Businesses have been putting the finishing touches to their new offices at Victoria Place, with no fewer than four moving in since the start of the year.

Telecommunications company TeleBermuda International (TBI) was the first tenant to move in three weeks ago, followed by re/insurance firms Risk Management Solutions (RMS) and Wind River Reinsurance, and, at the end of January they were joined by Ariel Re.

Court House, a state-of-the-art gym and squash club, and Clarendon Pharmacy, which was relocated from Bermudiana Road, is expected to open a week today, while Hannover Re, lawyers Wakefield Quin, health food shop Better Health, Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch and Nephila Capital are in the process of installing their facilities.

The first business to open was Latin restaurant, run by the Island Restaurant Group, in November last year and since then a steady succession of companies have been moving into the premises.

The advantages for each company are obvious, from being centrally located in the traditional heart of Hamilton to using the facilities of Bermuda's first ever 'green' or LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building. In fact, many firms have made the most of the natural light and incorporated movement sensors to control the lighting into their design, as well as the use of recycled materials and environmentally-friendly air-conditioning system.

TBI, which was previously based in the Bermuda Monetary Authority House, moved down a couple of blocks down the road when its lease expired and it decided that Victoria Place was the best place to be, as well as good back up power and redundancy for its operations.

Its new premises comprise the administration part of the business on the first floor of the building for 19 employees and a 1,000 square-foot retail store on the ground level, which will be manned by three staff and feature a cyber cafe and wireless 'hot spot' in the courtyard, should open in six to eight weeks' time, to compliment its network operations centre in Southside, St. David's and existing shop in Reid Street.

The admin offices, which cover 7,000 square feet, contain offices for the CEO, chief finance officer, financial controller, vice-president of sales, director of marketing and customer service manager and an open plan design for the various teams, as well as a board room complete with video conferencing facilities, meeting rooms and a back office for the IT department.

"Victoria Street has always been telecommunications row, so it is good to stay here," said Greg Swan, CEO of TBI.

"We are very excited about it because we see it as Bermuda's first metro style building with restaurants, a gym and a pharmacy next door, and there is a lot of traffic here.

"This is phase one of what we call the TBI expansion plans for 2009."

RMS decided to move across town from its original premises on Burnaby Street, which it set up in Bermuda in October 2005, to the first floor of Victoria Place, because it had simply outgrown its previous office space, according to RMS's vice-president and service leader Chris Zumbrum.

"We just needed a bigger space to schedule our client meetings," he said.

"What intrigued us the most was that this is a green building "What intrigued us the most was that this is a green building and we wanted to be environmentally-friendly.

"So we talked to the property management company and he showed us the pictures of the design and gave us a tour to show us what it would be like and we decided to move in."

The office, which is 1,600 square feet of space, had a big design input from RMS, with a training and conference room complete with six computer terminals and a flat-screen television for video conferencing integrated into the plan.

"It is important to our clients do having to travel to other RMS offices around the world now we have the capacity to offer that to them," he said.

"We just liked the fact that we could build it out like this.

"It is the ideal office space for us and it is just the right size for our operation."

The facilities, which will be used by its all-Bermudian team of three employees, include everything from an open plan office, an interview room and a seating area with a table to a kitchen, toilet and shower and even a storage cupboard, all ventilated by an innovative and environmentally-friendly air-conditioning system, which uses water from a well below ground, and furnished with carpet made from recycled material.

In fact, RMS used its very own geocoding (the process of finding associated geographic co-ordinates - often expressed as latitude and longitude) to work out that its new location would be in the heart of Hamilton, which fitted perfectly into the way it does business and put the company right on the doorstep of some of its biggest clients.

Staff will also be able to take advantage of the surrounding amenities such as motorbike parking spaces and storage room in the basement of the building, as well as Latin downstairs.

And with a range of about 46 clients from re/insurers like Ace, American International Group, XL Capital and Allied World Assurance Co. to big hitters in the financial industry coming in to be trained on how to use its latest risk modelling software, including for earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, hail and terrorism in the US, Japan and the Caribbean, to name but a few, RMS's new facilities will be able to accommodate the demand. RMS uses a variety of methodology from models to calculate the vulnerability of buildings to a set of new initiatives on the exposure management side and the assessment of data quality.

In terms of its own 'green' agenda, RMS has gone environmentally-friendly on a global scale, from using greener taxi operators at its London base to encouraging its employees to use public transport such as trains instead of cars and even video conferencing facilities in most of its offices to reduce its carbon footprint from air travel.

Another scheme which it has signed up to is ClimateWise - a collaborative insurance initiative where members work together in response to the risks and opportunities of climate change.

Hannover Re's head of administration, Michele Cassin, said the company's move from its premises in Front Street, where it has been since setting up in Bermuda in 2001, to the new location will be like home from home with a lot of the same fixtures and furnishings such as the brickwork and glass panelling and surrounds in the executive part of the office.

The reinsurer's new 14,900 square foot offices will accommodate 25 staff, while its sister company Hannover Life will relocate nine employees which run its current operation in St. David's to Victoria Place.

"We renovated our existing office in Front Street in 2004, but we did not expect our staffbase to grow so quickly, hence the move," she said.

The LEED building fits with Hannover Re's move towards being a greener employer, with a paperless accounting and payment put in place in 2005, while the company has been allocated two car parking spaces and 16 motorcycle lots to encourage employees to walk or cycle to work instead.

The offices comprise an executive wing, complete with a boardroom, meeting room, computer room, copying and filing room and offices for the CEO and chief financial officer, a section for the accounting department and another for the underwriting and modelling team.