It is being touted as Bermuda’s first truly redundant building, with not one but two emergency generators and two air conditioning systems.

Even in the event of an Island-wide disaster and total loss of power supplies, the operations within the building at 7 Par-La-Ville Road will be unaffected, its lights, electricity, computers, telephones and air conditioning will all remain up-and-running because of back-up systems incorporated in its construction, according to developers.

Lessons learned from the impact of hurricanes and the 2005 Belco fire are behind the idea for the first “true, highly redundant building in the city” which is known as a “Power House”.

Eric Hetzel, one of the partners of developers Par-La-Ville Treo Limited, explains: “There have been examples where, (in a power outage situation) some generators have not started up or have not kept running. And there was an example of one building that did not have air conditioning for months afterwards.

“By having multiples we eliminate these points of failure. This building will keep running even if the general outage lasts for a week or more.”

The second back-up generator is there in case the first one fails and also to allow maintenance of one generator while the other is in operation - such as might be required should there be a sustained Island-wide outage.

The new building will have a central UPS system to keep computers online during any Belco outage and before the generators power-up.

There will also be redundant telecommunications pathways into and within the seven-storey office block.

A car park and the former Terceira architects’ cottage have made way for the new building and its 74,000 sq ft of office space. It is anticipated the building, which is in front of Bermy Cuisine, as viewed from Par-La-Ville Road, will take 18 months to erect.

It has been designed by Terceira Quarterly Limited and features glass frontage on three sides, is set 20 feet back from the road and may have a cafe or other retail space on its ground floor. A central six-storey atrium will feature open staircase and two elevators.

A number of floors within the office block are still available for lease, according to Par-La-Ville Treo partners Mr. Hetzel, Peter Terceira and John Robbins.

Apex Construction is overseeing the construction.