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 fiber optic and copper. “The backbone is fiber 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.