First "green" IT building to open 4,000 seats in June

CEBU, Philippines – The first cyber-building at the Mandaue-North Reclamation Area, the RobinLand IT/BPO Center, will open up a total of 4,000 seats next month, to accommodate the growing demand for BPO designed office spaces.

Developed by the RobinLand Inc., the 9-story building is also the first “Green building” in Cebu, of which support infrastructure facilities are designed to cut power cost, among others.

RobinLand Inc., president and chairman Edwin Robin said the company is now talking with at least two big multinational BPO companies that expressed interest to locate in the building.

Robin, whose core business is into food catering services and owns the largest canteen concessionaire for companies in Cebu called Eight2Eight Catering Services, has ventured into real estate development in 2007 to establish the first PEZA (Philippine Economic Zone Authority) registered IT/BPO building in Mandaue City.

Next month, the company will officially open the P300 million building, which has a first of a kind design and one of the most unique building architecture in Cebu.

“We hope to fill the building’s occupancy by this year,” said RobinLand Inc., vice president for operations, and business development Wilfredo Sa-a Jr.

As the economy is on its way to recovery, Sa-a hopes that the company will be able to fill the 4,000 seats by this year, so that it could start developing another IT building within the area, adjacent to the Parkmall shopping center.

The “green building” technology is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources such as energy, water, and materials while reducing impacts on human health and the environment.

Aside from being the first “Green Building” in Cebu, RobinLand IT/BPO Center also invested on its infrastructure facilities to provide un-interrupted telecommunication and power system for its tenants.

According to Sa-a the building has provisions for a building management system which can be tapped by the locators according to their needs. One innovation of the building is the dual/redundant busway system, which will allow the locators to easily tap the power supply of the building.

The building location is near Cebu Doctors University, at Zuellig Avenue, of which three Public Utility Jeepney (PUJ) franchisees have been approved to extend their routes in the area to provide transportation needs of the employees.

If the 4,000 available seats will be filled up, it would provide an employment opportunity for at least 12 thousand jobs, in a 24-hour shift.

Earlier, in separate interviews with BPO companies, most of them are planning to expand their respective facilities in Cebu, preferably on a PEZA-registered building to avail of fiscal incentives.

Industry sources said that India’s one of the largest BPO/IT companies, InfoSys is now looking at available office-space for their major expansion in Cebu. Other BPO companies that expressed expansion plans here include Wipro, and other call center and IT-enabled services companies.

The country's BPO industry is forecasted to earn around $12 billion and employing 900,000 people by the year 2010.