The UK end of Digital Equipment Corp is moving into property design and management, offering to plan the entire building and computing requirements of companies moving to new buildings. DEC has set up an Intelligent Building Services division within its Services Group which will be made up of around 50 of its internal property staff. Marketing manager of the service Nigel Dowler says the division will organise all aspects of a company’s building, from finding a suitable site, designing the building – including the information technology infrastructure co-ordinating builders and finally handing over the keys to the client. And of course having installed the cabling, DEC will be happy to provide the network. Dowler says the division’s staff are qualified to advise a company on a new building because of experience gained through setting up DEC’s own UK sites – it has about 80 – as well as the experience of installing networks for other companies. Specialists will be brought in to advise on areas such as building security, but DEC’s own people will handle the facilities management, building design and information technology infrastructure as well as co-ordinating the whole project. Dowler says the service is being set up in response to the many office buildings that are poorly designed in terms of computing needs – we will design a building that meets the building requirements rather than meets architectural awards briefs. But although the DEConnect cabling will be installed to industry standards he acknowledges that it would not be ideal for installing, for example, an IBM network, if you went IBM you would be advised to install a proprietary cabling system specifically for the IBM environment. The service is initially being offered in the UK only, but it will eventually be introduced on a worldwide basis.
