You walk into a commercial property viewing and immediately start doing the mental calculations. Square footage. Natural light. Proximity to public transport. The fit-out costs for your particular operation. Maybe you picture where the reception desk would go, or which corner would work best for the server room.
What you probably don’t think about is what’s happening behind the walls, above the ceiling tiles, and beneath the concrete. The pipes and cables and ducts that will determine whether this building serves your business well or becomes a constant headache. Most buyers and tenants spend ninety percent of their attention on things that account for perhaps twenty percent of their future problems. The infrastructure nobody talks about ends up being the infrastructure that matters most.
The True Cost of Infrastructure Failures
When building systems fail, they rarely do so politely. A drainage backup doesn’t wait for a convenient moment. Electrical capacity issues don’t announce themselves until you’ve already committed to the lease and installed equipment that trips the breakers every time someone turns on the air conditioning.
Consider what happens when things go wrong. Your server room overheats because the HVAC system was never designed for the thermal load of modern computing equipment. Production halts while you scramble for temporary cooling solutions. Or perhaps you’re running a food preparation facility and discover during an inspection that the drainage system can’t handle the volume and grease loads your operation generates. Suddenly you’re facing compliance issues, potential fines, and the very real possibility of temporary closure.
These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. They happen regularly to businesses that focused on the visible elements of their premises while underestimating the invisible ones. Insurance often covers some of the direct damage, but rarely the business interruption, the reputational harm, or the management time consumed by crisis response.
The frustrating truth? Most of these situations were avoidable with proper due diligence before signing anything.
Electrical Capacity: Planning for Today and Tomorrow
If there’s one infrastructure element that trips up growing businesses more than any other, it’s electrical supply. Not whether you have power, but whether you have enough power for what you actually need to do.
The distinction between single-phase and three-phase supply matters enormously for commercial operations. Standard single-phase supplies work fine for basic office environments, but the moment you introduce significant equipment loads, you’re likely to need three-phase power. Manufacturing machinery, professional kitchen equipment, multiple server racks, even certain types of HVAC systems, all require more than a standard supply can provide.
Upgrading electrical infrastructure after the fact is expensive and disruptive. It often requires significant building work, potential road closures for new cable runs, and coordination with ESB Networks that can stretch over months. Far better to understand what you need before you commit.
Beyond raw capacity, the distribution infrastructure within the building matters too. How many circuits are available? Where are the distribution boards located? Is there room to expand? These questions might seem like details for the electricians to worry about, but they directly affect what your business can do in that space.
For anyone operating commercial premises, regular testing and maintenance of electrical systems isn’t optional. The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work regulations place clear obligations on employers and building owners. Using a Registered Electrical Contractor through Safe Electric ensures work meets national standards and that you receive proper certification. For practical guidance on maintaining compliance with your electrical testing requirements, there’s useful information in this guide to managing your electrical testing kit.
Water Systems: Drainage, Supply, and the Weather Factor
Water infrastructure rarely features in the glossy property brochures, but it can make or break certain types of operations. Start with supply: if your business involves any water-intensive processes, from food and beverage production to certain manufacturing applications, you need to understand what flow rates and pressure the building can actually deliver. Municipal supply varies significantly by location, and some operations require storage tanks or booster pumps to function properly.
Then there’s wastewater. Commercial kitchens generate grease-laden effluent that requires proper interception before entering the public sewer system. Industrial processes may produce contaminated water requiring treatment. Even seemingly straightforward office buildings generate more wastewater than you might expect once you factor in staff numbers and any catering facilities.
But here’s what catches many property developers and owners off guard: roof drainage. Ireland’s climate has always been wet, but recent years have brought a noticeable shift in rainfall patterns. According to Met Éireann’s climate analysis, Ireland has become approximately 7% wetter when comparing the 1991-2020 period to 1961-1990, and winter rainfall could increase by up to 24% under future warming scenarios. The national forecaster’s 2025 Annual Climate Statement noted that the last four years have been the warmest on record, with five named storms and numerous impactful rain events in 2025 alone.
For commercial buildings with large roof areas, this matters significantly. A warehouse, factory, or distribution centre can have thousands of square metres of roof collecting rainfall. When intense storms deliver heavy precipitation over short periods, inadequate drainage systems become overwhelmed. Water backs up. Roofs leak. Internal flooding damages stock, equipment, and finishes.
Conventional gravity drainage systems have their limitations, particularly for buildings with large spans and limited options for downpipe runs. This is where more sophisticated approaches become necessary. Siphonic drainage systems, which use the physics of full-bore flow to move water more efficiently through smaller pipes, are increasingly common in commercial and industrial buildings. Rainwater drainage specialists such as Capcon Engineering provide the design expertise and installation services required for these more complex systems, particularly in sectors like pharmaceuticals, data centres, and large-scale manufacturing where drainage failure would be catastrophic.
The point isn’t that every building needs the most sophisticated drainage available. Rather, it’s that drainage infrastructure deserves proper assessment, particularly given the trajectory of Ireland’s climate and the potential consequences of getting it wrong.
Climate Control and Air Quality
The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems in a commercial building are rarely just about comfort. They’re about functionality and compliance.
Different operations have vastly different requirements. A standard office needs basic temperature control and adequate ventilation. A pharmaceutical manufacturing facility needs precise environmental management with specific temperature and humidity ranges, cleanroom air handling, and sophisticated contamination control. A food processing plant has its own set of requirements around temperature zones, extraction systems, and air quality.
What determines HVAC energy consumption? Partly the efficiency of the systems themselves, but equally the building envelope. How well insulated are the walls and roof? What’s the quality of the glazing? How much of the building faces south and receives direct solar gain in summer?
Under Irish regulations, commercial buildings require a Building Energy Rating when sold or let. The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) administers this system, and the rating provides a standardised assessment of energy efficiency from A to G. But the BER certificate is just one piece of the puzzle. For businesses with significant energy costs, understanding the actual performance of building systems, not just their theoretical rating, matters far more.
Air quality has risen up the agenda significantly since the pandemic years. Employees and customers now have expectations about ventilation that simply didn’t exist a decade ago. Beyond expectations, there’s mounting evidence linking air quality to cognitive performance and health outcomes. Investing in better ventilation systems may pay dividends in productivity that are harder to measure than energy bills but no less real.
Compliance, Certification, and Future Requirements
Irish building regulations have undergone significant updates recently. The Building Regulations (Part B Amendment) Regulations 2024, which come into full effect from May 2025, represent the largest changes to fire safety requirements in over a decade. New requirements cover sprinkler systems, smoke control, fire-resistant facades, and internal firefighter access for taller buildings.
For anyone buying, developing, or significantly modifying commercial property, understanding these requirements isn’t optional. Buildings that technically comply with older standards may face challenges during sale or refinancing if buyers or lenders perceive future compliance costs.
Beyond fire safety, accessibility requirements under Part M of the building regulations create obligations for commercial buildings undergoing change of use or significant renovation. Environmental regulations continue to tighten, with the EU’s Energy Performance of Buildings Directive driving requirements for building automation systems and electric vehicle charging infrastructure in larger buildings.
The Office of Public Works flood mapping service allows anyone to check flood risk for specific locations. Given the climate trajectory already discussed, properties in areas with elevated flood risk face both operational concerns and potential challenges around insurance and future marketability. Due diligence on flood risk should be standard practice for any significant property transaction.
What’s the theme connecting all these regulatory considerations? The standards expected of commercial buildings are rising, and properties that meet only minimum historical requirements will increasingly face headwinds.
Working With the Right Specialists
Here’s the practical takeaway from everything above: generic property advice rarely captures infrastructure nuances adequately. Estate agents understand location and lease terms. Solicitors handle the legal documentation. Accountants assess the financial implications. But none of these professionals typically have deep expertise in mechanical and electrical systems, drainage design, or building services generally.
For significant commercial property decisions, particularly for businesses with specific operational requirements, bringing in specialist M&E consultants during due diligence pays for itself many times over. These professionals can assess whether existing building systems match your needs, identify potential upgrade costs, and flag issues that generic surveys miss.
Building surveyors serve a related but distinct function, examining the physical condition of the structure itself. For older buildings or properties being converted from one use to another, their input becomes essential.
The cost of these assessments might seem like an unnecessary expense when you’re already spending significantly on property. It isn’t. The assessments themselves typically cost a fraction of the remediation work they might prevent you from needing later. More importantly, they give you the information necessary to negotiate properly. A building with inadequate electrical infrastructure is worth less than an otherwise identical building with capacity to spare. But you only have that negotiating position if you actually know what you’re dealing with.
Commercial property decisions are among the most significant financial commitments most businesses make. Getting the infrastructure assessment right means buying or leasing premises that support your operations rather than constraining them. Getting it wrong means years of workarounds, unexpected costs, and the nagging sense that you’re fighting your own building.
The founders and business owners who get this right tend to be the ones who treated infrastructure due diligence as essential rather than optional. The ones still thriving in suitable premises five years from now, rather than looking for their third location because the first two didn’t work out.