A plan for the future

Indeed, to a remarkable degree, the building — even the floors Kirkland is not occupying — is being built to Kirkland's specifications.

"This baby is juiced up," says Aaron Bowman, Hines' construction manager for the base building, of Kirkland's tech requirements. Bowman isn't complaining, however. "If it wasn't for Kirkland, we wouldn't be doing the building at all so obviously we want them to be happy with the results."

Novak acknowledges that Hines took some persuading in some areas, mainly because the firm wasn't used to tenants arriving with such detailed tech requirements. "We got a lot of blank stares initially," says Novak. Ultimately, however, the developer realized the value of doing the building Kirkland's way. "As time went on," says Novak, "Hines saw that what we were designing into the building made sense and would be looked on favorably by other tenants."

The overall aim, he adds, is increased flexibility and reliability. For instance, power and electronic services enter most new office buildings through a single entryway in the basement. Kirkland, however, requested two such entryways with physical separation. "That way," says Novak, "if a backhoe in the street takes one out, it won't shut us down."

(One area where the firm had to compromise, however, was power sources: "We wanted the power to be delivered from two different grids," says Novak, "but it turns out that is a utility decision and not something you can specify in a lease.")

There are numerous additional redundancies in everything from chilled water for cooling to riser closets that effectively create a building within the building. The base building, for example, has two riser closets per floor. On Kirkland's floors, however, the firm has requested an additional two closets to house equipment for its in-house networks and systems.

"They're totally segregated," says Novak. "We're going to run our tenant services through our space, and they're going to run the building's services through the base building closets."

Another goal is efficiency. In order to minimize the amount of wiring in the building and also improve access to the system for maintenance technicians, Kirkland requested that these dedicated riser closets be stacked throughout its space.

The wiring itself is a mix of fibre optic and copper. "The backbone is fibre optic because of the flexibility it provides for present and future tech protocols, but out on the floor we're going to deliver service through copper," says Novak.

The firm is also anticipating the day when wireless and a number of other new technologies — some not even on the current horizon — will play a greater role by building in excess capacity and flexibility in a number of areas.

"Tech projections tend to be relatively accurate over an 18-month to three-year cycle," says Novak. "After that, the future becomes more fuzzy. But the way to accommodate future technologies is to build flexibility into the design. One of the ways you do that is by making sure you can increase your amperage over time. Even though individual devices are becoming more efficient in terms of power usage, the overall number of devices keeps increasing. The long-term trend is for more power. That means installing 12-gauge wire rather than 10-gauge even if 10 is all you need today."

It also means increasing the size of the building's water pipes to allow for additional cooling capacity and making sure equipment is easily accessible, which is part of the reason for the already mentioned dedicated riser closets.

Also key is not basing your design on the requirements of any one vendor's equipment. "You don't want to design your space for Vendor A because Vendor A may not be around in three to five years," says Falkin from Baker Robbins. "You design it in a way so that it is flexible enough to accommodate a range of different vendors and technologies." As data centers become more densely packed with equipment, he adds, "the difficult issues here aren't necessarily about space but about things like power, cooling and cabling. From a future standpoint, it's all about designing these core systems in a manner that allows you to grow or shrink as your needs change."

The heart of any big company's tech program, of course, is the data center. Kirkland's will share space on the fourth floor with the base building's mechanical operations, a relatively unusual arrangement but advantageous from a cost point of view because such spaces, like data centers, typically are built with heavier floors. "We were able to benefit from the standard engineering that comes into play on mechanical floors," says Novak.

Kirkland's 740-square-metre data centre will contain four 625 kVA Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) systems, 240 tons of cooling capacity and a 2000-kilowatt generator.

The firm's top-to-bottom approach also included demands for prime space on the roof for its satellite communications equipment. The roof, says Novak, is something that needs to be addressed very early in the process because it affects the aesthetics or look of the facade. He added that Kirkland hasn't fully defined what it will use the space for but that an antenna to boost wireless signals within the building is likely.

A CIO-landlord partnership

Kirkland — which has a substantial in-house real estate practice — also devised a unique 100-plus-page lease that includes a 20-page subsection devoted to tech requirements.

"We've never seen anything like that lease," says Hines' Bowman.

"We originally started down the traditional path where tech requirements are scattered throughout the lease but it just became too cumbersome to manage all the information," says Novak. "You have a sentence here and a clause there and it's difficult to keep track of all of it — especially because we had a far more detailed program than is customary. Also, what started to be a challenge was we found that we would add elements to the lease and then somewhere along the way they would get changed during some other conversation or negotiation. The solution was to make the tech portion of the lease a discrete document. It's harder to change that."

Novak adds, "I think this is probably a good foreshadowing of what the future will be like in tech lease negotiations."

The lease is infinitely detailed. Among the clauses is one that requires Hines to insulate Kirkland's systems from electromagnetic flux interference — that is, interference from other electronic systems in a certain area of the base building.

"If any of their riser rooms are adjacent to elevator control rooms," says Bowman, "we're required to steel-plate the wall that separates them."

The financial pluses of this approach should be obvious. Whatever becomes part of the base building is the developer's responsibility. "Whatever is in the lease is our responsibility, so 90 percent of the buildout is on our nickel," says Bowman.

Ultimately, Novak believes Hines acquiesced because even the most elaborate tech program doesn't involve much additional cost — especially when it's addressed in the early design stages. "It's almost like working with a clean slate," he says. "It's very easy to make changes on paper. I really believe that half the battle is knowing what you want and asking for it."