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YEAR BOOK |
The Northern Ireland Science Park
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The Northern Ireland Science Park
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One hundred years ago, Northern Ireland harnessed those attributes to become one of the powerhouses of the industrial revolution, and Belfast boasted the world's largest shipyard, rope works and linen mills. Today, NISP is helping the region combine those same qualities to forge the knowledge revolution.
Innovation Centre
Based at three locations in Northern Ireland (Belfast, Coleraine & Derry) the Science Park is making a tangible contribution to the commercial exploitation of the region's reserves of intellectual property.
At the forefront of the strategy is the provision of bespoke facilities for knowledge-based companies. NISP's first facility, a 56,000 sq ft Innovation Centre at Queen's Island, Belfast, is one of the most sophisticated buildings in Europe, and was designed with the needs of knowledge-based start-ups specifically in mind.
Just months after opening, the centre was acknowledged at the Irish Property Awards as 'Northern Ireland's Commercial Development of the Year' and, judging by demand for the 2,000 sq ft units, there is obviously plenty of interest in the market for facilities of this standard. Units have already been let to firms operating in the renewable energy, SMS, food technology, and IT sectors.
The reason for this is that the centre provides occupants with two strong assets: corporate standard IT platforms/real estate facilities at start-up prices, and 'agility'.
Agility at the Innovation Centre comes in many guises. On a practical level, it has been designed to cater for everything from wet-lab scenarios to traditional office environments, from one or two-man operations to multi-national operations. Flexibility has also been built into lease terms to cater for companies which need to quickly increase or reduce their space requirements.
Corporate Quality
The other strong draw for occupants is access to high quality facilities at affordable prices. This is particularly true of the IT offering at the Innovation Centre, which uses the latest HP and Cisco technology.
Occupants can avail of IP telephony, unified messaging, security solutions, and wireless access in what is the island's largest secure wireless facility. The system also offers security solutions and lower relocation/management costs.
The Science Park has also ensured that tenants have access to the fastest bandwidth in Northern Ireland � up to 12MB per sec, which is six times the industry standard. In conjunction with Bytel, which maintains and supports Northern Ireland's Internet backbone exchange, occupants can transfer data packets from Belfast to any other point on the European backbone in 20 milli-seconds � or 80 milli-seconds to get to East Coast US. This is only marginally slower than the theoretical limitations imposed by the speed of light!
ECIT
However, there's more to the Science Park than just the Innovation Centre, which is the first of twelve facilities planned for the 24-acre headquarter site in Belfast. The second building, Queen's University's Electronics, Communications and IT (ECIT) research institute, was completed during summer 2004 and, at �40m, represents Northern Ireland's largest single R&D investment to date.
Headed by John McCanny FRS, Professor of Microelectronics Engineering at Queen's, ECIT houses specialists in the fields of advanced digital and electronics communications technology, and will focus on broadband, wireless broadband and telecommunications software. As well as being a world-class centre of excellence, ECIT will also accommodate spin-in and spin-out companies.
Plans are also afoot for the next facilities at Queen's Island � a 40,000 sq ft building to provide 'growth-space' for occupants and a 20,000 sq ft unit for light manufacturing.
Wider Picture
Despite the activity at Belfast, the �73m NISP project is very much a Northern Ireland wide venture, which also has the potential to fulfil a cross-border role. NISP provides facilities in association with the University of Ulster's Science & Research Parks at the university's campuses in Magee and Coleraine. It is also the first European location for the trial of a new wireless broadband technology that holds out the potential to enable users to access NISP's IT facilities � no matter where they are based.
If your business operates in the ICT, electronics, biotech or the wider knowledge economy as a start-up or a well established venture, perhaps the Northern Ireland Science Park can provide an environment and a community which will accelerate your development.
For further information please visit www.nisp.co.uk or contact:
Professor Norman Apsley,
Chief Executive, or Michael Graham, Director of Corporate Real Estate, N.I.S.P.;
Tel: 028 (048 from RoI) 9073 7800;
E-mail [email protected]