Livingston Place West

In 2007, Provident Energy fitted out 180,000 sq ft across ten floors of Livingston Place West in downtown Calgary, and chose a prefabricated zonal data cabling platform over a conventional on-site terminated system. Eighteen years and four occupants later, that same installation is still in service. Each successive tenant has reconfigured the space around it rather than replacing it — and the most recent fit-out reused every existing data port, saving over $100,000 against the cost of a new system.

Conventional office fit-outs put most of the work on site. Cabling is terminated in place, becomes a fixed part of the building, and is written off when the tenancy ends. Most of the cost sits in labour rather than material, which means none of it can be recovered.

Over a long lease that adds up twice over. Every reconfiguration — and offices reconfigure constantly — means new on-site work. And when the tenant leaves, the next occupant starts again from nothing.

When Provident Energy designed their space at Livingston Place West, they set out to avoid that. The brief called for maximum flexibility throughout: demountable office partitions, a plug-and-play power solution, and a zonal plug-and-play data system.

Tekena supplied and installed the data communications system: a standards-compliant, pre-terminated plug-and-play platform that requires no on-site termination and uses consolidation points to support a zonal design.

• Factory built and tested — built around a cassette system, cutting installation time by around 75% with no compromise to quality or reliability.
• Zonal design — consolidation points across each floor, so reconfiguration stays local to the area being changed rather than running back to the riser.
• No price premium — delivered at no additional cost against an on-site terminated, inflexible system.
• Investment in material, not labour — which is what makes the infrastructure recoverable rather than written off.

Because most of the value sits in the product rather than the installation, the system can be reconfigured, reused, or removed and redeployed elsewhere. That distinction is what the following eighteen years demonstrate.

Four companies have now occupied the space, and each has reconfigured it around the original installation.

• Provident Energy, from 2007 — changes to the design were absorbed during construction at little or no cost. Over the following two years, major business change drove significant revisions to the layout. Provident went on record that the modular environment saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction costs, and let the changes be fast-tracked against a fixed infrastructure design.
• Pembina Pipelines — following the acquisition of Provident, the space was sub-leased. On every floor the incoming tenant reused the existing infrastructure, with layout changes achieved at minimal time and cost.
• Enbridge — occupied the top four floors for three years. Despite significant changes to those floors, the cabling infrastructure continued in use without issue through many moves and changes.
• Long View Systems — took the floors on and significantly increased user density, which a traditional data system could not have supported without a full replacement. Additional consolidation points were added for the extra users, but every existing data port was reused, saving over $100,000 against the cabling budget.

The Long View refit ran to an aggressive schedule: three floors in four weeks. On a conventional system that timeline would most likely have been unachievable.

The most telling detail is what Pembina chose not to do. Because the system is prefabricated and pre-terminated rather than built into the fabric of the building, it can be removed and redeployed — treated as a portable asset in the same way as demountable partitions or furniture. Pembina could have taken it with them. They left it in place as a sub-lease incentive, and installed the same platform in their new environment at Eighth Avenue Place, along with their new-build satellite offices.

That is the argument for treating cabling as an asset rather than a sunk cost. The value did not end when the original tenant left. It has been realised four times over, by four different businesses, in a building that is still working eighteen years on.