Any office building must be designed to accommodate the occupant's current needs and future needs, and above all, it should be designed to forestall obsolescence. Current needs for a new or renovated building are relatively easy to tabulate by using corporate experience, conducting an inventory, and interviewing a cross section of employees. However with the rapid pace of technological improvement and ever changing organisational structures, no one can accurately predict any organisation's future needs.

The cost per megabyte of computing capacity keeps going down, permitting more and more employees to have computing power right at their desks. The advances in telecommunications now permit national and international networking, and modern personal branch exchanges can he integrated into local information networks. Facsimile is no longer a luxury. and, for a low cost, can even be incorporated into personal computers. Building, lighting, air conditioning and security systems can he controlled by a personal computer in the building engineers office. It is clear, therefore, that the Information Age is here - now, and it will continue to change and improve the way we do business. All of this progress demands a new outlook on planning and constructing buildings. and some insight into assuring that all the building systems are integrated so they become mutually supporting.

Often people confuse Intelligent Buildings with High-Tech Buildings. This is totally wrong. An intelligent building is not gadget-oriented. You don't have to have talking elevators or mail carts that wander through the building on their own. An intelligent building must be designed as already stated above, to suit the present needs of the occupants. It must easily and economically accommodate change, have its basic elements integrated into a synergetic whole, and above all, be cost effective. In reality, an intelligent building reflects the knowledge and the intelligence of its planners.

Well, now that we are convinced, and we have decided to be innovative and intelligent, can we afford it? What is the cost to build an intelligent building? Believe it or not, an intelligent building call be built with much less initial cost than is commonly perceived. In fact, the initial cost of an intelligent building can come close to equating to the initial cost of a traditional building. The big pay-off in an intelligent building is in its sharply reduced life cycle cost and its insulation from obsolescence. Unfortunately, many decision makers, along with their bankers, have an upfront-cost-syndrome and they choose not to look at the ultimate costs that would include life-cycle costs.

The intelligent Building Institute in United States, working with some of its member companies in determining the cost of various types of building, has come to the conclusion that the ultimate solution to the problem of being flexible in today's modern environments, is the Raised Assess Floor. We are definitely adding to the building cost by using the raised floor, but this is exactly where we have to be really careful, because raised floor produces major cost savings in other costs of construction that come to zeroing out the initial cost for the raised access floor. Some of these savings, are produced by the following:

• avoiding the need for poke-through devices;
• reducing rigid duct and conduit;
• avoiding traditional fixed wiring methods;
• no requirement for levelling the screed;
• eliminating the need for hand screeding the floor slab;
• less complex concrete preparation;
• savings in pre-engineering cost;
• eliminating the need to electrify systems furniture and demountable partitions;
• direct-path routing of electrical and communications wiring;
• reduced height of construction;
• save the cost of false ceiling;
• reduced program time on site;
• reduced cost of re-configuration:

The space between the access floor and the building slab serves as a high-capacity electrical closet. A major problem facing the building planner in accommodating future advances in technology is the amount of space that must be allocated for electrical closets. If you are planning for today's technology, the problem is rather simple. But what can you do about tomorrow's technology? The space you allocate for today and tomorrow's needs would, at best, be a guess. It is not only a problem of forecasting technological advances, but it is also a problem of forecasting the future changing needs of the organisation occupying the facility.

Access floor also simplifies wiring. It goes without saying that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. In a clustered distribution system in which each underfloor distribution point serves locations in a 3 -to- 5 meters radius from the distribution point, the feeder whips can be routed directly to each workstation and do not have to follow a set path such as they would with cellular deck or with above-ceiling wiring trays.Follow-on changes when using raised access floor, are as simple as plugging a lamp into a wall socket - no electrician or telephone technician required, and thus more money is saved.

The broader applicability of access floors has been boosted by the greater flexibility introduced by the 1996 change in the Electronic Industry Association / Telecommunications Industry Association's, 568 standard for telecommunications cabling. This revision eliminates the need to change the full length of wire from an individual workstation to a telecommunications closet when rearranging furniture. An interruption placed in the cabling makes connecting and disconnecting from a network simpler than ever. This reduces a company's dependence on outside contractors to rearrange electronic equipment and furniture by allowing owners to make changes on their own

To be continued.
Topics to be discussed: Perfectly levelled floor and under-floor conditioned air delivery for temperature comfort.