Who Is Responsible for IT Investments in a Shell Space?

A shell-delivered space is a blank canvas. No partition walls, no floor finishes, often not even a suspended ceiling. That gives tenants freedom, but it also raises an awkward question that in practice remains surprisingly unanswered: who is responsible for the digital infrastructure? The landlord who owns the building, or the tenant who works there every day? The answer is more nuanced than most lease agreements suggest.

The digital foundation: typically the landlord's domain

Let us start with the basics. Just as a landlord is responsible for a watertight roof, functioning drainage, and a safe main electrical connection, the digital foundation of a building typically belongs to the owner. That sounds logical, but in practice this foundation is surprisingly often absent.

What typically falls under this domain? First and foremost, the fiber connection to the building. Not a single line from an arbitrary provider, but preferably a multi-carrier connection where multiple providers reach the property via independent routes. That may sound like overkill, but the difference between one and two fiber routes is the difference between a building that goes completely dark during excavation works and one that keeps running.

Beyond that, the landlord typically provides the infrastructure in the meter room and risers. These are the common areas of the digital world: the distribution points where fiber is converted to per-floor connections, where switches and patch panels form the building's spine. A well-designed meter room with adequate space, cooling, and power supply is not a luxury. It is a baseline requirement.

Building-level redundancy also belongs here. A UPS system for the core infrastructure, emergency power for technical rooms, and preferably two physically separated risers. These are investments that an individual tenant cannot and should not need to make, but that make the difference for everyone in the property.

The tenant domain: from patch panel to application

Once the fiber reaches the floor, the domain shifts. Within the leased space, it is the tenant's turn. And that involves considerably more than just pulling a few cables.

It starts with horizontal cabling: Cat6a or Cat7 cables from the connection point to the workstations. Then the setup of a dedicated patch cabinet or server room, depending on the organisation's size. Next, the active equipment: wifi access points covering the entire office, switches handling internal traffic, firewalls guarding the boundary between the internal network and the outside world.

On top of that base layer come the application-specific systems. Room booking systems, IoT sensors for climate and occupancy, audiovisual equipment for presentations and video conferencing. The further along this stack you go, the more specific the needs become and the more logical it is for the tenant to invest and manage.

"Even the best internal IT setup cannot compensate for a weak building backbone. It is like installing a high-tech kitchen in a house without plumbing."

Where friction arises

The theory is clear, but practice reveals grey areas. And it is precisely in those grey areas that most frustration occurs.

Take the issue of additional fiber. A tenant with high bandwidth needs wants a dedicated fiber connection to their floor. But that connection must run through the landlord's riser, and there may no longer be room in the meter room. Who pays for the expansion? The tenant who needs the capacity, or the landlord offering a building that fails to grow with demand?

Or the matter of redundancy. A tenant running business-critical systems wants a second, independent fiber route. But that is a building-level investment benefiting all tenants. Is it reasonable to place those costs on a single tenant? And if the landlord co-invests, can that investment be passed on to all tenants through service charges?

Then there is the question of upgrades. The building is fifteen years old and the riser cabling needs replacing. The landlord sees this as "maintenance" and wants to spread it over ten years. The tenant has a problem now and cannot wait. These kinds of impasses occur more often than you might think, and they cost both parties money and goodwill.

The IT-label as objective starting point

This is where the IT-label offers a solution that goes beyond a technical score. The methodology makes an explicit distinction between two levels: the building level and the user level.

The building level encompasses the building-related infrastructure: the fiber connection, the meter room, the risers, the shared infrastructure, building-level redundancy. This is what the IT-label assesses during certification. A property with multi-carrier fiber, redundant risers, and a professionally equipped meter room scores fundamentally differently from a building with a single line and an overcrowded cabinet.

The user level is what the tenant brings: internal cabling, active equipment, wifi coverage, applications. This falls outside the building certification but is obviously crucial for daily operations.

By making this separation explicit, the IT-label provides a common language for landlord and tenant. It is no longer a matter of opinion but an objective measurement. And that makes conversations about responsibilities and investments far more productive. The final agreements on who installs and manages what are recorded in the IT Demarcation List.

What the landlord gains

For property owners who invest in their building's digital foundation, the business case is compelling. A higher IT-label translates to better lettability. Tenants, particularly in the premium segment, increasingly select on digital quality. A building rated IT1 HIGH PERFORMANCE or IT2 PLUG & PLAY attracts a different type of tenant than one rated IT5 SHELL.

Vacancy rates also drop. In a market where office space is abundant, digital infrastructure becomes a differentiating feature. It is comparable to the energy label: ten years ago nobody looked at it; now it is a dealbreaker.

And at the point of sale, the IT-label plays a role in valuation. Buyers and appraisers are beginning to weigh digital infrastructure as part of building quality. A property with a documented IT-label is more transparent and therefore more attractive to investors.

What the tenant gains

For tenants, the gains may be even more tangible. Business continuity tops the list. In a well-equipped building, a tenant need not worry about the digital foundation. No unexpected outages from a single fiber route, no disputes about whether the meter room is the landlord's concern or not.

AI readiness is becoming an increasingly relevant criterion. Organisations wanting to experiment with AI applications, process large datasets, or work cloud-intensively need digital infrastructure that can handle it. In a building with a low IT-label, you run into limitations before you have even started.

And then there is the simple matter of less downtime. Every hour an office goes without internet costs money. For a law firm with eighty employees, a day's outage can mean tens of thousands of euros in lost productivity. Redundant building infrastructure reduces that risk to a minimum.

"The discussion about who pays for IT infrastructure only becomes productive when both parties speak the same language. The IT-label provides that language."

Invest together, benefit together

The conclusion is clear: a strong IT-label is not the landlord's responsibility alone, nor the tenant's alone. It is a shared effort where each party invests in their own domain, with the shared interest of a future-proof building.

The landlord lays the digital foundation: fiber, redundancy, shared infrastructure. The tenant builds on that with internal cabling, active equipment, and applications. Where those two domains meet, the IT-label provides an objective reference framework that prevents disputes and guides investment.

For landlords who want to know how their building scores, and for tenants who want to understand what they can expect, the IT-label offers a starting point. Get in touch for more information about certification and the possibilities for your property.