Workplace and specialist facilities for technology tenants.

Offices, labs, test facilities, comms rooms and light assembly space for technology and engineering businesses across South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales.

Group
Specialist and technical
  • A completed technology workplace with a glazed equipment room, illustrative of the building type
  • A completed technology workplace with an open stair, illustrative of the building type
  • A completed communications room with racks and cable trays, illustrative of the building type
Project capacity under a single contract
$20m
States we build in: South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales
3
Years of the director’s delivery experience
15+
Every instruction priced and approved in writing
100%

The constraint

A technology tenancy is an office with a technical building inside it.

The workplace half is straightforward. The half with the equipment in it is where the programme and the services capacity actually go.

Technology tenants tend to need two buildings in one lease: a normal workplace, and a set of rooms with requirements that a commercial tenancy was never sized for. Server and comms rooms, test benches, prototyping and light assembly, secure areas, and sometimes a laboratory.

Those rooms bring dedicated cooling, dedicated power, containment, acoustic separation, vibration and access control. Each of them draws on base building capacity that has to be confirmed in writing, and each of them carries a lead time that the workplace half does not.

One lease, two buildings

  1. The workplace half

    Open plan, meeting, collaboration, end-of-trip, front of house

    Large area · Light services · Short lead time

  2. The technical half

    Comms and server rooms, test benches, secure areas, labs

    Small area · Heavy services · Long lead

  3. Base building capacity

    Cooling, riser, condenser locations, structural allowance. Confirmed in writing, before design.

Rarely the constraint

A well-understood fitout with known trades and ordinary lead times. It follows the other half.

The small half sets the programme and draws on capacity the tenant does not own. That is why we ask the building manager the hard questions before the layout is agreed.

What we build

The two halves, and where they meet.

Workplace
Open plan, collaboration, meeting rooms, end-of-trip and front of house. Technology tenants typically brief higher occupant density and heavier power and data provision than a professional services tenant, which changes the services design more than the layout does.
Comms and server rooms
Dedicated cooling with its own condenser location, dedicated and often backed-up power, containment, early warning detection and access control. Physically small and disproportionately complex.
Test, prototyping and light assembly
Benches, three-phase supply, extraction, compressed air, floor loading and goods access. A small industrial fitout inside a commercial tenancy.
Laboratories
Where a technology tenant needs a laboratory, the containment, ventilation and services requirements are a separate discipline. We treat them as such.
Secure and restricted areas
Where a client works under a customer’s security requirements, access control, separation, cabling segregation and construction access all follow from those requirements rather than from convenience.
Growth
Technology tenancies change shape faster than most. Where a client anticipates it, designing spare capacity and a modular services strategy now is far cheaper than a second project later.

Sizing the room

Start at the equipment, finish at the room.

Nearly every comms room problem we are called into started with someone nominating a room on a plan before anyone had added up what was going into it.

Sizing a comms room, in sequence. Start from the equipment the client will actually install, which gives a heat load in kilowatts. The heat load sets the cooling, the cooling needs a condenser location which is a landlord question, and the equipment plus the cooling together set the electrical load. The electrical load has to be reconciled with the riser capacity, and only then is the room size and containment resolved. Skipping to room size first is the common error.

Size the room last, not first

  1. 1

    Equipment list

    from the client, not assumed

  2. 2

    Heat load

    in kilowatts, at capacity

  3. 3

    Cooling

    dedicated, not the floor system

  4. 4

    Condenser location

    a landlord question, always

  5. 5

    Electrical load

    equipment plus cooling

  6. 6

    Riser capacity

    confirmed in writing

  7. 7

    Backup and UPS

    runtime the business needs

  8. 8

    Room and containment

    the answer, not the question

The common error is starting at step eight. A room is nominated on a plan, the equipment arrives, and the cooling has nowhere to reject heat to.

The condenser location is a landlord conversation and it is the one step in this chain that a tenant cannot solve on their own.

The condenser location is the step a tenant cannot solve alone, and it is the one most often left until the equipment is on site. We put it to the building manager in week one.

The small rooms carry the programme. The open plan never does.

A completed technology workplace with a glazed equipment room, illustrative of the building type

The technical half

What each of those rooms actually needs.

  • Dedicated power

    Its own circuit, often backed up, sized from the equipment rather than from the floor area.

  • Dedicated cooling

    A high heat load in a small room, with a condenser that needs somewhere to reject to.

  • Access control

    Tied to the base building system, with cabling segregation where a customer requires it.

  • Containment and growth

    Cable containment sized for what comes next, because the second fitout costs more than the spare tray did.

Where we add value

What we bring to a technology fitout.

  1. Capacity firstThe base building questions: cooling, riser capacity, condenser locations, structural allowance. Answered in writing before the design commits to anything.
  2. Long leads earlyThe specialist plant in the technical rooms is ordered against a design that has to be frozen first. We identify those items in week one.
  3. Staged occupancyTechnology tenants frequently need to move in before the whole tenancy is finished. Planned deliberately, it works. Requested late, it costs.
  4. One team across both halvesThe workplace and the technical rooms are coordinated by the same people, which is where the interfaces stop falling between parties.

Projects

Prior firm: the director’s contribution at a previous firm, not JCGAU-delivered work.

Where to go next

  1. Office construction

    Workplace projects, from a single floor to a whole building.

  2. Fitout and refurbishment

    Working inside an existing building, including one that has to keep operating.

  3. Laboratories and research facilities

    Containment, ventilation and equipment loads, where the services are the project.

  4. Commercial construction

    Offices, retail, hospitality and institutional work, from fitout to new build.

Questions

Can you build the server room as part of the fitout?

Yes, and it should be part of the same contract. Splitting it out is where the coordination problems start.

We need to be in before the whole floor is done. Possible?

Usually, with staged completion designed into the programme and the occupation certificate path considered from the outset.

Our customer imposes security requirements on our site. Can you work to them?

Yes. Tell us what the requirements are and we build the site access, personnel and documentation arrangements around them.

Do you do laboratory work too?

Yes. There is a separate page covering laboratory and research facility construction in more detail.

Other sectors

Send us the floor plan and the equipment list.

The equipment list tells us more about your project than the workplace brief does.

Tell us about your projectCall 1300 909 938