Panduit Corporation Announces Opening of New World Headquarters Building in Suburban Chicago

TINLEY PARK, Ill., June 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Panduit Corporation is proud to announce the opening of its new World Headquarters building today in Tinley Park, Ill. The building, which incorporates Panduit's Unified Physical Infrastructure(SM) (UPI) approach, represents a dramatic leap forward in collaboration, smart and healthy work environments, energy reduction, and cost savings. The UPI approach delivers optimal efficiency without sacrificing effectiveness – significantly reducing capital and operational expenses in buildings while enhancing productivity, safety, reliability, and sustainability.

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"Panduit's new world headquarters brings to life our vision for creating environmentally sustainable and healthy places to work," states John Caveney, CEO. "We set out with a mission to create the 'building of the future,' and we feel we've set a new precedent by combining state-of-the-art visibility and control for all critical building systems, sustainable energy, operational cost savings and intelligent design features − all aligned under a single unified infrastructure."

The five-story building comprises 280,000 square feet of office, conferencing and training space, enabling collaboration through open office concepts, shared work spaces, and the deployment of the latest technologies to connect internal and external employees, partners and customers. The space will initially serve 550 employees and is able to accommodate a total of 800. The company in total now employs over 4,000 people globally.

The world headquarters is an important step in the evolution of Panduit, providing a proof of concept for UPI that demonstrates intelligent design, implementation and management of unified systems and building architecture. The new building reflects Panduit's transformation and commitment to solving customer and industry challenges surrounding business continuity, security, agility, and rising costs. During the design phase, energy modeling showed that the LEED Design process will provide an estimated annual energy savings of 30% to 35%. In addition, UPI enabled Connected Building design principles will provide estimated operational savings of $0.63 per square foot.

The building serves as a living case study of Panduit's Unified Physical Infrastructure (UPI) approach, which gives enterprises the capabilities to connect, manage and automate communications, computing, power, control and security systems for a smarter business foundation. UPI based elements of the building design include:  

• A smart data center, which showcases an intelligent infrastructure that features high-speed data transport network infrastructure, energy efficient heating and cooling, and data center virtualization, enabling a 15% reduction in data center power costs and 38% reduction in cooling costs.
• Connected building architecture, which bridges key business applications across the building, enabling convergence of physical and logical systems onto a single network. This intelligence drives efficiencies, visibility and control extending the reach of cabling infrastructures to all endpoint devices for seamless integration of building systems (including IP telephony, wireless connectivity, digital media, and physical security).
• The unique Unified Operation Center (UOC), which co-locates the world headquarters safety, security, network, and communications operations, enables close coordination and information sharing in a central location. Moving to converged and IP based systems speeds time-critical evaluation and response for improved workplace safety and network service level agreements (SLAs). This consolidated environment also reduces duplication, which results in a positive ROI in both hard equipment and soft operational costs.

The headquarters is already being viewed as a model for best-in-class integrated buildings worldwide. By collaborating with UPI Technology Partners such as Cisco, IBM, EMC, Emerson, Fluke, Haworth, Lutron, Oracle, and Tridium, Panduit is able to address challenges that cut across multiple business and technology domains. "As the trend of building automation and IT convergence advances, the common vision we have developed with Panduit becomes even more relevant. Together we are helping to rethink the way that physical infrastructure is managed and are opening up new opportunities for our customers to place network-driven innovation at the heart of their business," said David Hsieh, VP Marketing, Emerging Technologies Group, Cisco.

Panduit teamed with leading global design, planning and strategic consulting firm Gensler, as well as with national engineering and construction firms Affiliated Engineers Inc., Continental Technologies, and Power Construction, to design this innovative building. "Through our relationship with Panduit, we better understand that technology is a key component to sustainability – to monitor and control the building's energy use. We understand how the UPI vision can enhance LEED certification and will consider using this technology strategy on other projects," states Jay Longo, Gensler Senior Associate.

The building is expected to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. In addition to the UPI based design, other features of Panduit's world headquarters that enhance the workplace experience and contribute to overall sustainability goals include:

• The first application of light shelves with integrated window shades, to help redistribute the sun's direct light deep into the building and reduce the amount of powered lighting.
• The first installation in Illinois of a water reclamation system in an office building. This system collects rainwater from the roofs for internal non-potable uses to enhance efficiency and environmental responsibility, creating an estimated annual water savings of 910,000 gallons.
• Reclaimed redwood from water towers, used for architectural wood accents.
• A green roof which protects the roof membrane from harsh weather and ultraviolet radiation. This system insulates the building and minimizes heat gain.

Many of the building's features are a direct result of Panduit's commitment to achieving a LEED Gold certification. "The costs associated with the LEED criteria were approximately 2% of the total construction budget, and we expect to see these investments show a payback in less than five years," says Robert Smith, Director of Global Real Estate. "Our LEED Gold building design demonstrates our continued dedication to being an environmentally conscious manufacturer and our commitment to sustainability."

Panduit's new World Headquarters brings to life the many benefits of the Unified Physical Infrastructure approach and values of the company. According to a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Panduit, organizations utilizing UPI principles can benefit from IT hardware and support savings, improved user productivity and profitability, increased revenue, better IT infrastructure performance and support, greater IT security, and the realization of green benefits such as reduced power consumption.

About Panduit:

Panduit is a world-class developer and provider of leading-edge solutions that help customers optimize the physical infrastructure through simplification, agility and operational efficiency. Panduit Unified Physical Infrastructure(SM) (UPI) based solutions give enterprises the capabilities to connect, manage and automate communications, computing, power, control and security systems for a smarter, unified business foundation. Strong relationships with technology leaders complemented with its global staff and unmatched service and support, make Panduit a valuable and trusted partner. (www.panduit.com).

SOURCE Panduit Corporation