Group and the company’s press materials. It was reviewed and edited by Semiconductor Digest. The post ABM Maps the Six Phases of a Fab’s Life appeared first on Semiconductor Digest .