Our company is in the process of planning and then building a new
office building. We're a small business (less than 50 employees) civil
engineering consulting firm. As we plan our new office space, we're
having trouble finding information on what technology to include in
that office space. (i.e. types of wiring, video conferencing, etc.) We
want to be able to "upgrade" or include future technologies in the
plans for this new office. What resources are available on the net
(articles, websites, etc.) that would help us to include these things
in our plans? Thanks for your help.

Dear blue:

Thank you for your question. A great overview of office technologies
and how to integrate these into an office building is available here:

Introduction to Building Wiring
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~amccord/building-wiring.html

The article touches upon electrical, communications, and other types
of wiring technologies in modern office buildings, and provides links
to additional resources on the internet as well. Their provideed links
are quite extensive and relevant, so I have not included them again in
my answer here. Your best bet would to check the links in that article
first.

The Building Owners and Manager's Association's publications would be
a good place to start with their publications on their subject. A
complete list of their downloadable publications are available here:
http://www.boma.org/download.htm

The relevant article in that list is:

Systems Integration: Increasing Building and Workplace Performance 
http://www.boma.org/download/research/whitepages.pdf

TIA Online is an online vendor of IT standards. You can view a top ten
list of their best selling standards here:
http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/search_n_order.cfm

The most relevant standards in that list include:

# TIA/EIA-569-A, Commercial Building Standards for Telecommunications
Pathways and Spaces
http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/search_results2.cfm?document_no=TIA/EIA-569-A

# TIA/EIA-606, Administration Standard for the Telecommunications
Infrastructure of Commercial Buildings
http://www.tiaonline.org/standards/search_results2.cfm?document_no=TIA/EIA-606

Smarttech also has a good article on the subject, titled:

Choices in Workplace Design for High End Knowledge Work
http://www.smarttech.com/facilitydesign/feature.asp

Steelcase.com has an extensive knowledge library of building design
related articles. I have included a direct link to the section on
"Technology" below, but you will likely find that the other sections
to be of help as well.

http://www.steelcase.com/servlet/ToolsInsightsServlet?ACTION=3&SEC_ID=3&SUB_ID=9&MIN_ID=20&NAME=knowledge+library

Division17.net is another proposed standard for IT wiring in the work
place. Here is the description from their homepage:

"Division 17" is an initiative that began over 2 years ago with the
objective of ensuring that telecommunication systems are "designed
into" a building during the design phase of the project versus the
more traditional method of "retrofitting" it into the building while
it is being constructed.
Source: http://www.division17.net/

You can view the current draft of the initiative here:
http://www.division17.net/downloadform2.htm

Although this is not completely related, Business 2.0 has a good
article that you probably will be interested in titled:

The Office That Revolves Around You
http://www.business2.com/articles/web/0,1653,41205,FF.html


Google Search Strategy:

     Office Space Building Technologies Guide
     ://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=Office+Space+Building+Technologies+Guide&btnG=Google+Search


I hope this helps! 

Best Regards,
blader-ga

Your help is very much appreciated - the links contain some
information that will help us as least consider some new technologies.
Good work!